TG = Voodoo?

[TGJB]

Next time the film shows on TV, watch it. She looks exactly the same.

[Dana]

to jim,
what the heck is andy beyers\' claim to fame anyway? he had one good year about twenty or so years ago, and he wrote a book on speed figures (half the people on this site could write a book about speed figures) -- not much he says these days is very relevant or meaningful, or even particularly useful --when is the last time he picked a derby winner?

Jerry doesn\'t need my help, but I\'ll tell you, what he and the rest of the t-g crew has created here (this web site) is quite impressive and quite generous in all the freebies they give out. the availability of data, the speed at which you can get it, and the ease and relatively low cost are all very valuable aspects what they do here; they helped revolutionize the entire sport and the way people play it; i\'d try it out a little longer before you make a final decision.


just my 2 cents worth.

[JohnTChance]

Re: TG = Voodoo and your claim that Jerry\'s analysis missed the
mark in the Derby, two points:

1) Jerry\'s analysis, stated plainly in his OVERVIEW, was that the
most likely winners of the race were LION HEART or THE CLIFF\'s
EDGE (50%); and that if not those two, then either SMARTY JONES
or READ THE FOOTNOTES would win (25-30% chance). Thus,
Jerry\'s take on the race was pretty good, seeing as those 4 provided
the exacta, [as well as 3 of the 5 colts that made up the quinto-fecta,
- a bet that, as we all know, was taken in underground areas of Iraq].

2) At the Ragozin Derby seminar, the seminar leader said he did not
like SMARTY JONES to win the Derby [because he had an 0-2-X pattern.]

JohnTChance

[miff]

Regarding point #2,It comes as no surprise that the Dogmatic Rags people also saw an automatic X coming for SJ.

[kev]

Who Cares, I worte my derby picks on the Rag site, title was \"The Real Deal picks\" something like that, go look it up. I love SJ and I said Lion was my 2nd choice. That was mixed in with my pace and sheet number\'s.

[TGJB]

Damn it John, now you tell me. I was LOOKING for a place to bet the quinto-fecta.

There was great article, I think in Bloodhorse. There is racing in Iraq, at a track in the suburbs of Baghdad. In the opening days of the war, when we were bombing the crap out of the city, racing went on anyway. And we would expect no less.

[magicnight]

Yeah, except, when the Baghdad sheet players refer to \"ground loss\", they literally mean \"ground loss\".

[Thehoarsehorseplayer]

This is a true story.
I was out in LA when the last big earth quake hit.
LA might have been devasted but Santa Anita was open. Martin Luther King Day, holiday card.  
Business as usual except that every twenty minutes or so, there would be an aftershock.
So about every twenty minutes the grandstand would start shaking and  everybody would run out of the building and stand by the track apron.
And then after a few minutes the tremors would subside and they would all go back inside this building that was shaking like a leaf a few minutes earlier to attend to their business and trust to their fates.
Because, after all, the track being the track, probably by the fourth or fifth race dying in an earthquake was the last of most of the patron\'s worries.
Rather, they were thinking something like this, \"It\'s okay if you take me God, but, Please just get me even first.\"
The hell with the building collapsing.  Post time is in ten minutes.
And if I didn\'t see it, I wouldn\'t believe it either.

[TGJB]

Great story.

Along the same lines, there was a story I read in DRF once, that took place before my time. Back in those days NY did not have winter racing, but Bowie did, and there was a train that ran from NY to the Maryland track on weekends. One day the train crashed a couple of miles from the track, in the woods. The horseplayers dragged themselves bleeding out of the wreck and trudged through the snowy woods, getting to Bowie before the first race was run.

About 20 people turned out to have broken bones.

But not one showed up at first aid until after the double had been run, which was in those days the only exotic offered.

[LasVegasHorseplayer]

Without regard to Jerry Brown\'s verbal narrative on the Derby, it should be pointed out that anyone who understands how to interpret the TG numbers could have narrowed the race down to four (and only four) legitimate contenders for the win! This after listening all spring to the so-called experts blathering on and on about how \"wide open\" the race was...etc...ad nauseum!

In an 18-20 horse field this gives you a huge edge...Especially when the two fastest of these horses are paying 4-1 or better.

Of the four horses, three of them finished in the top five, two of them completed the exacta and they keyed a trifecta payoff of almost 500-1 and a superfecta payoff of over 20,000-1!

Personally, I don\'t know how much more one could expect? At some point a player must make up their own mind and take a stand...I read all of the same data as everyone else and what I saw were two horses key to the race, (especially after it started raining).

As it turned out they were collectively much the best. The numbers said that SJ was quite simply the fastest of them all so I took my stand and ignored the possibility that he might very well bounce. He didn\'t and the second fastest horse chased him home.

TCE and RTF had other negatives that I thought outweighed the likelyhood that SJ would bounce. On this day that is what happened and as it turned out I was correct and rewarded nicely for my efforts.

Often things don\'t work out the way you hope when you design a play. In this case they did.

It is also worth noting that while Jerry did give TCE and LH a 50% chance to win the race, he further stated that if one of them didn\'t win it there was a 30% or so chance that the winner would be SJ or RTF. That\'s an 80% probability among four entrants out of an 18 horse field (20 when he was doing his analysis)

Hell, you could have bet all four of them and turned a profit on the race.  This in a race where none of the handicapping illiterati around the country could come up with anything close to the winner!