Alydar did a good job with this, which saves me some work. And of course, again, it’s not really you I’m speaking to, since you have no real interest in getting to the truth—if you did you would have joined the chorus asking Friedman to post the 13th (which they now have, and which I will be addressing shortly).
Numbered points are mine, not yours, except where indicated.
1- I make no assumptions, other than that prior figures of horses can be used to determine future figures horses run, and outcomes of races. I do this because it’s the premise, and that it works out in practice. Because you don’t make figures, this point eludes you, but Alydar did a pretty good job of explaining it. You can’t assign artificial (incorrect) figures for horses running in different races, at different distances, and different tracks, to have them run in a tight range, and ALSO have them running in a tight range when they come out of those different races and run against each other. It’s physically impossible unless you screw around with the relationships WITHIN the race, and the “tightness” confirms both the numbers you are assigning today and they numbers they are based upon. Spend one week making figures and you’ll get it.
2- Ragozin was first, and has tons of dogmatic rules concerning sprints/routes, changing tracks, etc. I came along, disavowed that stuff, and only make the one assumption, above. Good luck convincing anybody I’m the creationist.
3- (your 1)- Yeah, Bayakoa probably won a FM graded stake with a 19. Do you ever actually listen to yourself?
4- (your 2)- Pure nonsense, and you know it. The point is not the percentage of variability, but of net effect on final time, and re-casting the argument is disingenuous. The actual difference between variants was 3.6 points (not 5 or 6) for the grass races—a difference of right around 1% of the final time. That’s not a lot, and in this case we’re talking about a course that had been soaked by rain, and was now drying. Regardless of all underlying logic, however, everyone should look at the 5th and 7th races on Preakness day on Ragozin and TG, and draw their own conclusions.
5- (your 3)- Again, disingenuous, especially your granting “graded horses run better”. Not just better—more consistently near their tops. If you actually don’t know this, you’re a very bad handicapper.
What I said (and BOTH statements are in the 5/24 post) was, “every horse, in a graded stake race, ran at least 6 points off their top”, and “every horse in the field but one ran at least 6 points worse than his previous race.” i.e., bounced. BOTH ARE TRUE ON RAGOZIN—everyone can look at Ragozin’s Schaefer sheets and see for themselves. Again, even if you think any one older stake horse is 50/50 to run 6 points off his top (or bounce 6 points, either way)—and 50% is an astronomically high number considering how close to their tops stake horses run—the chance of all 6 doing it is 2%. Rather than taking a position that can’t be proved (like saying each one had an 80% chance) why not try one that can—take me up on the bet I offered.
6- (your 5)- As has been documented here (my lawyers letter to Ragozin after we taped Ragozin employees lying about us) the “dissing” that takes place is almost all by them, in the field, in private, where we are almost never in a position to respond. The only reason they don’t do it here is because we can respond. And calling my raising questions of figure methodology “dissing” is diss-ingenuous. You know better.
