Bellamy Road Out

[Mall]

Fair enough. I think if you\'re a little more cautious about how you say things, stay on subject, & not repeat yourself too awful much, 99% or more of your problems will disappear. With few exceptions, the posters here are friendly & reasonable, not to mention very good handicappers. Don\'t be defensive if someone asks you to post in advance of a race. It\'s one of the best ways to get a concrete idea of what the person is saying, & the posters here understand that the results of any particular race mean very little, if anything.

Your comments re the Wood anticipated my next subject. You say that one of the things you\'re looking at is the stride of the horses. You may recall the wolf teeth post where I mentioned that the person who told me the story had done a stride analysis of a recent, important race in Ky. The gentleman in question was a trainer for many yrs, is a private & commercial clocker now, & is paid to analyze horses\' stride. Maybe I didn\'t explain it very well, but he seemed puzzled by what you seem to be saying. I looked at the replays & quite frankly, I don\'t see anything which is any different than what I see everyday. Nothing, as far as I could tell, which would have any predictive ability, at least for me.

And there is a fundamental & important aspect of observing horses in general, & their stride in particular, that you seem to have overlooked entirely. I noticed that the list of books you\'ve read didn\'t include anything by Takach or Ledbetter. If you read Takach\'s daily report on the condition of horses in the paddock, or you\'re getting his real time assessments over your computer, or you have someone else doing these sorts of things for you, one of the things which had to strike you right away is the number of horses, including many, many stakes horses, which are running with quarter cracks, frog problems, walking short, walking wide, wearing a martingale, using various types of shoes to try to overcome foot problems,  etc.,etc. These are all things that can change a horse\'s stride dramatically, & they are all things that change from race to race. Even assuming you can educate me re exactly what it is about some horse\'s stride that you are looking at, it seems to me that absent a lot more information than you have, it would still be impossible to determine anything which could possibly be reliably predictive from examining a horse\'s stride in any particular race. I think this is what is sometimes referred to as irrefutable logic, but maybe you don\'t see it that way.

Mall,

Some of the things you are talking about go far beyond anything I am looking it. If there is value in those things, you should be explaining it to me.

I am talking about a much more basic visual impression of whether the pace was fast or not. I can sometimes sense how hard the horses are being ridden early and how hard they are reaching out much the way you can see it in the stretch run. Sometimes you can see a horse that is really reaching out vs. one that is tired and shortening stride.

The main thing however is just looking at the horses records themselves (how much speed they have) and whether they open up on the field, are in a duel, are all bunched up, are under restraint etc....  

The visual impression of the pace just verfies the numeric and vice versa.

If you would like to take the conversation somewhere the people at TG would appreciate, I have a lot of interest in the breeding stats/figures you guys produce and have said so in other forums.

Potentially profitable applications of stats about which pedigrees develop early vs. late interest me a lot because I play plenty of stakes races for 2YOs and 3YOs. I think projecting improvement potential based on breeding would help. Right now I think in more general terms of what is typical/average for a young horse. I compiled plenty of data on that years ago.

[marcus]

MO - I agree , a 20 point bounce can\'t bode well for the career or general wellbeing of any race horse and is something that, unless there was an equipment or an equine type  flu like condition , would mean that there is a serious problem . I really hope that for this horse retierment is next - Bandini has earned his and now I\'m begnning to come around to the idea that so hasn\'t Bellamy Road ...

[beyerguy]

Mall,

Absolutely it would depend on the amount bet.  The problem is that if you are only betting a small number of races and you bet a lot more per race, you risk goes up exponentially.  Anyway, I\'m off subject, this definitely has nothing to do with Bellamy Road being out!

beyer,

>The problem is that if you are only betting a small number of races and you bet a lot more per race, you risk goes up exponentially.<

I agree.

I believe that with a very high ROI though, the risk of a bust goes down a bit relative to the same percentage of bankroll with a low ROI.

I know I feel more comfortable betting a slightly higher percentage of my bankroll the way I play now than I would if my ROI was thinner.

There\'s probably a good way to calculate how to maximize profits in terms of ROI/RISK.

That\'s not what this is about for me. For me it\'s about pleasure. Handicapping and playing claiming races all day would be like work for me even if I could grind out some extra profits at a lower ROI.

Now that I\'m not working though, I did make a trip to Belmont the other day and hit a dirt allowance race. :-)



Post Edited (05-13-05 09:36)

[Mall]

I expected there would be some backsliding, but it was still a little disappointing to read your suggestion that we change the subject to 2yr old vs. 3yr old pedigrees. Maybe we can discuss that somewhere down the road, but for now I would ask that you try a little harder to stick to the subject we are discussing now, which is the factors you have identified as aspects of your brand of handicapping.

We\'ve discussed one so far, namely the way you use visual interpretation of horses\' stride to help you decide if a race was fast or slow. If you\'re willing to be fair & objective, I think you have to agree that these are the things we\'ve learned about that: (a) it plays much less of a role than it seemed when you 1st raised it in response to a question about how your pace figures account for wind; (b) it\'s a factor which cannot be explained in terms other than \"sometimes I can sense\" & \"sometimes you can see\", which in my estimation is the same thing as saying it has no predictive value; & (c) forgive me for not figuring out some way to sugarcoat this, but the bottom line is that you were doing an \"analysis\" which you had said \"isn\'t that difficult\" without having or even knowing about the basic information necessary to even attempt the analysis in the 1st place.

Each and every one of the things which \"go far beyond\" anything you\'re looking at are things I didn\'t know when I started posting here. They are all things I learned from others who post here, something you might want to keep in mind in future discussions, whether or not HP is on the other side.

The next handicapping factor you mentioned was how you \"look at the jockey\'s hands to see how hard they were urging their horses.\" When I get back Tues, we can go through the same kind of discussion we just went through, but your statement that the \"main\" thing you look at is the horses\'s records leads me to believe that it might be another waste of time, particularly if at the end of the day all we\'re left with again is something you can\'t really describe, but is rather nothing more than something that you can \"sometimes sense\" & \"sometimes see.\"

Until then, best of luck on all the stakes races you bet on this weekend.

Mall,

I think the problem is that you are looking for a formula/method by which I can transfer visual perception skills to you immediately or that you think there is more here than there is.

I don\'t think I can transfer perception. It took awhile before I could tell when a horse changed leads in the stretch.

However, I consider what \"I\" am doing to be so basic, that there really isn\'t much of a conversation to be had. I\'m not sure why you are complicating the matter.

Virtually every experienced horseplayer friend I have can watch a race and see the obvious duels/very slow paces by watching the race development and having a general familiarity with the horses.

The weight of each aspect of it (horses opening up on the field or bunched up, hard jockey hand urging/tight hold, horse stride extention, a past record of early speed/lack of speed, going head to head/loose etc... is not the same.

It\'s a package and I couldn\'t weight them for you even if I tried.

The use of these visual skills for me is singular.

There are sometimes complications to making numeric pace figures. When I am not sure of the numbers, I watch the race and look for additional clues.

Some people I know develop all their opinions on pace by the subjective/visual methods I described above.

Some people I know develop all their opinions on pace using fractions and numeric pace figures.

I use both because they tend to either verify or contradict each other and I believe that helps me get a more accurate appraisal. There\'s no rocket science here.  It doesn\'t extend beyond that and I never implied it does.

I believe there are several popular handicapping books that have chapters on race watching skills and pace (The Winning Horseplayer is one), but they\'re probably not worth the trouble. They are going to say in a chapter what I said in a paragraph.



Post Edited (05-13-05 12:09)

[Mall]

My 1st reaction when I read this one was that this game would be quite a bit easier, though probably not as much fun, if the horses were as predictable as you\'re becoming. I particularly enjoyed the reference to the book where, if memory serves, Andy finally admitted that much of what he had writing about sheet players over the yrs was what might be characterized as idiotic gibberish. Sort of like someone saying something along the lines that I would probably agreee with you guys if I too was only looking at speed figures.

You keep using slightly different words, usually in the form of handicapping cliches, to make the point that only certain aspects of racing can be measured, & that subjective judgment will always be important. Nobody disagrees. The fundamental flaw in your logic comes when you start reaching conclusions based on the fact that someone is interested in knowing what factors can be measured & what those measurements show. Wanting that information doesn\'t mean that the person requesting it is going to rely on the information to the exclusion of everything else. It doesn\'t mean that the person doesn\'t know about or understand what the other factors are.  It doesn\'t mean that too much weight will be placed on what one learns. In fact, the one & only thing it does mean for sure is that the person is interested in learning what the information is, which is how we reached this point in the discussion.

Your response to HP\'s question re whether your early speed calculations take wind into consideration was that wind was tricky & that your approach was to take notes on those days when you attended the races in person. You very easily could have said any number of things, such as incorporating wind is too much time & work for someone who plays a couple of stakes on weekends, or I\'m willing to live with however much this impacts what I\'m doing, or etc, etc, etc. However, the answer you did give was so nonsensical & wrong that it led me to question some of the other things you raised in your response.

The pt of our just concluded exercise, then, wasn\'t so you could give me a formula to improve my visual perception skills. It was to see if you understood the basics of one of the factors you cited, & were using it the way it can & should be used. I now have answers to both of those questions, & am more than willing to let the hardy few who are still reading this thread decide what they think the answers are for themselves.

I should probable end this now, but think it only fair to give you a chance to surprise me with your answer to a softball kind of question which is likely to be very important to the accuracy of your early speed calculations for the races which will take place in Baltimore this weekend, namely: How do your calculations account for run ups? Now this is one you should be able to knock out of the park with one short, make that very short, sweet swing.

Mall,

\"How do your calculations account for run ups?\"

Ideally I would have that information all the time, but I do not.

However, you are making many assumptions that are very false.

The biggest error is that I am saying someone can create perfect pace figures or a perfect formula for using them. I\'ve said repeatedly that that isn\'t possible for many of the reasons we\'ve discussed.

Wind, runnups, only one race at the distance on a given day, horses rating instead of being all out, etc... are all issues and complications .

The idea is to make the best pace figures you can.

Race watching, familiarity with the horses, and other techniques compliment well researched numeric measurements and vice versa and allow fairly accurate appraisals much of the time.  

Pace handicapping is best summed up by a discussion by the great stock investor Warren Buffett when talking about depreciation accounting.

When an investor in Berkshire Hathaway (of which I have been since the late 80s) suggested that the depreciation of certain company assets was an accounting fiction that often doesn\'t match the economic reality, Mr. Buffett agreed. However, he was very clear that just because actual depreciation could often not be measured perfectly, one should still not ignore it.

The exact quote went something like this.

\"I would rather be approximately right than precisely wrong!\"

Repeat that 3 times and click your heels.



Post Edited (05-17-05 17:56)

[davidrex]

     
     The bite that annoyes me is when you attempt to convince your antagonists of the differences you espouse,but then concentrate soley on listening to yourself ramble trying to explain yourself as if on trial by your peers for thinking in such a one of a kind philosophy.
     Such self serving  rationalization{good for you possibly}is most frequently mistaken for debate,which i\'m thinking is what fuels these long and tiring responses.

[Mall]

Not exactly a home run, & maybe a bit longer & more repetitive than necessary, but very much improved. I\'m not familiar with that specific quotation from the Oracle of Omaha, but can say unequivocally that it contradicts one of he & Charlie\'s key tenets, to never act until you gather & understand the best data available. Exactly the opposite of what I think you\'re doing. As a matter of fact, I seem to recall, very vaguely, being told that Warren was seen using TG at Ak-Sar-Ben before it closed, but I suppose it\'s possible it was Warren Zevon they were talking about. I even liked your advice, which would make it next to impossible to put one\'s foot in one\'s mouth. If you had thought of it before your 1st visit, maybe things would be different today.

Mall,

\"to never act until you gather & understand the best data available. Exactly the opposite of what I think you\'re doing.\"

If someone could provide pace figures that incorporated run up and wind information for every race every day so they could capture the instances where there was a \"significant change within a day\" it would probably help the analysis.

However, they would still run into many of the other problems of accuracy that have been discussed. IMHO, one would still be required to watch the races and know the horses. In the end, you\'d pretty much be right back where you started.

Setting all that aside, the biggest reason for putting a lot of emphasis on pace now despite the lack of perfection of the figures is that they are an extraordinary source of betting value now despite the limitations!

Most people focus on final time exclusively.

I also suspect that many of those that attempt to use pace figures are not using them properly because they haven\'t studied the issue well enough.