Derby Strategy!!

[Uncle Buck]

He\'s a SLOW RAT. That\'s what troubles me. Don\'t talk down to me Monmouth Guy. I\'m not your whippin\' post. If you wanna make a side bet, I\'m game any time.

[miff]

Hey Buck,

Hee Hee,lots of slow rats in this weak crop. Everyone getting into derby  information overload,instead of a cold straight look.

Good luck to all and stick to your guns no matter what anyone else thinks/says.

Mike

[fkach]

Jimbo,

Just a thought.

IMO it is sometimes possible to get good value in exotic combinations using a small underlay on top with some live bombs in exactas, triples etc...  

So just because you feel that BB will be an underlay, that does not mean you need to leave him off all your tickets. You just want to leave him off tickets with other underlays or horses who odds are more less in line with their chances. But if you have a 20-1 that you think should be 6-1 or something, BB under and over that horse will probably still be an overlay even though BB may not be on his own. No reason to tear up all your tickets on that live 20-1 if he happens to finish 2nd to BB and fills out a nice exacta.

[fkach]

Since there is some question about the speed of the Wood it might make some sense to first compare TOE and Court Vision to each other without looking at their speed figures.

IMO, TOE had a rougher trip than is generally perceived. He was a bit wide and not that far off the blistering pace of War Pass after a 1/2 mile and 3/4 of mile. I don\'t think that was an easy trip at all even though he was off the pace.

IMO, Court Vision lost a lot of ground on the second turn during his rally, but he couldn\'t have gotten a better pace setup to catch War Pass and TOE and couldn\'t do it.

IMO, TOE ran better than Court Vision in the Wood, but CV has had a very sharp and speedy work since that race (something he normally doesn\'t do) and seems set for a new top to me. I want to see more in the next week or so, but I think their chances are similar. The real issue is evaluating them relative to some of the others. That\'s where the actual speed of the Wood comes in.

[MonmouthGuy]

I guess a simpler question for you two, and it is meant to be straightforward:

Are you suggesting that the TG figure for ToE in the Wood is wrong?

[jimbo66]

Buck,

While I don\'t care to be between the war of words between you and Monmouth guy, but I really have no idea how you can be a TG user and call Tale of Ekati a slow rat.  If you want to say he is going to bounce of the 5 point move up, god bless.  You are probably statistically correct in that a bounce may be the most likely result.  

But the horse ran a \"0\" and IMO gets points for being near a very hot pace.  He went 22 and change in his 2nd quarter and still went by the 2 year old champ in the lane.  He got a 3w/2w trip, while chasing those hot fractions, in his second start off a layoff.  

He will be 20-1 BTW.  I obviously don\'t KNOW that, but I expect he will be.  If he is 10-1, then obviously my optimism to bet him will wane and he wouldn\'t be my top choice, Court Vision would be.

Now, if you are also saying in your post that you would be willing to bet on Denis of Cork against Tale of Ekati, then you are telling me you aren\'t a regular T-Graph user.  While I will give Denis of Cork a shot to win, he is definitey a large underdog against Tale of Ekati in a matchup bet.  His pattern is erratic and he obviously reacted in his last.  It is most likely too soon for him to return to his top.  Tale of Ekati has not moved backward yet.  yes, he has the big forward move, but off the solid foundation, he is more likely to run a solid race (and both have the same top of \"0\")

If you believe Big Brown will win easily, then you can call all the rest \"slow rats\".  BB has run a negative 3 and if he repeats, he is offly likely to win, probably 75% or so.  But if you don\'t like him, there are a handful of horses that can run a \"0\", which is the next fastest figure, so horses that are running \"0\'s\" are contenders, not slow rats.

[TGJB]

Jimbo-- first of all, one of these years I\'m going to let you do the seminar. I don\'t agree with all of that, but it\'s good stuff. (Now try to do each horse in half as many words). By the way, I believe my comment was that Pyro was the most likely winner AT THAT TIME. Now he\'s a horse that you can neither bet or throw out with any confidence at 8-1.

The Wood figures are right. Bit is right on the money-- I actually took 1/4 point more off the other route, which was the preceding race. The races were 4 points apart in raw time,the figures for the winners ended up exactly the same after you adjusted for weight and ground loss (which Miff doesn\'t count anyway). I haven\'t looked at it, but my guess is that if you adjusted the Beyers for weight and ground you would end up in the same place. Don\'t know what Len did, someone must have his pre-entries.

Fkach-- pace had nothing to do with this.

[miff]

Mon Guy,

If you do not know, there is no such finite thing as right or wrong in making performance figs. It\'s mostly a skill/art unsupported by any science/math to confirm it\'s accuracy.

The three main/credible fig makers all use the projection method with TG and Rags including ground and weight, which Beyer does not.If you spoke to all three fig makers, you would get an explanation beyond the obvious as to why they are lengths apart in scoring the Wood.Keep in mind that I have tracked these 3 guys for years(mainly TG) and they agree app 90% of the time(within a point)

Like other weather days, the Wood was a tough day weather wise i.e. wind wise, moisture content wise and track speed wise.For myself, I do not say the TG fig is wrong but I have a different view of how fast that race went, from pure racing stuff,talking to connections and getting feedback from more than one jockey/agent who participated.If you are an avid race watcher and saw the whole card and got the feedback that I received, you might not be too sure of the Wood fig either. Then add the general disagreement of the 3 fig makers.


If TOE wins the derby or runs dead last, it neither proves or disproves the Wood fig, imo.There\'s alot more to it than that.


Mike

[fkach]

>Fkach-- pace had nothing to do with this.<

Thanks.

Ground and weight probably accounts for some of the difference between your figure and the Beyer figure.

From my perspective there is ZERO doubt that War Pass would have run faster had he gotten away with a more average pace. I believe the same is true of TOE (to a lesser and more subjective degree).

When I first evaluated the performances for the Wood using the Beyers, I adjusted them for ground loss AND the pace of the race (gave a lot of extra pace credit to War Pass, some to TOE and nothing to Court Vision) and they seemed to make a lot of sense. I am a little leary of doing the same with other figures because I know for certain that some people incorporate pace at times with or without knowing it (they tell me their thinking).

[BitPlayer]

Sandreadis -

Temporary Saint had a 4yo top of \"3\".  In his first race as a 5yo (and first race in Levine\'s barn) he got down to a \"neg 1.5\".  Then in the Stymie, in which he was sent after Daaher early, he bounced to a \"3.5.\"  TGJB has posted that his Excelsior fig was the same as Tale of Ekati\'s.  Most of the Excelsior field had tops of between \"0\" and \"neg 1.5\".

[TreadHead]

IMO if you are using the Wood to gauge Court Vision\'s ability, you have ignored the comments of the jockey who stated the track was very greasy and the colt was slipping all over the place and could not get a good hold.

You dont need to state an opinion that TOEs Wood race was better than CV, that is a fact no one will dispute.  But what is more relevant is, assuming CD comes up dry, which horse has the potential to run better on Derby Day?  In CV\'s case, using the Wood race is not nearly as relevant as his overall picture and how he is working/previously racing over the CD surface.

I, for one, am hoping for some juicy matchup odds at some of the bookmaking sites for heads up bets vs. someone like TOE or Pyro.

[miff]

Jim,

\"But the horse ran a \"0\" and IMO gets points for being near a very hot pace. He went 22 and change in his 2nd quarter and still went by the 2 year old champ in the lane. He got a 3w/2w trip, while chasing those hot fractions, in his second start off a layoff\"

Jim,

.....but what about his third and fourth quarter splits? Figs are supposed to represent the \"whole\" race. He crawled the last 3/8ths, how does that come up zero.That looked like a 7 length improvement for TOE from any race he had ever run? WOW!!


JB,

Of course I adjusted Beyers 93 for 8 lbs and total of three paths. It came up app a TG 2, scale to scale. Judging from the fact that Rags gave WP a 9 at GP(equal to a TG 5 1/2) I can only wonder how Rags scored WP in the Wood.Any Rag guy want to post the RAG fig for TOE\'s Wood just for comparison.


Mike

[fkach]

>IMO if you are using the Wood to gauge Court Vision\'s ability, you have ignored the comments of the jockey who stated the track was very greasy and the colt was slipping all over the place and could not get a good hold. <

I didn\'t know that, but I would have ignored it anyway. I never saw a horse that ran a disappointing race that handled the track well or didn\'t come out of the race with an injury according to his connections. ;-)

My perspective on him is different than many other peoples\'. Some people I know hate him because he couldn\'t win despite all the pace in front of him in the Wood. I don\'t think he was nearly as good as the top two in the Wood (and perhaps not that good at all), but I think he\'s very likely to move forward based on his recent work.

[Uncle Buck]

Jimbo - you offer a well thought out, non offensive question. From what I can see TOE didn\'t develop much figure-wise until the Wood with his \"0\". I can\'t say the Wood figure is wrong as that\'s not my profession, but visually, the race looked slow and TOE basically fell into the winner\'s circle ALA Giacomo. He looked hopelessly beaten at the 3/8th pole and kept plodding. Again that\'s how my eyes saw it. I recall another strange Wood a few year\'s ago that nobody could agree on (the race Tapit won).

I\'ve said it on this forum at least five times that BB is clearly best in this year\'s 3 yo crop, is my undisputed pick to win and I will be keying him on all tickets.

As to whether I\'m a TG user - yes I am. I don\'t purchase a ton of sheets but I respect the TG methodology and have never even seen a Ragozin sheet. I was first introduced to TG by James Ough at Golden Gate Fields in 1998 or so. My biggest asset in successful handicapping over the years has been CLOSELY watching horses travel, watching for troubled and bad trips and how they look pre-race. I watch hundreds of horse races per week and have for years. I\'ve learned a lot.

[TGJB]

Miff-- roughly speaking, Beyer 100 = TG 1, at about 118 pounds. Looks to me like they got it less than 1 point slower after all adjustments (123 pounds, 3w3w).