Triple Crown Post Mortem

[richiebee]

Too much discussion on ESPN about the state of the Triple Crown, and whether the
format should be changed, without any real grasp of what I feel is the key to
whether there will ever be another Triple Crown winner under the current format.

I believe that the current prototype of Classic candidate (developing later in
the 2YO year, lightly raced as a 3YO) will never be able to win the 3 Classics in
the current 5-week timeframe. In my opinion, the likely Triple Crown candidate
will have raced extensively as a 2YO in addition to having the requisite speed
and stamina.

I read with interest the posts praising ESPN\'s coverage, which we were likely
able to enjoy only because College Lacrosse season had ended and there were no
wiomen\'s softball games scheduled. I was thinking to myself I would withhold all
praise until I was able to view all undercard races on ESPN/ABC. Apparently
coverage of the Manhattan was dropped during the transition from ESPN to ABC.

Wacky call in the stretch of the Belmont by Durkin. I am going to listen again
closely, because I swore I heard Durkin call \"Deputy\" someone or something right
before he called Drossle\'s winning surge. I do not think there was a runner in the
142nd Belmont with Deputy in his name; but I got excited because I had a huge
future Derby bet on Kristin Mulhall\'s \"The Deputy\" in 2004 and Durkin\'s mis-call
was as close as I got to cashing said wager.

The pick 4s on Derby (Attaboy Roy) and Belmont Day (Champagne D\'Oro) proved to be
much too chaotic for me.

Not so the featured \"overnight doubles\". The close photos in the Kentucky Oaks
and the Brooklyn Handicap likely cost me between 2-3K, which is big money at
Living Room Downs.

[miff]

Lots af action by horsemen Belmont day. Track super\'s phone ringing with calls about the \'dead\' slow cuppy surface. Despite adding 20% more water than normal, Big Sandy swallowed the moisture and left the track dead.A constant warm breeze was blamed for the slowest raw timed Belmont in many years.

How much you takin off JB?

Mike

[Rich Curtis]

Richie,

 You mean Kristin Mulhall\'s Imperialism, right? The Deputy was Jenine Sahadi.

  And two more questions:

  1: Why would people who love racing want there to be another Triple Crown winner? Horse retires. Luster off future attempts. This is a gun with one bullet.

  2: Does the Cmdiri situation on the Rags board remind you of Chauncey Gardiner and \"Being There\"?

[TGJB]

That\'s pretty funny. I figure CTC has to go after him at some point, he\'s stealing his oxygen.

As for the track,the time actually fits pretty well with the Brooklyn time, just eyeballing it. Brooklyn winner gets his zero, Belmont winner gets a couple points worse, probably only horse to run a top.

[Beginner]

Nice mention of TG and JB in Kerrison\'s column in today\'s NY Post - congrats...

[TGJB]

He gave me more credit than I deserved, this time.

[Rich Curtis]

If CtC can\'t do something with Cmdiri\'s imperishably idiotic \"Disraeli\" post, then CtC needs to go wherever they send washed-up old clowns. I can\'t figure out how CtC missed this opportunity. Who knows? Maybe he missed the \"D,\" saw only \"israeli,\" flew into a rage, and choked on a peanut.

[magicnight]

\"... might drain their resources and lead them to bounce, or digress.\"

Guess the biggest bounce of all time belongs to Mr. Ed, eh?

[moosepalm]

OK, with no board cred to risk, I must proffer a modest defense of Cmdiri (candid disclosure:  we\'re friends).  Since English is not his native tongue, he handles the language with all the dexterity of Marv Throneberry fielding a throw in the dirt.  He\'s actually a pretty bright guy, has a doctorate in statistics from an American university and has a fairly sophisticated system of handicapping, combining pace and energy analysis, with TG or Rag figures.  This is his third go round with the Disraeli quote, two of them coming after I gave him the verbatim, and each one gets worse than the previous.  As some of you might have seen, he will occasionally give out his picks, and I\'ve been playing them for a while, and he has an ROI to die for.  Anyhow, I\'m not really trying to be an apologist, and fully understand why he\'s perceived the way he is, but, since, among other attributes, he\'s an occasional TG customer, I thought I\'d at least offer a scintilla of evidence that he\'s not in the same league with CTC.

[Rich Curtis]

Moosepalm,

Certainly he is nothing like CtC. And I give him a total pass on the language problem. It is more cute than anything else.

Here is the problem as I see it. You wrote:

\"He\'s actually a pretty bright guy, has a doctorate in statistics from an American university\"

And I think that the way he presents his \"winning\" selections is statistically corrupt and meaningless and therefore forgivable only if he knows NOTHING about statistics.

You wrote:

\" with TG or Rag figures...among other attributes, he\'s an occasional TG customer,\"

I couldn\'t tell this by reading the Rags board. Anyway, the way he uses sheet figures in his posts reminds me of the way the novelist Martin Amis uses semicolons--put precisely one semicolon in your entire novel so that people will know you are aware the semicolon exists.

[moosepalm]

Rich Curtis Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Here is the problem as I see it. You wrote:
>
> \"He\'s actually a pretty bright guy, has a
> doctorate in statistics from an American
> university\"
>
> And I think that the way he presents his \"winning\"
> selections is statistically corrupt and
> meaningless and therefore forgivable only if he
> knows NOTHING about statistics.


Rich, I offered the information about his academic background in the context of remarks about his exchange with Friedman, where the topic WAS statistics.  Now, regarding his selections, at the very least, use of the words \"corrupt and meaningless\" beg for some substantiation, but, even if sustained, it only leads to the question, \"So?\"  His virtues (or lack, thereof, as you might suggest) as a handicapper and statistician came independently, and I strongly suspect he would say that any hardcore use of statistical theory is ancillary to his handicapping methodology.  Right now, he has scoreboard, so he can probably live with accusations of statistical defects in the presentation of his picks.

>
> You wrote: (which means \"I\" wrote the part in quotes)
>
> \" with TG or Rag figures...among other attributes,
> he\'s an occasional TG customer,\"
>
> I couldn\'t tell this by reading the Rags board.
> Anyway, the way he uses sheet figures in his posts
> reminds me of the way the novelist Martin Amis
> uses semicolons--put precisely one semicolon in
> your entire novel so that people will know you are
> aware the semicolon exists.


I doubt most people could glean too much about his methodology from anything he has posted on the Rags board.  He has said that he relies on his pace/energy materials and TG/Rags in about a 50-50 ratio.  I\'m pretty certain this is not the case in every pick, because if so, he\'s reading patterns in a \"Lost\" sideways universe.  However, there have been times when he has not posted his picks because he said he hadn\'t had time, yet, \"to read the sheets.\"  I seriously doubt that he\'s playing two or more tracks, at $25 to $35 a pop, just to paper his bathroom walls.

BTW, I appreciate the Martin Amis drop-in.

[Rich Curtis]

Moosepalm wrote:

\"I offered the information about his academic background in the context of remarks about his exchange with Friedman, where the topic WAS statistics.\"

Yes, including the post that began with Cmdiri calling Benjamin Disraeli the founder of statistics, right? And my point is that to defend Cmdiri\'s knowledge of statistics is to indict him on other grounds. See below:

\"Now, regarding his selections, at the very least, use of the words \'corrupt and meaningless\' beg for some substantiation\"

As does praising his ROI. Regardless, my substantiation is based in part on what has to be one of the most absurd sights I have ever seen on a racing message board: People on Cmdiri\'s email list posting AFTER the races in order to claim that Cmdiri picked the winner in PRIVATE email. This sort of thing goes on even when there are other posters who posted the winner publicly before the race. Could Cmdiri stop this sort of thing? Possibly by taking advantage of his collection of email addresses and telling people privately that what they are doing is, in a statistical sense, meaningless and corrupt? Couple this with Cmdiri\'s habit of doing things like posting that he kind of likes a horse but isn\'t sure yet, and I think you get a situation where keeping count in an honest, meaningful way can get kind of difficult.

\"Right now, he has scoreboard\"

I have no opinion on this matter whatsoever. For all I know, honestly, Cmdiri is superb. But could you please show me this scoreboard and tell me how the score is kept there?

\"I doubt most people could glean too much about his methodology from anything he has posted on the Rags board. He has said that he relies on his pace/energy materials and TG/Rags in about a 50-50 ratio.\"

He said this publicly? The TG part?

[mandown]

Hi Moose,

The thing I have most trouble with (given that he has a doctorate in statistics) is his statement to Robes that bigger samples produce misleading results because \'they revert to the mean.\' That makes no sense.

I also didn\'t realize Disraeli was the \'founder of statistics.\' I\'ve always known him as politician and took his quote to be a put-down of statistics - which would be strange for someone who founded it. If you read his bios online it seems he trained as a lawyer and dabbled as a writer.

Still Cmdiri does seem to have a knack for sniffing out the winners though I also found his earlier explanation on the Rags board on the significance of turf horses having raced on yielding tracks a little hard to follow.

In the end he\'s entertaining and you can\'t argue if he\'s tipping winners. It\'s just sometimes hard to follow his reasoning.

George

[miff]

....unfiltered statistics, a great way to go broke betting horses.

[moosepalm]

Rich, if there\'s one thing more tedious on a internet message board than two people arguing back in forth, tweaking and re-tweaking previously-made points, it\'s when two people do the same on a topic for which the majority of other posters have little idea what they\'re talking about.  As such, I\'ll let this drop, as I only wanted to clarify that he has the academic background to support his statistical contentions, coupled with a complete lack of facility with the language to explain them.  As for assertions I made about what he has said, or accomplished, most of that was probably based on written communication between him and me, or my experience (and a few others) in following his recommendations.  I can\'t substantiate any of that in any meaningful way here, so I\'ll just have to resign myself to living with your suspicions about their veracity.