Why Does Beyer Get Dissed?
 

Everytime I turn around anymore it seems like some person is dissin Beyer's numbers. I TOTALLY understand why someone might diss a Beyer number from some track like my home turf Beulah or Thistledowns but to diss the figs from a track at an elite meet is beyond my scope of comprehension. He has paid his dues has he not and so his numbers should be trusted and respected should they not at tracks where one knows he will not employ a mediocre person to come up with a figure? I have been around this game only 3 years, but I have read enough books and read enough information to know one thing is for certain, Andrew Beyer knows his business and I trust his numbers from the major tracks without a second guess.

For those that have been around the block and disagree, give me a reason to think otherwise without dissin me. I love to learn and have an open mind to formulate my own opinion.

I don't diss him, I have read all of his books and I respect him, sometimes his numbers are legit, sometimes not, there's room for interpretation, so they are not always going to be correct. One thing you have to remember with Beyers and he has a chapter in his book on it, How was the Figure Earned, that's more important than just running a big figure in my opinion. Was it a loose on the lead or did he battle through fast fractions or have a wide trip. I prefer Sheets and will defer to them in most cases, but they are $40 for a day...

Good stuff thanks

I like them, but I really only use them to see if a horse fits in a race. I don't assume one horse is faster than another based simply on the beyers. I really like to use racereplays.com and trip handicap and adjust the beyers myself.

There is room for interpretation in BSF creation and use. For example how can a # possibly be created for the Belmont stakes which is at a distance run once/yr?

I use proprietary figures too. http://www.pacefigures.com/ . I trust these ( speed and pace ) figs more than Beyers. I like it when BSF are off compared to CJ's (CJ is not me): I've made significant scores when that way.

Noone with a brain disses Beyer the man. Dissing his figs is another story.
Beyer basically helped form my love of the game with his first book Picking Winners, an absolute classic. The Winning Horseplayer was equally as good. You are talking about a guy who basically helped create modern handicapping as we know it with his emphasis on players learning to look for biases, trips, and making figures. He also has made plenty of his own scores and loves the game. Hes actually revolutioned the game.
The problem with his figs is multifaceted. The sheets, once a private thing, are now mass marketed and outperform his numbers by a mile. But the biggest problem I have is that he has allowed the human element creep way too far into the process. His original take on making figs as I understood it in the books was to just let the mathematical formula make them and then draw your own conclusions about the how and why they were achieved. He now allows his associates to interject their opinions into a figure, basically making them a product of someone's opinion. They speak in articles of having them "make sense". Well horses races don't always make sense. Sometimes horses freak out or run clunkers. The fiasco on Summit of Speed day where they assigned two horses who ran an hour apart on the same track at the same distance a ten point different fig was the final straw. As it turned out the sheets guys got it right. Valid Video who was adjusted down came back and won the grade one Kings Bishop. Shake You down who was adjusted up came back horribly and lost his next race at the Spa as a heavy chalk. It was basically the explanation of his associate that by some miracle the track slowed down in an hour despite the lack of weather changes.
If they just printed the raw number they come up with the math players would be better served. And don't even get me started on Shadow Caster.

I have taken any pronouncements on handicapping made by Andy Beyer with a grain of salt ever since he stated categorically that there was no way on God's green earth that Bayakoa could win the Breeders' Cup distaff at 10f on a BC preview show.(That was the first of her two successive BC wins.)

The game has passed him by. He didn't make adjustments for ground loss and his arrogance about disregarding sheet players makes him an easy target.

The man has strong opinions. Are they always right? Of course not. But many of his strong opinion shave been right, and hes made many scores with strong opinions. The problem is that most weekend warriors only pay real attention on big race days like the Derby or breeders Cup. real players know that it makes no difference whether you come up with a 20-1 in the Breeders Cup or in the 8th race at Finger lakes, it makes no difference whatsoever.
Its really unfair to criticize his selections since hes only asked to give them about twice a year. The other 363 days are never in the print, and I would assume that he some very nice selections on some of those days.

I don't think its arrogance, I think if you are Hertz that there is no way you can praise Avis and if you are Coke you can't praise Pepsi.

The guy is very bright quite obviously. He is doing something that many others only wish they could do. He writes about racing and betting and makes money off it.

And he came up with a unique system for its time. A way to compare races coming from diff tracks, or from the same track under diff conditions. This was one of the first legitimate attempts with some sound reasoning to do this. And all of these publications still use "his" numbers...

The fact that he makes wrong picks is no different from anybody else. This game is extraordinarily difficult. Just cause the guy is bright does not mean he is expected to pick correctly in a game as random as this. I think it takes people who are intimately associated with A track and all that goes on with it to do the picking job. I dont think he does this anymore.

The sheet makers don't take into account pace and bias (while using lesser factors such as weight and wind) so those numbers are far from perfect as well. Like T-Graph numbers for turf, but the dirt figs are not as reliable, IMO.

..........dude, you memory is ****ing unreal..... ;)

alysheba,

I have noticed over the past year and a half that Mike (Oracle) has what some might call a darn near perfect memory. obviously this plays a part in why he is so successful in the industry.

Repent and Oracle have outstanding memories. Repent was absolutely amazing. He could remember stuff he did not even care about. A gift I do not have. Heck I cant even remember all my students names until about 12 weeks. 180 names and some teachers have it down in the first two days...

I wonder why Repent didn't come over here? I have a selective memory. Really strange, I can remember the silliest little details from years ago but yet sometimes I struggle to remember what I had for dinner last night.

Pgardn my Grandmother is a retired Teacher, she was a Teacher for 41 years. She taught a lost art for several, Latin. I plan on taking Latin in College here in the Fall.

Take it from someone who has known Mike perhaps longer than anyone else on here. His memory is even more unreal than you guys know. I have a great memory when it comes to horses, but Mike's is on another level. Hes kind of the Tiger Woods and I am like the Chris Demarco. Good except when he plays Tiger (actually Chris does very well against Tiger, its just he runs 2nd).

If I had a dollar for every question of mine hes answered I'd be able to go to the track :)

Gander and Kurt.

I use kids to help me remember stuff all the time. What I am good at is finding the ones that have the incredible memories quickly. I latch on the them, tell em they will be that part of my brain, and Im all set. Wish I could take some of these little photographic memory kids to the track. Their parents would kill me.
I guess its called learning to cope with weaknesses. And names for me are terribly difficult. Ideas, I got no problem with concepts and ideas. Just proper nouns, a real problem.

Agree.

This is an important point that is often missed. The Beyer fig is supposed to simply reflect how fast the race was run. It is NOT supposed to contain any other info about trip, bias, weight, etc. I'd rather supply those adjustments myself than rely on someone else to do it. However...

As you and oracle point out, the "room for interpretation" in Beyer's figs can lead to error. The offered explanation from oracle's Summit of Speed example is pretty lame, unless the track was obviously drying out or getting sloppy. There have been some pretty big "adjustments" in some figs this year. The initial BSF awarded to a horse was changed substantially. This has happened with "big" horses like Bob and John. One wonders how many "errors" are not corrected when the horse and race are not so thoroughly dissected as Bob and John in a Ky Derby prep.

--Dunbar

Do you use TG or Rags or another (like Fotias)?

TG, mainly because I can at least look at one of their races every week. I only use them on big days like when I was going to the place formerly known as a real race track(Keeneland) or Triple Crown, BC Days...

Well said, Dunbar. I am much like you in that I would rather the figures be objective instead of subjective. Let handicappers interpret how the figure was earned instead of adjusting the numbers to "fit" how fast the race was run. While I believe projection methods yield sharper variants, I still like to do some of the work myself. This has been my problem with grasping Thorograph all along. They may or may not have better figures, but it is very difficult for recreational players to interpret their figures because their are so many subjective factors. They strive to deliver the most accurate figures with wind speed adjustments, private clockers, and lengths lost, but you can't put a number on a trip.

Actually, I think you CAN put a number on a trip. And there's a good chance that some of the sheet guys are better at it than I am, if we both sat down to do the same race. What I worry about is how much attention they can possibly put into each horse in each race.

When I am betting, I am only going to closely look at a few races a day. But the sheet guys have to come up with data on pretty much every horse running every day across the country. I assume that there is a lot of room for error in trying to amass so much information on a daily basis.

Beyer does every horse, too, but his process is WAY simpler since he is NOT trying to factor in all the variables that constitute a trip.

--Dunbar

You can make an educated guess at putting a number on a trip, but not an accurate one. The "path's wide" approach has its shortcomings. It doesn't account for biases and the fact that many horses run better off the rail. Plus, the big downside for me is that you upgrade a horse who is coming off the pace and forced to take the wide trip to reach contention. These types will always be going wider than early speed that avoids going wide, and we all know early speed rules dirt racing.

Now the sheet guys are smart, really smart, but I think they oversell the value of the "number" when the real value of their work is their methodology of presenting it in sheet fashion and finding patterns for the horses and trainers. I've heard a lot of pro's talk about that being the case along with the fact that Sheet figures aren't bet as much as Beyers at many venues, so the prices are a bit better.

I dont really use BSF to handicap at all. I find them useless in my method when I do handicap. My main tool is race replays. I use replays of races to see what the heck happened in the race. Did the horse get squeezed, did he get caught in a speed duel, did he make a move and flatten out etc etc. I then take the race replay and couple that with the times the horse has been running, the competition, does the horse fit etc etc. On Saturday there were two total underlays. 1) Planets Aligned in the 1st at Saratoga. The horse went off at 13-1 and the sheets and beyers indicated that he couldnt win. But the horse is in great form and he fit with the group he was racing with. Of course I had him to win. 2) Fast Act in the 4th at Monmouth. He had a horrible trip in his 1st start. He went off at 29-1 and no way should he gone off at that price. He was a 2nd time starter on turf out of Theatrical. He loved the distance and he was going to run into a speed duel. Things like this the sheets and beyers dont capture. IMO so many things come together to help you make your selection.

Don't take this the wrong way Euro, but if you look at times instead of BSF or another credible figure, you're really missing out. Times and BSF are printed on the same line in the form, so help me understand why?

Help me here guys
 

I use brisnet and find them very useful to isolate pace, especially at the end of the race but keep hearing about rags or raglan sheets. I'd like to check them out...where do I find them on the net?

As for BSF they are subjectively objective which is the definition of about any horseplayer I know.....until the race is over.

Spyder from SC

Spyder, I'm a big fan of the Brisnet product myself. IMO, theirs and Trackmaster are light years ahead of DRF, and it has nothing to do with the speed figures they produce.
"Sheets" are produced by two competing companies who were once together. Len Ragozin was the innovator and can be found at www.thesheets.com. Thorograph was started by Jerry Brown, a former employee of Ragozin. I don't know either guy, but everyone says Brown is a better PR guy if nothing else. He lets you view a "Race of the Week" for free and has a lot of other promotions to get you familiar with the work at www.thorograph.com. Ragozin wrote a book about his work which was basically a 200 page commercial for his product with zero insight. As a sidenote, Cary Fotias uses sheet format to produce his "X-tras" product which uses a lot of the same ideas the other sheet guys, but takes it a step further by incorporating pace figures on his sheets. I'm just learning his stuff, but the early results are promising. Both Ragozin and Brown speak of pace as having an insignificant effect on most races(whatever works for you- I guess). Fotias is at www.equiform.com.