Saturday Beyers

[hockey2315]

Originally Posted by cmorioles

Your first inclination? Do you actually make your own figures?

Nope. . . I've never bothered to make my own figures because I have always respected the philosophy behind Beyers and the application of that philosophy into their calculations. I think there are much better places to find value in handicapping than speed figs, but I rely on them to put those other variables into context. I've only been handicapping for five years, and would never claim to be an expert in any area of the game, but I think I'm plenty intelligent enough to see that something here just doesn't make sense. More and more, we've been expected to "believe" in figs that are constantly re-adjusted and seem incongruous with logic. I know it's not easy to explain abberant figures/results--and maybe I'd run into the same problems that Beyer + Associates do if I made my own calculations--but how can we possibly believe that two horses turned in basically the exact same performances with extremely different final times without any semblance of an explanation for the abberation? Did the length of a second change for a half hour in Delaware yesterday? Like Phil said, I'd rather be given the crazy looking figs--a 115 and a 75 or whatever--and allowed to decide for myself, than to be forced to swallow a forced reconciliation made to make everything look neat and clean.