Time

[Indian Charlie]

Originally Posted by Calzone Lord

If you're trying to analyze a race and a performance...you're going to do a pretty piss poor job over the long run if you can't gauge how fast the race was run.

It's central to everything in handicapping...and anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool.

All of the angles, skills, stats, trip work, and clever betting you can do isn't going to get you far enough if you can't consistantly gauge fractions and final time VS track speed.

The commerical figures tend to do a very good job of that in situations where making a figure is easy.

In other situations...like Wood Memorial day when you have a strong head-wind down the backstretch and only one two-turn route carded all day and it's for young lightly raced horses ... accuracy becomes a lot tougher to achieve.

Some commerical figs try to bake stuff like weight and ground loss in - others don't. None of them are regionally biased or have some agenda.

Yeah, well, why don't figure makers leave their numbers alone? I mean, why fudge numbers that you aren't comfortable with just because you aren't comfortable with them?

[Calzone Lord]

Originally Posted by Indian Charlie

Yeah, well, why don't figure makers leave their numbers alone? I mean, why fudge numbers that you aren't comfortable with just because you aren't comfortable with them?

Every commerical figure maker has their own habits and tendencies for dealing with situations. You hope that they're at least consistant in method and can put you in the ballpark when tricky situations arise.

[Perrault Robbed]

Out of the commercial figures, who does the best job in terms of consistency?

Secondly, when you have a track like Santa Anita this meet that is just closing, how well can you gauge the times of the races? It leveled off a tad in terms of insane clockings as the meet wore on, but, all in all fractional and final times bordered on the absurdly fast to the point that I didnt even give them a look until maybe the last month of the meet or so. Does a track get so fast that it makes gauging fractional and final times vs track speed nearly impossible?

[Calzone Lord]

Originally Posted by Perrault Robbed

Out of the commercial figures, who does the best job in terms of consistency?

In terms on final time figures... BRIS and Equibase make a lot of flawed figures.

Ragozin is brutally consistant with how they treat variants. Thoro-Graph is the opposite -- they split and break races loose like crazy. Other than that, they're the exact same product. Graphed sheet figures that bake wind, weight, and ground loss into the figures.

Beyers don't come back with the flaws like BRIS and Equibase. They screw with too many figures because of pace ... and when they do, this results in the Moss Pace Figures getting messed up. The Moss pace figures would be a lot better if the Beyers didn't cut races loose because of pace. Beyers are certainly better than Equibase and BRIS, though.

In terms of pace figures -- Moss pace figs are less flawed and better overall than Equibase and Bris. They do have some areas where you can find fault with them though, and some of the Moss's will come back absurd if they Beyers are messed with. CJ (pacefigures.com) does the best work I've seen of anyone with pace figures and I've learned a ton from him on the subject over the years.

[Calzone Lord]

Originally Posted by Perrault Robbed

Secondly, when you have a track like Santa Anita this meet that is just closing, how well can you gauge the times of the races? It leveled off a tad in terms of insane clockings as the meet wore on, but, all in all fractional and final times bordered on the absurdly fast to the point that I didnt even give them a look until maybe the last month of the meet or so. Does a track get so fast that it makes gauging fractional and final times vs track speed nearly impossible?

No. The track can be insanely fast -- but it will be the same for everyone and that won't make figure making any more difficult.

Grade 1 horses might run 7 furlongs in 1:20 ... but $20K claimers will run 6.5 furlongs in 1:14 and change.

The real mess with track speed comes on days when it rains halfway thorugh a card -- and the track is sealed up and sometimes reharrowed again and the track super is doing maitenence work on it during the turf races. That happens at Saratoga a lot.