New User Evaluation of RDSS

[The Pook]

Hi Ted,

As you know I have subscribed to the software. I am impressed with it and have had good fun experimenting with it over the past month. I think it is a great facilitator of the Sartin Method.

I have been reading many posts, the Follow Ups and have been practicing on past files and in live play. I wish I had known about the Follow Ups way back. And I would have loved using the old Sartin programs. RDSS seems to be a nice evolutionary step.

One question I have is an applying theories that were written 15 and more years ago. Doc was always changing things slightly to stay ahead of the crowd. From what I can see, proper application works as well all these years later. I see enough good prices after hides, at least from the relatively short time frame I've looked. Could it be that the general public has never really jumped on board with the (horses running in herds concept)? Do you agree?

I have been doing 20 race betting cycles...half in the past and half live. In so doing I think I have honed out something that works for me. As you wrote somewhere, the Sartin Methodology is a big tent and no 2 people apply it the same way. When I read the Follow Up I get the impression that I should be doing 2.0 ROI's regularly. Betting 2 horses to win with a supplement place bet if the odds are 20-1 or over, my current live cycle played at Aqu and Parx over the last 2 days is typical. I am 17 races in. I passed 2. I missed 5. I lost 4. I hit 6 with an average mutuel of $14.26 for an ROI of 1.42. That is after hides. I hide below 5-2. Before hides interestingly enough I would have had 6 hits with an ROI of .79. I usually catch 7 or 8 wins per 20. Is my after hides ROI in the ballpark relative to your experience and knowledge of others? I realize this is a small sample and that many race cycles with that level of performance would carry more weight.

One of the hardest things I find is enduring what seems at times to be a high percentage of low payoffs missed because of hides. But from what I read in the Follow Up this has always been so.
Is it worse in modern times?

As for the software itself I find it friendly and easy to use. I don't know all the details and tools but I suspect that I will only use what I find works for me. Mostly I use the fulcrum pace stuff. The auto paceline features are great too. It allows so much to be figured out in short order. There is one small bug in that the software will freeze periodically for reasons unknown. I have to exit it and restart, but it doesn't happen often.

Anyways thanks Ted. I would appreciate your response and anybody who cares to respond to my queries.


Mike P
The Pook

[Ted Craven]

Welcome Mike (fellow alumni, ‘Class of 92’ - Woodbine Sartin Seminar)!

(Sorry it took me this long to get back to you ...)

Glad you’ve been having a good time with RDSS. I do agree wholeheartedly that there are STILL enough good prices available today in the higher rankings of Bottom Line/Betting Line and VDC. The ‘Hide’ was a largely psychological device Doc employed to get people to look beyond top ranks where horses’ good credentials are often easily seen by the public and pay too little relative to their hit rate. Today (in RDSS) you can either ‘hide’ them (exclude them from the Analysis set), ‘hide them in plain sight’ (move them to Secondary Contender status and re-rank the remainder) or ‘don’t hide’ them and simply move your decision making focus to the next top ranked horses.

The ‘herd concept’, The Matchup, Running Style interplay, incremental energy disbursement and deceleration, etc ARE somewhat more understood by – if not the general betting public – then by collections of high-rollers (‘whales’) and other more sophisticated bettors who more than before account for significant minority percentages of overall betting handle. As a consequence, we all see well ranked horses – both Win and Place – being generally more bet down than they probably would have been 20 years ago. For example, the 5/2 horses of 20 years ago are now 2-1 or lower. This is of course inevitable given the adoption of public teachings of people like Sartin, Brohamer, Pizzolla, Massa, Platt, Schwartz, and others, and the proliferation of online and electronic data, making horse racing analysis and betting data ever more amenable to computer and database analysis.

The fact is – WAS, and still IS – that if you develop consistent and repeatable line selection approaches, and functional Contender vs non - (or not-for-win) Contender skills, and your Top 4 ranked BL and Top 3 and ties ranked VDC horses contain the Winner and Place horse a high percentage of the time – and you keep track of the Win Odds ranks at bet-time and mostly limit yourself to the Top 4 Win odds ranks – THEN by eliminating for WIN (i.e. ‘hiding’) the highly ranked but low Odds horse (was 5/2, may today be 2-1) and betting your 2 remaining best ranked and longest odds horses (i.e. the process described by Sartin as 'wagercapping') – TWO things will surely follow:1. You will ‘miss’ (i.e. lose to) a fair number of those low-odds horses – perhaps a few more than 20 years ago. 5 of 15 (races bet) in your latest reported cycle doesn’t seem too out of line – maybe a tad high (and often those races lost outright are mitigated by Place hits, or Exactas including the ‘hidden’ favourite back in.) You must develop your own guidelines for when strong Top ranked favourites just can’t be bet against (e.g. 2+ BL gap over 2nd tier; Top CR rating; NO negatives, no Tote Xray anomalies, etc), and decide if a few more of these per 20 race cycle should be passed. Sometimes it is truly a 'crap-shoot' to predict when the well ranked favourite won't fire - sometimes you make the wrong choice ...

2. When a favourite – and a horse top ranked on your Betting Line – is bet down to odds-on (say 2-1 or less), the odds on everyone else go up. That’s where your average $14.26 mutuels are coming from. MANY of these horses will be ranked 2, 3 and 4 on your Odds Line. By having money in the ‘pot’ on these horses, and NOT on the low paying favourites – even if you have to sometimes ‘hold your nose’ while betting these – as your recent records show, your average mutuels and your hit rate on these will be high enough to sometimes sustain those magical ROI’s you refer to (1.42 or 142% of your bet amount).
You ask what ROI might be normal nowadays!? My experience, and others who share it with me, is that indeed sometimes you will enjoy 100% or 200% or more ROI in a given 20 race cycle (let’s say on your Win bets). Other times you will lose money. Other times you will slightly break even. This depends on the distribution of racing randomness, on temporary bouts of ‘greed’ and ‘handicapping insanity’ – and certainly on the learning process. The longer the accumulation of actual bet races you record, and the more you actually bet, my view is that the closer to low double digits your overall average ROI will come (20% or less). In the millions of annual betting handle, your profit may approach single digits if that and you may be making your money largely on rebates. When that happens to me – I will report on it here :)

All to say – your periodic ROI will likely fluctuate wildly. It also depends on how you bet: do you sit on your hands and wait for 8-1 minimum on 1 horse bets or on Exacta payouts. Do you bet 10 races per month holding out for big hits, or 200 races per month, ‘gathering rosebuds while ye may’. Dealing with wild ROI and hit rate fluctuations is the hardest psychological part of what we do. If hundreds (or thousands) of consistently worked races show you your Betting Line rank horses finish predictably and at increasing mutuels as you go down the ‘tiers’, and you know how long the maximum typical string of losses is, and you don’t bet on too low odds horses, and pass races where 2 or more horses have too low odds (i.e. collectively too much of the pool, and too indistinguishable), and you split your Win bets 50/50 on 2 of your well ranked horses (perhaps Place backup on 10-1 ?), and you find a type of racing (distance, class level, surface, track) where you feel you have a good grasp – then as Doc told me late in his life ‘you can’t fail to make money’.

Note of the foregoing has really dealt much with handicapping techniques (and you didn’t ask). There are MANY good ways to arrive at the Primary Contenders: Matchup analysis à la Bradshaw & RichieP, TPRs, BL/BL, VDC – including syntheses of these - and more. Choosing betting opportunities is more important than handicapping. (Having a good rebate also helps). The Top 4 Win Odds ranks account for 80% of Winners, and I suspect that the RDSS Tote Xray (TX) ranking does even a bit better at bet-time. Knowing this is ALWAYS a good governor to choose 2 of your 4 top rated horses (even if you eliminate a favourite). And longshots (when they are not top 4 or 5 Win-odds ranked) can always be bet Win-Place or included in Exactas (Wheels or Boxes) when the logic of their good Betting Line rankings is compelling. (And for the record – I would NEVER say throw out a 20-1+ Morning Line horse out of hand: I’ll do my own analysis, thanks – we’ve covered this before ;-)

Re your bug comment – I agree there are several oddities resulting in crashes (sometimes depending on Windows version, more often than not when the Toteboard flow is connected – not sure if that’s the problem). Another fairly significant new version of RDSS is coming along steadily for the late Spring, which in addition to lots of new stuff, should correct a lot of stability bugs.

Let me know if there’s any part of your main questions I did not address. I’ll do my best to give my thoughts further.

Good luck – and skill, going forward! Keep us posted.

Cheers,

Ted

[DocSartinLearner]

Ted, well said ... I'll enjoy this. We all need good luck and handicapping skills.
Mike (The Pook), little by little we'll get the handicapping details:
1. Rating the Horse
2. Early and Late Speed
3. The Pacesetters
4. Dirt and Turf
5. Racing Times
6. The Details explained withing RDSS
7. The Simplicity of Handicapping

Good Luck and Good Skills,
DocSartinLearner (DSL)

[The Pook]

Ted

Thanks for taking the time to give me such an elaborate and thorough response. Its all good information. I shall carry on and let you know how things are going from time to time.

Pook

[The Pook]

DSL

Thanks for responding although I'm not sure about what you are saying. You will enjoy what? Those are seven handicapping details? You go through seven steps to a point where handicapping is simple? Those are your seven details that you use to get where you want to be?
Maybe you could elaborate.

Pook

[DocSartinLearner]

:)Good morning Pook, IMHO I'm working on it to elaborate some. From time to time we all need practice, practice.

Thanks.
DSL

[DocSartinLearner]

Pook, This is just in my humble opinion (IMHO) when I try to open my mind like we say in these memorable hard times let's chat... to begin the opening statements. Everyone is welcome to say something in this new beginning for the game we all love very much. Here we go...
1. Rating the Horse
The principle difference between a sprint and a route is the way the jockey rides the horse. And this enters into the way these races are handicapped. In routes, the jockey "rates" the horse (holds the horse back earlier in the contest to conserve enrgy for the stretch run). On the other hand, a sprint is considerable more dynamic. When a horse is rated in a route contest, up to six lengths can be taken from its all-out effort to the second call point.

I shall continue to elaborate...
DSL

[DocSartinLearner]

Pook, give me more time. Let's keep this post intact; I have other things to attend to.

Thanks.
DSL

[The Pook]

DSL

No sweat. Thanks man.

Pook

[DocSartinLearner]

Pook, let's continue, shall we?
2. Early and Late Speed
A horse that demonstrates a superior ability to run to the second call point is one that is said to have good EARLY SPEED. A contender that runs well between the second call point and the finish line (i.e., in the Last Quarter) is said to be one with good LATE SPEED. RDSS program provides Early Speed and Late Speed ratings for each horse. Users can see graphically which horses can run with the pace and which cannot.

Thanks.
DSL

[DocSartinLearner]

Ted, can you help continue with this post, it seems that I can't continue on page 2.
I need to know the post/thread to continue.

Appreciate,
DSL

[Ted Craven]

:confused::confused::confused:

I would tell you to simply click the Post Reply button - but you just did that ...

Ted

[DocSartinLearner]

3. The Pacesetters
Whether it is a sprint or route, how fast a horse runs between the starting gate and the second call point, this is where we look for a horse with a paceline is best representative of the horses plus race form and condition. When one or more horses are leading at the second call point in the contest, they are referred to as the PACESETTERS and the speed of the leader is called the "pace."
The pace is important because the contest is about 70% complete at this point.

Thanks.
DSL

[DocSartinLearner]

4. Dirt and Turf
The majority of contests in North America are run on the dirt, although many turf courses are also available. Typically, a "firm" grass course will produce a faster time than a dirt racing surface. When excessive moisture is present in the turf, the clockings can be considerably slower than dirt.
Here is a valuable rule for handicappers to remember: Good horses that run run well on the dirt, usually run well on the turf. However, horses that run well on the turf do not necessarily run well on the dirt.

Thanks.
DSL

[DocSartinLearner]

5. Racing Times
Generally speaking, a horse runs the length of its body in roughly one-fifth of second. Thus, when a horse wins by a full second, it has beaten the place horse by about five lengths. In addition, RDSS adjusts the different type of distances and all the racing surfaces are adjusted too. This includes early and late speed adjustments for each distance at each racetrack.

Thanks.
DSL

[DocSartinLearner]

6. The Details explained withing RDSS
For this, we need to learn about the Paceline Manual, the Yellow Manual, Pace and Cap - Sartin Methodology & The Matchup. More importantly, we need to visit the various links offered by Google Custom Site Search found when you visit http://paceandcap.com/forums/index.php
Also, we learn from the teachings of Ted Craven, Barb Craven, Bill V. and from all of us at Pace and Cap - Sartin Methodology & The Matchup.

Thanks.
DSL

[DocSartinLearner]

7. The Simplicity of Handicapping
Later, when you learn more about the mechanics of RDSS, you will see why RDSS program is, by far, the best and most accurate piece of tool for Handicapping Thoroughbreds available today. Want a quick review of the early teachings of the software? You can get it from Ted, Barb, Bill V., and from this writer.

Thanks.
DSL

** Note: this is all for the present moment **

[DocSartinLearner]

Ted, :confused::confused::confused

For a couple of seconds this how I was feeling because, I could not advance to page 2 starting with count #11 and so on to complete 'New User Evaluation of RDSS'. You know I'm reading everything I can find to better understand the mechanics of RDSS. What do you think?

Thanks.
DSL