Originally Posted by DaveEdwards (Post 85883)

Let me take this one thing at a time.

Was this one of those races to sort the men from the boys???
Well, that's one way to put it! :) If you go back a couple of posts to the post just before the results, read the last attachment. It makes the point that this is the type of race that can turn "weekend warriors" into professionals. I didn't say it. The follow up did. More specifically, Tom Brohamer did.
Bill,

May I ask, your use of the 0, + & (+), do you use it to ensure you are using an appropriate line only or also as a tool for the form cycle analysis? I know The Doc has made reference to doing form cycle analysis when there is a discernible pattern, but in many cases it appears to my admittedly untrained eye that no pattern does exist. Is this an area you've been able to explore?

If you don't mind my "butting in", it works for both, line selection AND form cycle. Naturally, with regard to the form cycle, class, race condition, distance, surface and track, all have to be taken into consideration.


I keep having a quote Jim made at the Las Vegas seminar '91 running round & round my head. Paraphrasing now, but "......if you put the right horses into the programs they will sing & dance for you".
I can't argue with that. I will, however, expand on it. It's not just the "right horses", but the right horses with the right lines.

Essentially, if I can get to the point where in most cases I can confidently eliminate the non-contenders, especially the shorter price ones that are easier to get sucked into entering, then V/dc & the Incremental Match Up graph can take care of the rest (with appropriate line selections of course).
I would caution about "ELIMINATING" short priced non-contenders. I'm not saying they don't exist, but in most cases, short priced horses ARE contenders with decent form, recent races and good running lines. It's up to YOUR handicapping ability to use the tools provided by RDSS to assist you with that endeavor. Remeber, RDSS, or any other software, is not a "black box". The user still has some evaluation to do on their own. Here's a recent quote from TED that gives some indication as to how he uses his software.

I recommend you never just uncritically accept the auto-pacelines offered. Double check every horse for current condition, best ever performance, competitive paceline, surface preference, matchup surviveability.


Ted also said:
my software is not a betting black box - but since I could not otherwise rank pacelines or properly identify contenders without the computations and rankings of my software - then I'd have to call winning a race a partnership between my own consistent decision making and the software's number crunching, sorting and filtering.

Perhaps a Teaching thread on the elimination of non-contenders might be appropriate?
I thought that was what this thread was about! (lol)

It would be interesting to perhaps gather the various strategies that people deploy in this area.
Have you ever heard the saying "TOO MANY COOKS SPOIL THE BROTH?"
I think that applies here. The follow ups are good places to go for information on this subject, just like the race I just posted. Any those example are consistent, which is important.

Finally, I thought I would post some running lines from my own racing form. Although it is not nicely color coded like RDSS, I don't think you will have any problem in identifying the good lines from the bad. I don't think you will have any problem in identifying the points of call where the horse was actually "impacting" the race. And I don't think you will have any problem in identifying the horses running style. Using a line that is NOT colored would not be advisable. Early in this thread you can see where Doc said, "never use a bad line. It defeats the purpose of trying to pick winning horses".
Thanks FTL & Bill!