Benchmarks
 

When performing statistical analysis, it is useful to have benchmarks for comparison. Consider the following stats:

Currently,

The top public choice wins almost 40% of the time

The top 2 public choices win almost 60% of the time

The top 3 public choices win almost 75% of the time

The top 4 public choices win almost 85% of the time

The top 5 public choices win almost 90% of the time

The Wisdom of Crowds concept is very powerful in finding and ranking win contenders.

Use this type of benchmark when considering your method of contender selection -- i.e., are you better than the collective public? If not, then the edge you think you have might not actually exist.

Richard

This is very strong advise.

Never underestimate the Genius of the crowd!

PL

Richard are not your stats skewed more than mine???

Interesting. I just happened to listen to the Docs' 3 part videoseries[1998 in the library.] and on tape 3 #7[4] the Doc talks about this. He states that James Quinn had stated that not even a select group of handicappers such as Dowst, Col Bradley, Beyer ,Ainsle Talbort, Mahl ,Daivdowitz, plus the top 2 or 3 cappers of a circuit could NOT outperform the general public. The Docs'[also Ainsle] answer was baloney. Doc stated that if a professional handicapper couldn't outperform the public then they shouldn't call the selves a handicapper. Doc then states he offered a wager to Quinn that he[Doc] could
outperform the public. When asked how he would do that Doc simply stated that he would beat them at betting the routine run of the mill races and when races with FTS or Foreign horses were involved he simply would bet the crowd favorites thus staying even with them. The answer he got was well you have to do that for the rest of your life. When Doc asked why the answer was because that's what the public does. Needless to say the bet was never made so we will never know what would have happened. Docs' final words on the subject was that statements like this made by experts destroys the confidence of handicappers. So if the Doc and the dean of North American handicapping believed it could be done then that's good enough to give me the confidence that it can be done..
Tim

My post in no way implies that a horse bettor cannot beat the public: Blll Benter and others have proven that it can be done. The purpose of the post is to show how accurate the collective public is in assessing and ranking win contenders.

In order to show a profit at this game, you need to have an edge: the quants call is +EV or positive expected value. Sartin's edge was measuring and manipulating pace in ways that the public was not aware at the time. But like all markets, his initial edge declined over time and he needed to create new calculations to try to maintain his edge.

The modern task for those betting today is to use a method that will either 1) find significant defects in one or more of the publics top few choices, and/or 2) use a method that will show a horse that will run today significantly better than the historical data used by other bettors. For example, the "Sheets" bettors will look for a "bounce" to satisfy #1, or use form cycle patterns to satisfy #2. Similarly, when betting verticals, it is imperative to understand that the horse second most likely to WIN is NOT the horse most likely to PLACE (see Sartin's 55% Solution), something that the public tends to ignore, thus creating an edge. Finally, when betting horizontals, a method needs to differentiate races where ticket structure needs to run deep from races where likely winner will come from one of the top few public choices.

Richard

Point taken. It is true that the public has gotten better and is armed with better information then in the past. If I remember correctly the top 2 betting choices complete the exacta 24-26% of the time and usually pay very little. I agree it is our job to identify false or weak favs which can be bet against with confidence. Also we must identify races which should be passed. This imo is as important as choosing the ones we should play. No one ever lost money passing a race.
Tim

As the old saying goes
"You can beat a race but you cannot beat the races"

But people have proven that you can have an almost perfect day where they are 1 or 2 races off

I have the utmost respect to a lot of excellent handicappers on here and that is why I love to always hear what people have to say about contender selecting or any statistic containing ideas like that or just anything in general about handicapping

Remember this: We are all trying to fight the same battle at the window each and every day and as long as we keep our heads up and our handicapping sharp we will have a chance to be a successful handicapper in the long run

Sorry just my 2 cents