[Bill Lyster]

Over the last 5 or 6 years FTL has shared his rigorous contender selection guidelines with us. The more I read, the more it made sense, so I started copying his posts.

There are seven files in the library. The first four come primarily from FTL's threads and the three appendices apply across the board in every day racing analysis. I printed them all out and my binder totals 223 pages.

EVERY race uses the same methodology of line and contender selection.

Admittedly, FTL is not 100% Sartin, but he has used Sartin tools to explain his methods, all to our continued advantage if you pay attention.

FTL has focused on dirt races solely, does not entertain turf races and requires his bets to go to post at 4/1 or better. Obviously, his is a very disciplined and selective method that requires a high degree of discretion and perseverance on the part of the user.

I rehandicapped all of DMR this summer, dirt and turf races. In total 318 races of all kinds.

94% of all races were won by horses that had raced within 90 days; so we eliminate 6% of all races;

2% of all races (no overlap with the 90 day issue BTW) were won by horses whose ML was 20/1 or greater; so between these two elimination criteria we are down to 92% of all races.

Another 11.3% of all races were won by horses changing distance or surface. This is a foggy area for all of us because stretching out or cutting back in distance has always been a tough proposition to assess.

So now we are down to 80.7% of the races being "reasonably" playable.Dirt races were won by 64% of FTL's contenders; turf races were won by about the same %. So somewhere between 16-17% of all races are not covered by FTL's guidelines. About 10% of all races (31) were won by First Time Starters, so now the sample skinnies down to 6-7%.

Another thing to keep in mind. For the DMR meet 79.2% of all winners were TOP FOUR AND TIES IN MORNING LINE ODDS (81% DIRT, 78% TURF)

Where to find the missing winners? For sure YOU will find some that require use of a line more than 90 days old, or that did not finish first, second or third in their last race, or who raced up close early and faded badly or who were ML'd at 20/1. But in FTL's threads I only found two example races where he used a line more than 90 days, once at 92 days and another at either 93 or 94 days. (Co-incidentally, both happened on the same day, same track!)

By the way, in all races at DMR the average number of contenders was 3.67!