Quote:
Originally Posted by georgebenson
Question for anyone playing HKG.
I realize ENERGY here is Sartin ENERGY not physics kinetic energy. Hong Kong is unique as horse weight is published. Has anyone tried calculating ENERGY incorporating the weight of the horse + jock. (1/2MVsq)? Would be this more accurate?
Thanks
|
Hi George,
I have thought about this a lot. Howard had no math or science skills, he was a psychologist first and always and knew humans better than probably anyone else I have ever worked with. I remember he confused the greek sigma with the greek epsilon when marketing energy originally. His super power was getting people to do better than they ever did before, not in getting some special physics figured out.
I think that the correct answer to weight as a modifier will be something like the weight of the jockey in relation to the weight of the horse as one factor, and then if you were to track the weight cycle of the horse in relation to the horse's achievements, I think as the horse puts on muscle and gets heavier, you will see the upswing in results and when the horse is worn and tired and lighter, you will see a smart trainer either lay the horse off or sell it or get someone to claim it by running it lower.
I say weight as a modifier because i do not think the weight of the jockey is a key factor. I think it will probably need to be used in relation to a historical record for that horse if that makes any sense.
Also, like humans, there are going to be horses that can carry much greater weights compared to their size than so called normal horses. And vice versa, there will be horses that have a great deal of difficulty carrying extra weight, so you will probably want an average of what will be the result for horses in general and then a note as to whether a given horse exceeds average expectations or fails to live up to average.
I applaud HK for publishing weight. If american racing were not so corrupt, it would be universally available to us as well as opposed to just the connections. I have seen it at a small number of tracks and I think the regulators in those states must realize it is a useful indicator as to the health and condition of the horse.
If you wanted something easy to implement, at least as a starting point, I would try using the weight for energy as ( constant * weight of horse + weight of jockey ) * velocity squared. You really do not need to worry about the 0.5 in the energy equation because this number will only be important in relation to the numbers of all the other horses and so whether it is included in all their calculations or left out of all their calculations, the relationships will be the same. As for the constant, I would try 0.4 or 0.5. So if the horse's velocity for a section of the race is 55 fps, and the weight is 950 lbs and the constant I chose was 0.45 and the jockey was 118 lbs, then it would look something like:
( 0.45 * 950 + 118 ) * (55 * 55)
what I was going to use here in the US was something like:
( 400 + 118 ) * ( 55 * 55 )
where I gave each horse a fixed weight, in this example my constant and my weight when multiplied gave me 400 to which I would then add the jockey weight and then multiply by velocity squared.
Hope this helps,
Dan