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you know, i sometimes founder in these discussions because they're so "program" oriented. i think every one of sartins's programs will do the job; it's mostly determining which program is most effective with your particular bent and handicapping style. after that, you're home free. or i should say, you start dealing with the real issues. and if asked to name what the "real" issues are, i'd say contender and paceline selection--with contender selection heading the list.
and there's hardly any discussion of that here. i had a 50+ horse at WO last week, and the ONLY way i hit it was through a longitudinal study of every kind of race condition, and which paceline selection works best with it. obviously, studies like these lie outside of any in-situ handicapping procedure.
it is a fact that, for me, i either adhere to my indicators, and interpret them exactly the same every time, or i am lost in a sea of judgments, nuance, and speculation. it is true that my most successful and spectacular plays have been the product of "handicapping", seeing deeply into the character of a race, and nailing it down hard; but even there, the selections were produced by the dent of hard labor, use of pencil and paper, db's, and isolations, things that had been done without reference to the race in hand.
as an aside, this argument over the epr/lpr difference is over-simplified. in SCal racing, whatever that difference may be is generally of no use. that does not mean it should not be tracked, because it CAN and sometimes DOES become a viable readout; it just means that none of these numbers are the grail, that the difference number, or the ranking of the seperate factors, has no significance in vacuo.
as another observation, it seems to me that TPR is subject to the very same criticism often directed to Beyer's figs: they are pace handicapping's equivalent of "mainstream", and have a deflated value, by and large. i am much more inclined to base my decisions on factors i know the majority of users of these programs, or this methodology, are ignorant of, or dismiss. and i can categorically state that my largest and most successful runs have come when i detect a readout that contradicts the prevaling perception of a track's bias. the EP bias at SA or WO; the LP bias of turf races on the summer lawns at HO, eg.
i can only re-state (although with reservations, since i have not tested every program that PIRCO or its offshoots have produced) that it is the work i do OUTSIDE the methodology, per se, that accounts for my beating this game. i just do not think success can be had any other way, not on a long term basis.
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