[Ted Craven]

Having worked so much with Guy Wadsworth on Speculator before he passed away, I became much more familiar with Spec and thus handicapping with it. However after I updated Validator to Val4, and delved into the V/DC code and started going back over the later Follow Ups, and became comfortable again with using V/DC as a prime corollary despite ties (knowing how ties are derived), I believe I'd say right now that I am agnostic as to which 'mode' I prefer. I definitely appreciate having V/DC and it is available in both modes, but is affected by the different behaviour for each mode.

There are the 2 modes in RDSS to accomodate users who have a loyalty to one software predecessor or another. The main distinctions are:

- Val mode uses variable beaten lengths according to distance (canon in the Sartin Methodology), and Spec uses a fixed beaten length value
- different sprint to route projection formula
- readout rounding differences (which can affect rankings, thus BL/BL)
- the component of the Segments right-hand panel (V/dc for Val vs F3+TS fpr Spec)
- the formula for Segments Computed Beaten Lengths (which had only a 2nd Call component in Val).

So the Beaten Length value difference and any sprint to route projections will have the most effect on rank orders between the 2 modes.

Personally, I don't much care. If someone forced me to use Val4 mode, I would not complain a bit. I tend to use Spec mode out of habit.

It would be interesting if someone wanted to do the work to compare ROI on the 2 modes, but you could not simply select lines under 1 mode then change mode and record differences. You'd have to reselect lines under each mode, and may choose different lines to respresent a horse today.

Ted