[Mark]

I don't wish to sound combative here but for the life of me, I do not know how you can make a serious attempt to handicap a race if you do not make the attempt first of projecting today's pace.
If you do not project the pace of today's race, how can you successfully pick pacelines for the runners?
Did any of you run track or cross country in high school? Do you run for exercise today? Whether you did or didn't let me suggest to you that if you start fast you can't run the whole way at top speed.
You will tire. If you start slow, you will be way behind the leader and chances are if you are not a superb athlete you will never catch up.
Based upon Pedigree, conformation, herd behavior and training techniques, horses have preferred distances at which they excel. They generally will be either a sprinter or a route horse. At peak conditioning, fitness and
soundness they will run most often with a particular running style and are capable of certain times probably best represented by good speed figures.
I utilize The Match Up so the first thing I want to know is what kind of pace is likely in today's race? This group of horses most likely have never competed against each other before but I can tell fairly quickly looking at
the original screen in RDSS2 at what distances, surfaces and against what paces each horse has run their best speed figures against. The program will also tell me the running styles these horses most often display in their races.
If you will go to the Hat Check Blog and look at the thread in which Jim Bradshaw explains his methods for projecting the pace of today's race you will have a significant advantage over those that use any other method in selecting pacelines. Using best of the last 3 or any other canned paceline selection routine you are just as likely to ignore the likely pace of today's race and thereby minimize your opportunity to make an educated wagering decision.
Are there multiple Early horses in today's race that may exhaust themselves and set the race up for a closer? Can that closer run effectively against today's pace or will a Presser that shows he can press today's pace beat him to the punch? Is there a speed of the speed that will get his comfortable open lead and wire the field? You just can't decipher these things if you are mechanically approaching the race.
I offer this for no other reason than I read these threads and the information provided by others and I'd like to add my two cents. While you may not want to work in raw numbers as I do, if you do a better job of selecting your pacelines you increase your likelihood of success a 100 fold. If you have good pacelines then the other adjusted screens in the program will have a better chance of ranking your contenders.
I am not bound by the last 3 or 4 lines on a horse. If there have been layoffs recently and I determine the horse is coming fit I use the line that represents his ability from a previous form cycle. And sometimes it bits me in the ass but I also get alot of high priced horses that more than make up for it. There are methods used by trainers to improve their horses: distance and surface changes, condensing and expanding days between races, class and equipment changes. These things
are not readily obvious to new players but over time you will start to focus a little more on these things.
Databases are great but I have rarely seen winning percentages and ROIs that lead to profitability unless you insure that the pacelines you select are realistic in today's Match Up.
One of the most common methods for projecting today's pace is from the last race of all runners: RDSS2 will select these for you as you can see below.
What pace would you project for today's race and once you highlight that in the little boxes you can review each horse and his past performances with a new dimension of reality. Can he compete successfully against today's pace?


One Man's Opinion