First, very interesting post by Ted! My simple mind goes back to the day s when Doc and Ellis Starr both worked side by side on the srs etc. Ever since PIRCO closed shop and Ellis Starr went on to his touting service the srs and variants have in my humble opinion gone to hell in a handbasket. Guy Wadsworth and myself had many a conversation about this over the years while I was testing various versions of SPEC for him. As a matter of fact I was so fed up with the Trkmast Srs that he sent me a version of SPEC that had no variant!
I recall the last conversation I had with him he told me he thought he might finally be making some headway with them.
Im just glad that Ted is working on this problem.
I guess Im old school on this, many moons ago i had a pace program ( close to phase 2) and we used the old American turf monthly track pars and then to get the variant for each distance we simply took 20 srs out of the drf and averaged them and dumped them into the program. It worked well. No out of line srs and all
A thought for Ted here (as if he doesnt have enough of a headachc on his hands with all this
Why not consult the master of the matchup himself on this? Jim bradshaw in hsi forst book wrote that (and its certainly true with trakmaster today) that most handicappers are adjustment happy. He had a simple and straightforward way of making adjustments when they are needed. This would be a great option in the new program!