Live Zoom Tutorial/Discussion - 5/22/2025

[Ted Craven]

This week's live Zoom meeting and Tutorial will be devoted to demonstration and Questions and Answers about using the new Excel Modelling export and analysis features built into the new RDSS Leverage/Pace version.

For those who have asked for assistance, and those who wish to learn more!

Thursday May 22 - 5pm Pacific / 8 pm Eastern

The meeting will be recorded, as usual.

If anyone has a modelling spreadsheet they wish to submit in advance for discussion, or specific questions - please feel free to send them to me and I will include them in the meeting and discussion. (Please email support@sartinmethodology.com - kindly compress any Excel sheets into a ZIP file when emailing them to me).

Ted

[Ted Craven]

Here is the recording of this meeting -

http://rdss2.com/rdss.leverage.pace/...2025.05.22.mp4

This is Part 1 of a planned 2-part tutorial/discussion on using the Modeling features in RDSS. Part 2 is planned for next week May 29.

Topics addressed in this video -

1. How to mark races in RDSS for export to Excel (using Export button on any Analysis screen)

2. How to export to Excel all marked races on the Card Summary Screen - using the Export button

3. How to Import from within Excel a day of exported races for a single or multiple cards

4. Tips including Do's and Don'ts on specifying filters to view subsets of your data and related Stats. (Refer to the Help Sheet/Screen in the RDSS Model Workbook).

5. How to copy collections of stats for multiple filter sets (different tracks, distance groups, race types, etc) onto a separate Sheet for all-in-one-place viewing.

6. Suggestions and plans for future advancement of the Model file -
- add Min/Max stats where relevant (%Median, CBL behind, factor ranges)
- add UNFILTERED stats view (rather than the typically exported FILTERED into Primary/Secondary/Non-Contender groups)
- add Summary/consolidated view of different interesting stats all in one Sheet (a 'live' version of Point #5 above)

7. Various Questions and Answers and Suggestions

8. Bill Lyster presentation of his research process of evolving different stats

9. Reminder about migrating the Model to the current version V1.3 - fixes some issues where TS Ratings (PL & BPP) may be missing from some exported races; better Help; discussion about how it would be helpful for a better method of moving Data from one Version to another, as inevitable upgrades happen (e.g. from Model V1.2 to V1.3 ... etc)

10. Dick Werpy brief closing summary about actual effective usage of all this information in the context of handicapping, and using the Leverage/Pace / Segments / NewPace / screens. More in depth demo / discussion promised for next week (May 29).

Questions and comments welcomed.

Enjoy!

Ted

[Bill Lyster]

Subject: Model refinements

It is clear from last night and even before that, that several handicappers have little or no exposure to Excel and how to use it.

That in itself does not disqualify anyone accessing the data base from developing useful information from it. The current data base has close to 4000 races in it and very few of the values for any one category apply to ALL races. There are several existing tools in the data base that will let you parse the data in many different ways. And you will find the stats for one kind of race can, and often will be, drastically different than other types of races.

Lets say you play Belmont at Aqueduct. You can sort by surface, then by each individual distance from 5 furlongs to 12 furlongs and beyond if you wish. Each sort may have as many as 200 entries and many will only have 10 or so races, so you can see, for instance what the range of % Med is for each distance if you sort by that distance on dirt or turf. I know that the NY turf courses have inner and outer tracks and for now, we do not have the data base set up to delineate those different track configurations. Some may ultimately want to sort the data by the number of horses in the race, some by age, some by sex, etc. And of course these last three categories can be sorted by surface and distance as well. Right now, anyone with a little extra time on their hands could review the data and determine a rough idea of relevant data, until eyestrain catches up with you. (ask me how I know this!)

The more specific the info that is desired, the easier it is to get decent info by reviewing the currently available sorts. The tools for doing such a sort might have to be enhanced, like winners by sex or age, fields of specific sizes, younger horses by time of year (3 vs older, etc.)

One caveat to the current data. This time of year and in the horse industry in particular there are a lot of races with only 5-6-7 horses. The data base does not have any 5 horse races or races with more than two FTS or Foreign entries. So the more the data is influenced by 6 and 7 horse fields, the closer the data will apply if you are handicapping races with those few horses in it. When you come up against races with 10-12 horses the percentage of winners in each category are going to go down because of the increased field size, the number of decisions you make on your way to your top contenders, etc.

There are many factors where one could benefit by knowing MINimum or MAXimim values in a set of information, but it would be more useful if we could set a % age of success. So for something like % Med you could say develop a % Med stat that would get the winner 90%, 85%, 80% or other range of values. Obviously, when you do that you eliminate horses that won when their factor criteria fell out of the % age that you are looking for. Even if one decided not to eliminate a horse for being out of the desired range it should give you notice that the rest of the field should be looked at for other win candidates and hopefully open up the tote board to higher priced horses.

In my comments last night about PRX the MIN/MAX info came in handy for 8F routes in that in 28 races no winners had a % med over 69.5, but for races at 8.3 furlongs the cutoff appears to be a little lower at 69.4 but the data had four outliers. All of these outliers were at 70% or greater, like 70.3, 70.6, 70.8 and all came in those $5K and $7.5K non winners 1X or 2X six month variety. But outliers exist at both ends of the spectrum, thus the need to research reasonable brackets for the info.

Dick had a race the other day that he labeled a CHAOS race, and so he did not play it. That race became playable for me (in theory-I did not play that day) once I ran down the limiting value for % med. Admittedly it was a really ugly race with many having 3F fractions in the mid to upper 40 fps. Those horses could use a sun dial to time there way home! Using Dick's screen shots there were only two horses in the race with a low enough % med to win. One of them did and paid $13.20

There are some factors where max info alone can be used as a demoting influence. Like Days since last race. In a bigger PRX model done a couple of years ago, I found only 2-3% of winners had longer than 90 day layoffs for win and overall the stats for other tracks trended to 5-6%. At PRX and other tracks on the same circuit, it is rare to see low level horses with a long and/or consistent work tab. Those horses get raced into shape, which, by the way, makes it hard to choose a line some times. How many races does a particular horse need before they fire the big bullet? The PPs might give you a clue if you look deep enough.

But even using days away as a guide you will almost certainly find different data for dirt sprint returners, dirt route returners and turf sprint and route returning horses or first time Foreign horses. So even this data has to be framed properly to make a decision.

Knowing what a workout tab should look like to get a horse into shape after a layoff is a little on the art side of things, but there are trainers that do it well and along with PL and BPP info can further limit the number of surprise winners. See KOPION on the feature race at SA the day after Christmas.

Anyway, that is all for now. If I didn't say it last night, I probably meant to....

Yeah, right.

[gandalf380]

Bill and Dick and Ted

Thank you for all your hard work. In the worksheet, there is a column that shows contender category. What do the numbers mean? 10, 11 and I think I may have seen 12 or 20.

Charlie.

[Ted Craven]

Originally Posted by gandalf380

Bill and Dick and Ted

Thank you for all your hard work. In the worksheet, there is a column that shows contender category. What do the numbers mean? 10, 11 and I think I may have seen 12 or 20.

Charlie.

Charlie - I was about to explain that, but the conversation veered suddenly

Model File Column EE - Contender Status

10s - Primary group
11 - Key Contenders ◄ blue arrow
12 - the Selected Key Contender ◄ red arrow

20 - Secondary group

99 - Non-Contender group

The ranks exported for every factor are the same ranks you would see on the RDSS Analysis screens.

Note - the ranks do change for the remaining Primary group horses as you demote horses to Secondary (Group 20) and Non-Contender (Group 999). You would get somewhat different ranks if you made your exports before you filtered your horses into Contender Groups (i.e. reduced Primary Group horses to Top 5 whatever factor you like, or whatever criteria). That is the discussion we were alluding to in upcoming enhancements to the Model Sheet - how to see factor ranks BOTH ways: FILTERED (into Contender groups) and UNFILTERED (every horse still in Primary Group 10).

Ted

[Lt1]

Hi Bill. As someone who plays Parx daily[with some success] I can confirm that horses with a %med of 70% or more very rarely win a route at any route dist or class level. On the other hand they can & do win about 10 % of sprint races between 5.5 & 6.5 fur True this is based on my contender/paceline selections and my my models and may vary from others' records. As for as l/o horses one must know which trainers do well with them. Some of the best trainers on the grounds have weak #s with returning l/o horses while some of the weaker trainers do ok with them. Since we don't know how trainers work their horses on farms away from the track we only get to view the track w/os. TM PPS fail to show trainer records with horses returning from l/os[ Bris pps do show their records] which is a great help. Another thing that may help is checking the horses' pps. Sometimes we luck out and can see that the horse itself does well when returning from a l.o. Also keep in mind that we must handicap the race at hand. Winning %s or trainers records are general nice guidelines but each race we do is a distinct event. IMHO folks must maintain their own records if they wish to win on a consistent basis. Depending on another persons stats won't cut it no matter how good that person is or isn't. Keep up your good work on the Leverage approach.
Tim

[Bill Lyster]

Well done Tim. I know that at PRX a fairly substantial number of winners go wire to wire, depending on who ate his or her Wheaties that day.

I made a note relating to the outliers that I mentioned, those who won races with a % med above the 90% of sample level. The lines we chose for the model were best of last three, so many times those would not be a line choice for you or even me. Things like off track races, best ever adjusted speed ratings never before equaled,etc. So what I was going to do was go back to the races where high %med horses won and see what the rest of the field was probably going to do. If a horse with 70.8 %med was racing against fields that were barely mid pack horses on their best day it wont have to run that fast early. As you know a lot of this could be determined from several screens, TPR, POH Velocity and a few more. In any event there were only five outlier % meds and I will check the races for the factors just mentioned.

As always, thanks for your input.

[Bill Lyster]

Six races at 8.3 furlongs won by horses with % med out of 90% win range. All things considered, there are a lot of similarities in these out of range % med winners. Read on.

All races from PRX and shown in the current Model.
10/7/24-r10; 10/29/24-r5;1/1/2025-r3;2/10/25-r4;5/6/25-r2 and 5/7/25-r3.

4 were top 3 RX3, 1 was Rx3-4th and one 5th
2 were NP E1, 3 were NP E2 and one was NP L1, So ALL were NP horses!

In the 5/6 race the best of last 3 line was worst ever in a race class several levels higher than horse had ever raced. Using line 2 a 7f race at or about this level, in this 8.3 furlong made it a clear leader/winner.

3 horses won wire to wire and the other 3 ran 2nd at all early calls then pushed on to win.

Using the RC (race class) only 3 winners were dropping in class by 10 or more points, e.g. 88 to 77; one was racing at level, one had a small class decrease.

I reworked all races with BOLT lines and looked for horses that lost more than one length to eliminate them. THIS JUST POINTS OUT THAT YOU HAVE TO REVIEW RDSS VERSION OF BEST OF LAST THREE FOR OBVIOUS ERRORS. With one exception most of the races had only 6-7 horses. Exacta and trifecta in top five in all these races.

On the Segments screen if you line up the horses by either Running Style or Speed Bias points it will show you things like E horses that cannot make lead and no matter how they apparently finish will not be in contention. I know you know this.

That's all folks......

[Lt1]

Hey Bill here is another factor that most people either don't know or use and that is that at every track on any surface and dist there is a minimum 3rd fraction that the horse needs to be able to run in order to win. As the HAT use to preach was that the race doesn't end at the 2nd call. Granted that most of my contenders will meet it but you will find races where some don't and I use it to downgrade those horses.
Tim

[Jake]

Originally Posted by Lt1

Hey Bill here is another factor that most people either don't know or use and that is that at every track on any surface and dist there is a minimum 3rd fraction that the horse needs to be able to run in order to win. As the HAT use to preach was that the race doesn't end at the 2nd call. Granted that most of my contenders will meet it but you will find races where some don't and I use it to downgrade those horses.
Tim

Very nice thread going on here, tons of handicapping knowledge. Thanks, guys.
Cream rises....

Jake.