The history of Speculator

[Tim Y]

Many of us were left "high and dry" with the unexpected and unannounced demise of PIRCO. I can distinctly recall hearing that people wanted poor Ailne Best's head on a platter (Doc's secretary) when their money from updates and subscriptions were not honored as if it was her fault (What is the old phrase? Don't shoot the messenger?).

Without a printed forum, many of us searched the internet to find kindred spirits. Usernet groups, other horse player sites (ones that allowed conversation) e-mails etc. From about 1999 to 2002 a few of the old group found one another and one member from Maryland actually set up the first post Follow Up forum at yahoo called Sartin Alums. Many of the people here were there in December 2003 (seems longer ago than that) when began (Ty, Earl, Harry (Hook 'em Horns), Dylan, Counterenergy, Binder, Gerald [from Trackmaster], Mark, Kitman etc.) Our moderator here, Bill, actually designed the logo for that group which is there to this day. We talked and compared notes until a long time member, Peter, first introduced us to Guy Wadsworth.

Peter had stayed in touch with him (Sartin Alum posts 333,371,391,443) and reported that he had been the "transition" between the ideas of the methodology, to the practical (program) side of the selection method for years and that now, he was ill with COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease- same thing that killed my wife) and without an income. He reported that Guy had written a new program which allowed him to incorporate ideas heretofore NOT ALLOWED in the previous programs, and which he was planning to sell in some way. We contacted him, he became a part of that group, and began offering the earliest phase of the new Speculator program to those interested at a cost much less than the previous versions of Validator (less overhead I guess).

A group of us volunteered to test it versus the older Validator (at that time Val3c was the final version from PIRCO), and report to the group as well as to him. He posted his feedback from various members as in Sartin Alums post 390 where he stressed THERE ARE NO RULES as all had in the Follow Up. As feedback generated new ideas, SpecNF, SecEX, Span, and SpecPa (my favorite of these with the preview lines filtered by pace factors) came into being.

There were problems with these iterations and he tried hard to remedy them. There was a strong request to make them Windows compatible and one of our group had the code and started work on that idea (it was only later that Ted actually accomplished this). I found out later that the intertrack variants were not updated and this allowed for certain tracks (even with the normalized Trackmaster data) to be too fast or too slow. Ted saved the day when Trackmaster changed their speed ratings and Spec160 was the result.

I was amazed at the negative feedback this fellow received all the while he was stating that this was a work in progress not a final version. Comments like "crook," "the guy selling programs out of the trunk of his car" were being posted about a poor guy having NONE of the infrastructure available to him at PIRCO, and the SAME fellow who had written the last several standard programs. I still find that hard to understand.

Guy finally succumbed to his disease (I don't know the final diagnosis but form experience understand it is usually Congestive Heart Failure or pneumonia) and left the programming code with two people so that it would not be lost.

We owe this gentlemen a big dose of gratitude for keeping things alive and changing to the discoveries of those innovative enough to see where improvement could occur.

[JimG]

Tim,

Who runs Sartin Alumns? Years ago I got banished for defending Bill Varone regarding some negativity on that board. I would like to get my id reinstated so that I can read the board. If you could put me in contact with the person in charge, I would appreciate it.

Jim

[Tim Y]

Originally Posted by JimG

Tim,

Who runs Sartin Alumns? Years ago I got banished for defending Bill Varone regarding some negativity on that board. I would like to get my id reinstated so that I can read the board. If you could put me in contact with the person in charge, I would appreciate it.

Jim

PM me as it is now up to me to approve new people there, OR ,better yet, re-apply TODAY and I will okay it.

[JimG]

Originally Posted by Tim Y

PM me as it is now up to me to approve new people there, OR ,better yet, re-apply TODAY and I will okay it.

Tim,

I tried to reapply but it blocked me. I sent you a pm with the exact message.

Jim

[Tim Y]

Originally Posted by JimG

Tim,

I tried to reapply but it blocked me. I sent you a pm with the exact message.

Jim

Give me 24 hours to correct that or re-apply with a different handle

[JimG]

I think it is tied to my yahoo email account and I would just as soon not try to create a phony account to get in. I'll wait till I hear from you. Thanks.

Jim

[Ted Craven]

Originally Posted by Tim Y

PM me as it is now up to me to approve new people there, OR ,better yet, re-apply TODAY and I will okay it.

Hi Tim,

Thanks for approving me for re-joining SartinAlums yesterday. I was able to login and start reading recent posts. Lots of familiar names! Unfortunately, this morning I seem to banned again - can't login.

Know anything about that?

Ted

[Tim Y]

Originally Posted by Ted Craven

Hi Tim,

Thanks for approving me for re-joining SartinAlums yesterday. I was able to login and start reading recent posts. Lots of familiar names! Unfortunately, this morning I seem to banned again - can't login.

Know anything about that?

Ted

I am not the owner and as such, being JUST the moderator, I am only SECOND in command!

I did my part

[Ted Craven]

Originally Posted by Tim Y

I am not the owner and as such, being JUST the moderator, I am only SECOND in command!

I did my part

I think I must hold the record now - banned 4 times from Sartin Alums I wonder if Doc Sartin himself would be permitted to join and express his views.

Ted

[Ted Craven]

I have done the programming for a number of software projects in my career: work shift scheduling, land title registry, psychological profiling and others, some of which embodied highly complex algorithms, and all proprietary to the owners who hired me. I did not create those software applications and I'm sure the owners would take a different point of view to hear me be described as the creator of them.

Similarly, and my comment to a quote above, Guy Wadsworth was not the creator of Validator or any of its predecessors (e.g. Quadrater, PaceLauncher, Synthesis). He was the programmer for the creator of the intellectual ideas, namely Doc Sartin. And Doc got his ideas originally from studying Ray Taulbot, then Tom Ainslie, then Huey Mahl and everyone else in and out of print, then by his own study, research and reflection, aided by good ideas from yet others who were drawn to his process of intellectual and psychological enquiry (e.g. Bradshaw, Brohamer, Pizzola, Schmidt, Hambleton, Purdy and a host of others).

It is human nature that creative individuals who are exposed to the inner workings of a complex concept want to add their own creativity to what is before them, so naturally Guy wanted to make his own contribution to Doc's work - fair enough. It's actually surprising that Doc and Guy managed to work together for as long as they did, both being so strong minded, of such divergent political and social views and coming from different points of view on what role a handicapping software program should actually perform in a healing arts organization like PIRCO/O Henry House (my interpretation). Guy was an inventor, a tinker, ready to try out new and interesting ideas to see if he could actually do it, if they would work or even be useful. Doc, on the other hand - was focused on helping clients to WIN: to win money at horseracing, or to win self-mastery even if they didn't make much money from the races - as a psychological, even spiritual healing or self-validation exercise, the "gift of prophecy" etc, etc. Those are distinct focuses, and I believe Doc embodied the notion of KISS ('keep it simple stupid'). He said you can either be a handicapper, which he sometimes uttered as a pejorative term, or you can let the Methodology concepts and software help you to become a Winner - to make money (Not that Handicapper and Winner are mutually exclusive identities, though). I saw him persistently seek to reduce, reduce, reduce complexity to the simplest terms he knew how, with the goal (at least according to him) of offering useful tools to the perhaps intellectually least of us, be we only honest and willing to learn.

So Doc wanted to make his readouts simpler; Guy wanted to add ideas. And - almost every new programming team who comes in to take over an existing project finds some fault or counter-view to the previous team's approach (even if you were on both teams but forced to comply with a previous regime) - I think this is also human nature ("I wanna be free, I wanna create..."). Doc described to me the details of the Val3 debacle and collapse of O Henry House around the time of his birthday and serious stroke in 2001 (though I never heard Guy's side of the story). Guy was undoubtedly fearful of losing his livelihood, such as it was, and indeed lived a subsistence lifestyle until his end on Jan 1, 2006. All these desires and fears motivate people...

Speculator came from Validator - it was not simply created solely by Guy. Doc says he stole it, Guy says he caught the dropped ball and ran with it. Wisdom and acceptance (and perhaps madness) lie in being able to hold opposing notions in one's mind at the same time. Guy was as much an agregator as innovator, quite willing to try out the ideas of others to see if they were better. Those others' names must include Marty Dahl, Gerald Springer, HK, BT for ideas including modifying the sprint to route formula, the Longshot Detector, the Perceptor concept, and Pre-Analysis. Plus probably others I don't know. As Tim points out, many users tested subsequent iterations and pointed out bugs or enhancements - and thanks to them. The bug corrections, enhancements and emergency maintenance did NOT end with Guy's passing either: I managed to add printing to the Windows printer, correct the TrackMaster/Equibase DTV issue, add back in the missing ITV variants and fix a few (egregious) calculation bugs. That was Spec160, and the end of the line. I am happy that Doc's view and Guy's view are finally reconciled (such as they are) in what is becoming RDSS - Doc is certainly satisfied.

No one should doubt that I and many others did not have enormous affection for Guy: we came to talk weekly over a year and a half and I'm sure I heard every old groaner of a joke of my father's generation, and more of Republican politics than a Canadian boy is constitutionally permitted. That plus the normal fears, desires and trials of an old, sick man, and sometimes beset by erstwhile friends. He was more generous than most people I know, though he often had not more than next month's rent in his caretaker's bank account (Marie, another walking saint). In the end, I'm glad I got see where he lived, meet his friends, help speed his way.

If any have not read this before, here is the Pace and Cap thread from February 2006 from Guy's Memorial service: http://paceandcap.com/forums/showthread.php?t=766

Guy got some things right with Speculator and several things wrong (in my view):

Right:

1. He made some kind of Sartin software available after Doc became incapacitated
2. He gave us a better sprint to route projection
3. He added the Perceptor notion of stating Primary factors, Total Energy and fractional velocities as percentages of best
4. Brought the Deceleration readout from underground to foreground
5. Added TS+F3 to Match Up graph, rather than repeating V/DC rank
6. Extended the traditional Second Call Beaten Lengths readout (SCBL on many software) to the First Fraction and Final Time (Match Up showing Computed Beaten Length screen)
7. Pre Analysis (sort all horses' aggregate lines by several factors, filtered by timeframe and distance/surface)


Wrong:

1. He omitted the TrackMaster Inter Track Variant (said he did not understand it)
2. He thought that Equibase/TrackMaster's upcoming change of their Speed Rating formula would not affect the software (the effect of these first 2 items on Speculator prior to Spec160 renders the readouts closer to random than software befitting a Sartin heritage)
3. He omitted the V/DC readout (said he did not understand it). Wrong, wrong and wrong choice: Velocity tempered by Deceleration is everything Doc stood for since Phase III, from Energy through Entropy up to Validator. The Deceleration or Entropy readouts are NOT V/DC!
4. Thanks to early Spec testers for urging him to reinstate BL/BL.

Indeterminate:

1. Used fixed value for beaten lengths at all distances, distinct from Doc's longstanding practise of emphacising 3rd faction performance via use of variable beaten lengths
2. Long Shot Detector screen


Summary

Guy Wadsworth deserves much respect for his contributions to the Sartin Methodology. Those who knew him will always remember him fondly - no one who writes to me about RDSS or Speculator ever has an unkind word to say, only fond memories. Speculator prior to Spec160 is next to useless (same with Validator prior to Val4). Spec160 and Val4 still get great winners and you can make a living with either. When I use RDSS, I use the Spec160 settings. Spec160 (and Val4) is being replaced by RDSS.

I think all the foregoing is also pertinent to the History of Speculator.

Respectfully,

Ted