Contenders

[Because I Can Jim]

Hey Latekick,

For the Lead did an excellent job in the teaching area that he refers to. A definite must read and assimilate. Why?

IN the early days of the methodology, whenever there was a workshop or seminar, an enormous amount of time would be spent on paceline selection. Then contender selection would be gone over almost as an afterthought. This is because to some extent you pick pacelines in order to be able to evaluate horses for contention. (An argument and method can be shown for picking contenders first almost to the exclusion of picking pacelines, but, that is for another thread and one that is difficult for beginners to grasp As a hint: it has to do with running styles.)

So, I believe most people will pick a paceline first from which to use for deciding if the horse is a contender or not. That is what they are most comfortable with or they gravitate to and that is absolutely fine. It works for me and many, many others.

But.... (for additional consideration)....

As time passed, the methodolgy became more advanced. Computer programs changed. Today, we are using RDSS2 and in it is something called Paceline Selection Strategy. (PSS)

In PSS, you can choose between different strategies. First there is manual (which is what I learned decades ago and is what is presented in FTL's teaching thread.

Then there is Last Line which is akin to manual. It is just a shortcut and would be changed based upon using a line other than the last line.

But, then there is all of these others - Best Perceptor, Last 3 Comparable and all the way down to Best VDC, Last 3 (which is the one I focus on).

No strategy is perfect. But, they are helpful and let me explain.

My mentor uses Best VDC. He opens up the race and runs Best VDC and from that he chooses his contenders. Here is why:

rmath made a post (http://paceandcap.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9188) from his findings over 650 races using the top VDC and CSR. The winner came out of the top 5 DVC and CSR 81.4% of the time. In reading the manuals, if you pick the pacelines manually, you will pick the correct paceline about 85% of the time.

My mentor saves a lot of analysis time in doing it this way and he is comfortable in his analysis of the pacelines selected for him. He has been handicapping for many, many years and that is what he has evolved to, but, he does not use it blindly like a black box. He does change pacelines selected when necessary and also runs the Last Line PSS to get a different perspective on the a horse. (Most often, his conclusions about a horse will be the same using both Best VDC and Last Line. Ocassionally, they will be different. At these times, he will then look more closely at the horse and other factors in a race to see which paceline he should use or whether or not the horse should be a contender.)

Be forewarned: USE THE PSS LIKE A BLACK BOX AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!

So were does this leave my giving advice....

Study the FTL teaching thread. Internalize it. Use it as a foundation of knowledge from which to make judgements from.

Realize that there are things that are contradictory to using the PSS. For example, FTL has his opinion about layoffs based upon his analysis/statistics which I can respect. He will just not use a horse if a horse hase been layed off after I believe it is 90 days. Using a PSS, it will pick a line regardless of how may days, months or years a horse has been layed off.

On the other hand, while rmath did not supply us with how he decided upon the paceline selection/strategy he used, his stats also point to another direction for contender selection.

I usually end with something like "Hope this helps" but in this case I know that what I wrote may not be that helpful. I wrote it because when I first opened up RDSS2, there was this thing called PSS. Immediatley, I fell into a "black box" mode. My mentor corrected that. Using the PSS (especially Best VDC) is a decent starting point. But, It needs to be tempered with the knowledge from For The Leads post.

Best of luck.

Jim
Any Questions, Any Time