Tentative Derby EL 2.0 Contenders, plus Reasoning

[Dave Schwartz]

My Look at the Kentucky Derby

[Ted Craven]

Dave, not sure you've got the right race in your screenshot.

Ted

[shoeless]

Ted,

Nice screenshot from RDSS 2.0 and thanks for the reasoning behind it.


Jeff

[Dave Schwartz]

LOL I wasn't even paying attention. I'll fix.

Funny about that.

[Dave Schwartz]

See how little I pay attention to these big races? I didn't even look at the horses' names.

Okay, have corrected it. Just refresh the screen.

I will be around to respond to questions after about 7:30pacific.


Regards,
Dave Schwartz

[Ted Craven]

Dave, before analysing your workup further, how do you assign any ES points to Master of Hounds, given no upclose in his only North American race, and no position info in any other races? His presence in your Early group, affects the horses below him, and your subsequent query about dual Swing horses, I think?



Aside from that, I follow your analysis. We're using 2 different sets of self-coherent Speed Ratings (TrackMaster and HDW). Given that, could you comment on my reasoning in my earlier post above for choosing Comma to the Top versus Pants on Fire as one of the Early horses (i.e. tie break rules when Hi SR within 1 point). That is, what approach would you follow faced with an analogous situation using HDW supplied SR?

Cheers,

Ted

[Dave Schwartz]

Dave, before analysing your workup further, how do you assign any ES points to Master of Hounds, given no upclose in his only North American race, and no position info in any other races? His presence in your Early group, affects the horses below him, and your subsequent query about dual Swing horses, I think?

I am so used to our software handling some things automatically, that I just forget about it sometimes.

First, he has zero for ES Points. Since ES Points are not part of this calculation we'll leave that to a future discussion.

The real question is, "How did we determine his other attributes?" Essentially, I studied foreign horses in their next few races in the U.S. and determined that there was a good way to relate finishes to "likely" pace impact.

The approach I settled upon was to treat the past races as if he stalked or forced the pace based upon distance of the race coming from and the distance of today's race. In other words, a horse that has been sprinting (like Hounds) is more likely to run early in a race of this length than in a race of shorter distance. That is simply logical.

However, the C1 factor takes most of this back because we actually have no proof that the he DID run this way. Considering that the C1 number is a zero, I would expect this horse to actually run somewhat earlier than his "pct" indicates. It is a big leap from "no data" to being able to say this, but that has been my experience.

When you have a true question mark horse in a race, you cannot simply pretend he isn't there. Well, there are some methods for doing that relative to the tote board - I do it all the time with FTS - but it is very difficult when asked questions like, "How will the question mark horse run?"

A logical assumption, since so many winners go to the front, is to assume that IF HE WINS, he will do it at least somewhat early.

Besides, what are the alternatives? To give him all zeros would be to assume that he will be an absolute late closer, which is no more accurate and probably farther from reality.

[Dave Schwartz]

Aside from that, I follow your analysis. We're using 2 different sets of self-coherent Speed Ratings (TrackMaster and HDW). Given that, could you comment on my reasoning in my earlier post above for choosing Comma to the Top versus Pants on Fire as one of the Early horses (i.e. tie break rules when Hi SR within 1 point). That is, what approach would you follow faced with an analogous situation using HDW supplied SR?

Actually, I am not using HDW speed ratings. I am using my own par-based numbers.

The HDW ratings are far superior to my numbers for gathering winners. The top horse for last race speed rating - what we call "BL1" - wins around 29% of the time. My par-based numbers are down around 25%.

However, my numbers return MUCH MORE MONEY in the upper rankings! So, I use them instead.

On to your question.

As I read your previous post, you go into a long explanation about PoR (Pace of Race). The purpose of PoR is to eliminate horses that cannot keep up with a potentially fast pace. However, from a practical sense, it is only used IF WE HAVE A DOMINANT FRONT RUNNER!

Therefore, in a race such as this, you have no need to even LOOK at the PoR. That is why I did not display my RegSpeedLow ratings on the form!

Yes, PoR is used to eliminate horses that do not qualify on SpeedHigh, but in the end, we're going to simply take the two highest (plus ties) anyway so we might as well just move to that column right away.

Thus, in your calculation (as I see it) you wind up with the following:

EARLY
18 Mo                        123
13 Mucho Macho Man   102
 7 Pants on Fire           101
 6 Comma on Top         100
17 Soldat                    100
 5 Decisive Moment        99
14 Shackleford              97

In this scenario, you clearly have:

18-??? tie break between 13 & 7.


(Hmmm... Code does not line up. Can you point me to how to fix?)

[Ted Craven]

Originally Posted by Dave Schwartz

As I read your previous post, you go into a long explanation about PoR (Pace of Race). The purpose of PoR is to eliminate horses that cannot keep up with a potentially fast pace. However, from a practical sense, it is only used IF WE HAVE A DOMINANT FRONT RUNNER!

Therefore, in a race such as this, you have no need to even LOOK at the PoR. That is why I did not display my RegSpeedLow ratings on the form!

Yes, PoR is used to eliminate horses that do not qualify on SpeedHigh, but in the end, we're going to simply take the two highest (plus ties) anyway so we might as well just move to that column right away.

Thus, in your calculation (as I see it) you wind up with the following:

EARLY
18 Mo                        123   SCRATCHED
-------------------------------------------------

13 Mucho Macho Man   102  - 105
 7 Pants on Fire           101 - 103
 6 Comma on Top         100 - 105
17 Soldat                    100 - 112
 5 Decisive Moment        99 - 102
14 Shackleford              97 - 97

In this scenario, you clearly have:

18-??? tie break between 13 & 7.


(Hmmm... Code does not line up. Can you point me to how to fix? - not sure myself - let me work on that...)

Thanks Dave, setting aside your discussion of use of POR for a subsequent time, your chart and comments re tie-breaking were actually the meat of my question.

Uncle Mo is scratched. So we're picking between the next 5 horses separated by only 1 SR point. You have suggested (initial video) to break ties on Jockey %. You have also suggested (followup video session - an improvement?) to break ties on highest lifetime SR. I'm sure either way will get you success some of the time, but for consistency - using lifetime SR - do I understand:

(referring to your code table above - I added a second set of bolded numbers showing each horse's lifetime hi SR)

1. comparing #13 to #7 - #13 survives (105 vs 103)
2. comparing #6 to #7 - #6 survives
3. comparing #6 to #17 - #17 survives

Therefore the 2 Earlies would be #13 MMM and #17 Soldat

In your view, is that comparison logic consistent? (I agree, it is different to what I came up with initially). This is not so much to determine Derby contenders (though that's interesting) as to be in synch with your thoughts on best practices applying NewPace.

Thanks!

Ted

[Dave Schwartz]

Hang with me - working on a long post...