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Old 10-14-2021, 01:49 AM   #1
Tim Y
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the evolution of balance

I was the moderator of Sartin Alums from shortly after the Follow Up quit publishing, until about 2006. Input from over 450 (# of members at one point) we shared aspects of the software that any particular one of us would probably have never noted. I discovered (not all my ideas either) many angles that still work today: 2nd call maidens, TWO lines better than the field, Order within Chaos, Style over Substance (give extra attention to the standard racing style that wins on that track at that distance), the e/l predicting a horse is going off form (when three successive lines share a steady decline in total energy with a rising e/l, this animal is going off form. The exact same conditions tell you which 3 ear olds heading for the Derby will not be able to handle 10 panels). It was this angle that suggested that Curlin was weakening going into his Breeder's Cup Classic)..One of my favorites discovered during the running of the NYRA'S Damon Runyon Stakes: when an ENTIRE field of horses all project within the same TRUE SPEED SINGLE FPS (i.e. 55.2, 55.6, 55.4 etc, the DECELERATION makes the difference in the outcome often at a big price)...and finally when you see a bias forming by successive wins of faint hearted animals lasting (particularly in the cold of winter when the higher that normal e/l for that distance repeats).

In the early 2000's I was getting frustrated as I was putting in loads of WORK and not getting the return I had hoped. I turned to a mentor (FR who is the track handicapper at Hastings and uses HTR, a software using SIMILIAR fractional pace evaluations as did the program I then used: Speculator).

We worked out similar races for about two weeks and I sent him my findings. Our evaluation of contenders was very similar but he responded that I was making an obvious mistake in not working as hard on my wagering decisions. I am paraphrasing now "You are trying to be a golf pro and only only working diligently on your putting, and all but forgetting to practice, EQUALLY, your driving (which is also a mandatory mystery to be a good golfer.) Your time must be almost EQUAL on both sides of this game's TWO opposite poles: evaluation and wagering as I am sure you hear all the time, the LAMENT: I am a pretty good handicapper but NOT a good bettor. IT is akin to how a professional tennis player builds up ONE arm to a huge size, and lets the other side stay normal. Asymmetry. You have to practice BOTH to be a well rounded player in this game.

His opinion: you need to make as many wagering decisions each race (even passing is a decision) so it becomes a natural part of your game. How can you improve if you do not put as much effort in the variances of evaluation and forget the wagering side?

I stopped playing for real for almost 2 1/2 years and filled (7), 150 page notebooks, with meticulous records of how I approached each race at about 20 tracks and here is what learned about myself. I reviewed all of them and quite often go back and review the last several since my efforts evolved over time and only the last 3 or 4 represent more of what I found to be true for ME

1) I bet too many short prices horses, bet into too many SHORT fields the minimum should be about 6 to 7. There will not be enough money in the pools to get an adequate ROI.

2) I found that win betting was just about the ONLY straight way to cover, NEVER betting show, and following Howard Sartin's advice to only bet to place if the win odds were 9/2 or better. My 10 years experience as a photo finish camera tech, even eventually soured me to MOST win betting.

3) I found HORIZONTAL exotics were NOT the place for me after listening to a great DVD from Steven Christ. Admittedly, I did not try very many and my findings COULD suffer from sample error. He pointed out several problems A) you only get to observe the horses from the first leg. One of your keys later on can come out rank and sweaty, but you have no idea of that one ahead. B) You have NO CONTROL on late scratches that can, and often do, completely change the pace scenario for a later leg. C) you can never know if a later leg requires unloading the gate or when an animal breaks through (a SURE reason to cancel a wager in that contest. I learned that by working the gate a Hastings for several seasons and the track vet agreed with me, that upsets many horses who were already "keyed up" when loaded the first time. D) the weather can change, often enough to take a later race off the turf.

4) vertical exotics negate almost all the above problems.

5) set aside a percentage each day as your total bankroll for SESSIONAL PLAY. This will guarantee that on any one card you will never tap out. We all have days when bad luck is compounded : race trouble, photo trouble, rider falls off, you horse gets DQ's etc. ALL OUT OF OUR CONTROL. Adhere to the discipline of doing this if you are close to bankrupt on any particular day. Don't make the rookie mistake of chasing dollars. You have survived to fight again another day.

6) if you struggle with differentiating the very minor differences among a filed of horses project pace abilities and you cannot find similar rating among the different evaluations (FTT, SP, POR, 2nd call etc), realize the contenders are too close to separate and PASS the contest

7) Stay away from races where OBJECIVE evidence is unavailable for comparison: a) fields of many unraced babies, b) races coming OFF the turf where you only have mostly turf lines to try and compare to the AE list of main track lines c) most Breeder's Cup races, especially on the turf when sometimes nearly half the field are Europeans.

8) a horse in trouble last out, does NOT mean it will automatically improve today. I found it is usually the opposite

9) I completely discarded reading the conditions of the race, OTHER THAN MAIDENS. No longer looked at who the trainer is and in MOST cases never looked at the rider (except when it is Juan Crawford at Woodbine) and made EVERYTHING about how each HORSE can project against the pace of race today...My mantra: Horses run, humans watch. As Pincay and McCarron (as well as Sandy Hawley when I interviewed him in the press box at Woodbine) have stated: NO rider can make a horse do what it cannot do. Hawley thought that the rider was no more that 15% of the outcome at BEST.

10) I pass most turf races even if the odds are tempting. IF an animal projects more than ONE line over the field, it might be a bet (largest wins have come on the grass a Del Mar and Fair Ground but I place those on recognizing a competitor that was LUCKY as well). We know that MOST turfers get their pace advantage by having the better 2nd and 3rd fractions, and therefore the ones in FORM mostly all move at the same phase of the race. That puts TRIPS on a premium, and NO ONE can predict a trip beforehand. Look at the big courses of Europe and how WIDE the grass gets down the lane so there is ROOM for these animals to move. I made one of my biggest Turf scores betting against Dancing Brave in the 1986 Breeder's Cup turf, knowing that NO ONE would go out with the recent Arlington Million winner, Estrapade, and the only one close to her late would be Manila. I even wore a shirt proclaiming that which is printed in the DRF publication https://www.amazon.com/Thoroughbred-...ay-Anniversary in the chapter The Greatest Race. Dancing Brave would have too much to do on a too narrow as course and he finished 4th as I recall.
Also the number of times we had to split hairs amongst the majority of the big turf contests at Woodbine (blankets at the wire) soured me on wagering on them.

11) stay off ultra short races as there is usually no time to establish pace
order and most of these races are for poor stock.

12) stay away from the really cheap, usually night time tracks, unless you LOVE CHALK

13) I have talked a lot about COTTAILS which is just recognizing that you, in effect, play what is an exacta or splitzacta over the randomness of the under horses
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Old 10-14-2021, 11:14 AM   #2
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Forgot to add a few things I left out from those years of study.

1) one needs to find out what % of the pool is contained in our selection(s). There is a great article at the AQHA website about creating morning line and a review of "bookie points." These represent the % of the total pool that, let's say, 2/1 represents. You can calculate it easily or use the table at this website. 2/1 works out to be flipped (denominator and numerator so you get 1/2. then ADD one to the new denominator to get 1/2 =1 or 1/3 which is 33 points for 33%..3/1 becomes 1/3.... 1/3 + 1 or 1/4 then 25 points of 25% The total adds up to these entries percentage of the total money in the pool. You don't want to wander into pools that have only 45% available. https://www.aqha.com/-/the-morning-line

2) in my review of play over those 2 1/2 years, whenever I completely missed a horse in a race, I would mark (in red) "Odd Man Out." After about 30 days I would look into those races and found that over 80% of those horses missed were super early (top 3 F1's) and expanded my look after that. That percentage remained throughout my study.

3) in the book, The New Expert Handicappers there is a great line that I wrote down and keep here at the desk: "If you think in terms of having to walk a mile to make your wagers, and still would do that, THOSE are the races to make sure you cover." https://www.amazon.com/New-Expert-Ha.../dp/0688075118

4) Very few books on horse racing accurately address, seriously, and with practical ideas, the practice of wager creation. The Odds are on Your Side (Cramer), The Four Quarters of Horse Investing: Plus: betting line Construction (Fierro), and Dick Mitchell's Winning Thoroughbred Strategies. I would search carefully for these if you do not already won them because prices are often through the roof on these out of print works.

5) We all know, by conversations with friend who chose the same horse that we did that there is NO ONE WAY to EVER find the winner handicapping wise. I often state that it is like various ways to climb up a mountain. The WAGERING side of the coin is much more rigid akin to the way an accountant would cover their client's books. Each of us needs to create a set of rules and never waver from it much like a decision tree i.e. "if this then that, and so one.

I would just like to see many move toward the epiphany I discovered with my game, and to balance evaluation with wager creation...It SHOULD be based upon what we find out for ourselves through reviews of OUR BEHAVIOR.

ONE thing I solidly discovered : HARDLY ANYONE wins at Hawthorne!
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Old 10-14-2021, 11:38 AM   #3
Tim Y
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Left out one final thing

Michael Pizzola was a Sartin teacher in the early days before he went out on his own with Handicapping Magic and in that books describes with an interesting title SNAILS which stands of "Shown Nothing After Its Layoff."

Most horses show some regression after a layoff, but what he is describing is a significant one. This came up over the week at Parx in a feature race. 10th race on October 12th for the horse: I Am Redeemed. After a short layoff of 23 days this one came back in a race with the comment "asked final turn, empty." He then cam back in a stakes at PARX was bet down to 4/1 5/1 range and did exactly the same thing... a SNAIL.

Be very wary of declining form
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Old 10-14-2021, 02:34 PM   #4
Ted Craven
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Thanks Tim for sharing your insights. Good reading for any serious player and student.

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Old 10-14-2021, 02:34 PM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tim Y View Post
Forgot to add a few things I left out from those years of study.

1) one needs to find out what % of the pool is contained in our selection(s). There is a great article at the AQHA website about creating morning line and a review of "bookie points." These represent the % of the total pool that, let's say, 2/1 represents. You can calculate it easily or use the table at this website. 2/1 works out to be flipped (denominator and numerator so you get 1/2. then ADD one to the new denominator to get 1/2 =1 or 1/3 which is 33 points for 33%..3/1 becomes 1/3.... 1/3 + 1 or 1/4 then 25 points of 25% The total adds up to these entries percentage of the total money in the pool. You don't want to wander into pools that have only 45% available. https://www.aqha.com/-/the-morning-line
Users of RDSS can find these Win pool percentages on all Analysis screens, plus a subtotal of pool percent for those horses you deem Primary Win Contenders. Data carried from the Tote screen.

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