Track Master DTV Quality Control

[Bill V.]

How can the same day, same track, same distance, and basically same race type have 2 different daily track variants ?

These two horses ran last on August 9th. They are running against each other tomorrow in race 6 at Parx. The race is a $25.000 Starter Allowance for non winners of 2 life who have run in a race for a claiming price of $25,000 or less.

What goes on here ?
Looking back to August 9th The track was fast I have never seen this before. especially on a fast track at the same distance.

Miss Molly won race 1 The DTV was -9
Joyful Thing won race 8 The DTV was -1

[Bill V.]

There were 4 routes run at Parx on August 9th

Race 1, 4, 6 and 8 all were at 1 mile






It appears that the DTV for this day was -1

Here are 2 horses who won or ran in race 4 and race 6

The winner of race 4 was Tale of Peace. She has not raced since .
However Small Secret has. She next raced on 8/23
Her PP's from that race say she ran on a -1 DTV on 8/9/14



In race 6 the winner was Calypso Girl She next raced on 8/31
She too gets a -1 DTV for 8/9/14

[Rverge]

billv just a suggestion "don't use DTV" in the configure tab. just the SR.
i m 'caping PID tonite i'll try it.

[SamP]

http://www.trackmaster.com/track/info/tchdesc.htm

I searched for "Daily Track variant" on TrackMaster.com, and in the description for their "Results Charts" Track Variant is:

TRACK VARIANTS - A highly accurate measurement of the track surface for each race.

So, it says they are giving the Variant for each race. In your first example:
Miss Molly won race 1 The DTV was -9
Joyful Thing won race 8 The DTV was -1

Race 8 was at the end of the day so the variant shows the track was getting slower as the day progressed.

What do you think Bill?

[Rverge]

Originally Posted by SamP

http://www.trackmaster.com/track/info/tchdesc.htm

I searched for "Daily Track variant" on TrackMaster.com, and in the description for their "Results Charts" Track Variant is:

TRACK VARIANTS - A highly accurate measurement of the track surface for each race.

So, it says they are giving the Variant for each race. In your first example:
Miss Molly won race 1 The DTV was -9
Joyful Thing won race 8 The DTV was -1

Race 8 was at the end of the day so the variant shows the track was getting slower as the day progressed.

What do you think Bill?

true this has been discussed and written about in several H'capping books.
i once asked "how can there be a track bias when the track is "raked" after each race?" well steve davidowitz answered but i forget what he said

[Rverge]

TRACK VARIANTS - A highly accurate measurement of the track surface for each race.

[Bill V.]

So It appears what we see as a heading on RDSS should be RV for RACE Variant

Here is another horse from race 1 It's Purple Rain

We see a - 9 RACE Variant



But for race 2 and 3 4 6 and 8 we see a -1

[Hoof 11]

Nice work detective, that is a big swing between two races, something isn’t right there.

It is not unusual for the bias to change over the course of a day, Woodbine gets faster as the day moves on. You would have to monitor what type of track maintenance is going on, whether its gallop mastered, cultivated, harrowing, or roto-tilled, and how many times throughout the card. I know Woodbine generally gallop masters the poly track every two races.

[ray lopez]

Bill,

Handicapper's Data Warehouse has the same variant for both horses from my Aodds 98 Super Gold.Both horses have a '29' variant...



Ray

[Ted Craven]

Bill, and everyone,

I just spent tome time talking with Craig Walker from TrackMaster, refreshing my understanding of how TrackMaster DTVs (or RVs!) are calculated.

DTVs for different surfaces are always different (Turf DTVs will always be different from Main Track).

DTV for a given surface will be the same for all races, regardless of distance, EXCEPT:

1. when a certain number of the horses in the same race all run final time Speed Ratings (SR) which are significantly faster than their expected SR. Maybe 1 or 2 horses running so much faster might happen, but several of all horses in a race doing so most likely indicates an event impacting track speed for that race (weather, e.g. grooming). Thus, the normal DTV is modified for that race to bring the SR in line with what those horses would be expected to run, based on a calculation involving their SR over the past 6 months of their histories.

2. When the Official Track Condition changes from previous Condition, the DTV for that race will likely also change - e.g. from Fast to Muddy.

All these DTV calculations are done algorithmically, not by human intervention, for consistency and predictability.

So, For PRX August 9, the Dirt Track DTVs were:
Race 1 = -9
Races 2 - 8 = -1

The Weather was listed as Clear and the Track as Fast for all 8 races.

Thus from point #1 above, since the DTV of Race 1 was calculated as 8 points FASTER than all the rest of the day's races (-9 versus -1) it means that more than a few of the horses in that race ran faster than their past 6 months' SR indicated they should probably run. Thus their final time SR should be smoothed out to their likely normal ability by recording that some event related to that race (the first one on the day) enabled the horses to run faster than their norm. So the DTV was increased FASTER than the DTV shown for all the rest of the races that day. Horses in the rest of the races on the Dirt that day all ran consistently and the DTV was shown as a consistent -1.

If you want to cross-check a day's set of DTVs from the TrackMaster Result Charts for any other card (say, 1 or 2 cards?), just let me know. If this does not relate specifically to Older Sartin programs, perhaps we could put that in a different Forum.

FWIW, I have been spending a lot of my programming time on RDSS integrating TrackMaster XML Result Charts with the RDSS database. Shortly after each race (~20 minutes) the Chart is available to download and integrate with all the other info for that race, so the DTVs are visible as the day progresses. You can correlate the DTV with what you are seeing race by race by way of weather and track maintenance (and thus have confidence in those numbers). (You can also use the Results to maintain realtime Track profiles of 'what's winning', as well as maintain Decision Models and update Betting records - but that's a different discussion).

I hope that helps!

Ted