best way to start learning

[dandy68]

this is dandy68 from Houston, Texas and I just now registered for pace and cap. I learn by doing, making mistakes, and then go back and try again and again until I think I know the first step, then 2nd, then 3rd, etc. so any suggestions on step by step learning RDSS?

[Mark]

my suggestion is that you start with Jim Bradshaw's 5 Step Approach. You can find it in the Hat check Blog. As you progress the Blog is filled with more lessons and examples. Jim "The Hat" Bradshaw personally instructed Richie P, who is the moderator of this blog so you are getting great information from one of the greatest handicappers ever for free.

Rdss2 is a great program to implement Jim's teaching as it allows you to stack pacelines. As you will find Jim only used a racing form so he didn't many of the adjustments available today and even then.

[dandy68]

how do I get to the blog you mentioned? I have zero experience with blogs.

[Mark]

On the Pace and Cap website main screen there are a number of topics listed on the right side. Down 4 or 5 you will see "The Hat Check Blog" -How can we help you. Click on that and a new screen will come up. These are called Threads and each on will be a lesson or discussion or a question that someone has written in about. This goes all the way back to 2007. Look at the title of each thread and although they won't make much sense to you now, once you get into Jim Bradshaw's 5 step approach you will begin to understand the topics etc. With you subscription to for RDSS2 there is a data base of old races attached for free. Start on these. Work them exactly as instructed and before you know it you will begin to see why horses win races. Fast horses win races and the only time they don't is if they run too fast too early or are not fit and in condition. You can't do much about the latter other than steer away from those horses but Fast horses go to the lead or want to presser the pace. The one's in the back of the pack are there generally because they can't run any faster. The only time they will ever win is when the front runners go so fast early and all the pressers try to keep pace and they all exhaust themselves and the slow guy goes running by at the end.

Good Luck!

[Mitch44]

My recommendation to you is to forget the Matchup. This is something for advance players that can't be employed by average horseplayer with any degree of success. The originator Jim Bradshaw and Richie P. being proven exceptions.
You paid for RDSS and your chance of success will be greater with it. Besides the Matchup is included in the RDSS program. That's right read it again the Matchup is included in the readouts of RDSS.There also is much to learn there and the modern version is pretty much foolproof as compared to years past.
I would suggest you start by reading the recommended Follow Ups, watch the videos and work the example races. There are some great short videos here to bring you up to speed. If you learn to pick correct pace lines, stay away from races with unknown factors and use money management you'll do well. There are enough things in RDSS to keep you busy for quite awhile.
Good luck,
Mitch44

[Mark]

Everyone has their preference as to how they want to handicap and what they will use to do it. My advise to you in reading and studying Jim Bradshaw's 5 step approach is that it will teach you how horses win races. I've been handicapping for 50 years. I have used any number of programs, most from Doc Sartin. However, my success was intermittent. The final time of a horse race or the speed figure attached to it is entirely predicated on the Early Pace. Track Bias is more often due to the interaction of the horses than anything related to track condition. While the rest of the world is subscribing to all these mainstream "theories" by studying the Match Up you completely ignore most of that stuff and as a result to you will pick more winners at better prices. It is not easy to learn but you start by establishing the horses' habitual Running Styles and determining how fast the Early horses will go and then who can compete against that pace. You will learn that there is evidence right there in the racing form that will give you a good indication the personality characteristics of each horse. Will they fight, do they win when they are challenged for the lead, can they pass horses, will they quit if they don't get the lead?
Otherwise you are dealing with a bunch of numbers. If you are a statistician then that may be your preference. There is a great deal to learn but using adjusted numbers that everyone else is using and selecting pacelines limited by their recency will nearly guarantee that you will lose money during your apprenticeship. Horses run against each other not Par times. If they go too fast early a slower off the pace horse will win in most situations. If you ran track or cross country in high school you know exactly what I am talking about. Be prepared to invest a minimum of 6 to 8 months of daily handicapping and study and the results will be very worthwhile. Don't let anyone tell you that you can't do this or that. Good Luck!

[Mitch44]

One thing you'll learn here dandy 68 is that there is a wide range of opinions, partly due to many members. Some of these opinions can lead a new member astray in many areas such as picking pace lines. Every member reads and interprets the same data a little different. At times there can be too many hands in cooking this recipe.

RDSS has running styles, NTL(need to lead ) horses and many other things that matchup cappers use. Again the matchup is included in the RDSS program. Take your advice from Ted Craven, Bill V. and Ted's Mother also gives excellent handicapping examples.

Read the stuff yourself and see how those running this site do it and you'll be off to a great start. There is more to horseracing than being in the lead at the second call.

Wishing you success,
Mitchman

[Bill V.]

Actually I am going to be hated for telling my opinion. I also know this works so if i'm hated I am sorry you hate me. Believe me I have done it all.
I also have tried to handicap and do the match up and I failed.

Basically you can do very well forgetting all about visual match ups and who will take the lead and adjustments . You also don't really need to understand
the meaning of each of the staple readouts .

Just read and reread (and ask questions) here on PC about follow up 80 to 88
Just absorb the info in those follow ups, Get RDSS2 or Val4 from Ted
and pick the best paceline of the last three races at a comparable distance and surface. Go to the bottom line betting line and look at 3 things The rankings of the BLBL, The vdc ranking and the Early /Late graph Now bet the best 2 of your top 3, Make your first bet the first horse of those 3 that will pay over $7.00 to win. For your second bet bet the horse of the top 3 that will pay the highest win price . Break ties and close calls with the early late readouts and keep a simple model of what wins at your track

This is not going to win you any contest, or make you look smart , and your not going to be like Hat or Richie or Doc , so your not going to get any ego
satisfactions, However, You will get many high price horses and you will almost always show a profit every 20 race cycle .

The other reason for looking at the Early Late numbers is if you want to get into exactas. The winner and the place horse almost always run counter energy to each other . You also will see if one of your top 3 or 4 horse might be
too early or too late to win but may pay a nice price for place and show.


As you go along you will begin to try to refine your game by using tools like your visual perception and picking running styles but if your like almost EVERYBODY you will fail
so I suggest just keep it simple and take your profits

Bill

[DaveEdwards]

You might also like to check out the Psychology of Winning manual & the column in each of the follow ups.
I'm sure Howard mentioned something on the lines of winning being 80% psychology & 20% Methodology. Personally I think it's even heavier than the 80%, but then maybe that's just how I'm made up!
Something else that may or may not be useful for you. If you commute to work as I do then it is a perfect opportunity to listen to all of the audios. You can download the mp3 from here and listen away to your hearts content. I've reached the stage where with some of them I already know word for word what is going to be said! Still, it's two hours of Methodology a day without any effort on my part, just play & listen.

[Ted Craven]

Bill, you are not hated. You are loved!

People have different learning styles and relate to different portrayals of what's going on in a horse race (e.g. visual Matchup / numeric representations of velocity/deceleration and balance of energy distributions). I'm not sure how to suggest in advance which style suits someone best who is just coming fresh to these ideas. Perhaps, are you visually oriented - pictures? Or do you like numbers, feel confident in statistics if you can understand some of their derivation? Or do you like 'following instructions' and not delving too deeply?

I think there's an entry point to the broad brush of the Sartin Methodology (which I will use to encompass The Matchup) for each of the above mental/psychological orientations. Of course, individuals will tend to be proponents of what they have found to work for them - through due diligence and 'the school of hard knocks' - and depending on one's aim in being involved in handicapping and betting horses, life may be too short to try all the approaches. So you have to try to see what matches your own temperament and start there first (or maybe only).

As time goes on (if you continue) and you either gain some winning history (and good endorphins from that) OR you see and believe others' reported experiences and it inspires you to keep learning more - you may then dive deeper into all the other related approaches to analyse a race. They all dovetail in the end. I would recommend becoming an expert in the visual matchup AND using software to measure velocity, deceleration, energy distribution. Software helps you process a LOT of races looking for gems. It is easier to bang through 20 - 30 races per day with the assistance of software than it is by hand. If you need to dive deeper into a given race, the visual matchup helps you know more about which horses' running style are advantaged or disadvantaged by the likely developing pace and the presence of other similar running styles and abilities in the race.

Jim Bradshaw - and I think Richie P to an extent - elevated the art of 'seeing' races to almost a mystical level: a whole brained approach, a 'mind's-eye' approach. Everyone can learn at least something about seeing race info (and life) like this but it takes practice, and is built up from details into a gestalt (greater than the sum of parts). Along the way, you may get it wrong often enough to become discouraged and give up, which would be a shame.

Software can execute consistently and give you opinions which you can then decide how or IF to bet. Record keeping (again, with software) helps you know how your method is doing, in which types of races your strengths lie, which races are bettable, which factors favour or disfavour certain horses in certain types of races - decision models). Software helps you analyse tote betting patterns.

'BOTH / AND' seems a good approach to me. Where to start? My opinion: first leisurely read Follow Ups 70 - 88. Don't worry that the readouts don't match what you see people posting here, or on your own RDSS screen. Read for CONCEPT. Also read Jim Bradshaw's 5 Step Approach documents and the 8 Month Update thread. Again, read for CONCEPT.

Then dive into the software since you have it. Do 100 races on paper. Do ALL the races worked by folks in the Matchup Challenge Contest. Compare results, especially against those who seem to know what they're doing and can explain themselves. You will find a LOT of overlap of winning horses picked by BOTH major flavours of the Methodology.

Doc Sartin always said: The Matchup is the essence of the Methodology - the essence of a horse race. Both he AND Jim Bradshaw - who wrote all the early software programs dealing with velocity, deceleration and energy distribution - sought to quantify the Matchup observations and make it easier for those not possessing the rarified mental/visual skills of a Bradshaw or Sartin (i.e. MOST of us!) All the tools are imperfect, in a domain of incomplete information and sometimes random and chaotic unfolding events and public opinions (which include both accurate and inaccurate pricing opinions, aka 'odds' and thus mutuel prices). But the tools and ideas only need to be 'good enough' to nudge you over the edge to profitability over a series of races. For me, over the years, the tools have always been 'good enough' - the biggest obstacle to my own success at any given point in time has always been - ME ! It's getting better ...

How much time do you have?

Welcome dandy68, enjoy!

Ted