without history you are adrift

[Tim Y]

We all know the great George Santanya expression about learning the lessons of history (Only wish MULTIPLE heads of state would have taken it to heart over the years), but it is NO less true in understanding horse racing.

Why do we even study history? To learn how people confronted problems of their day, with their state of knowledge and can then LOOK BACK, given our current state of knowledge, and make sense of it all. IT HAS ALL HAPPENED BEFORE, and we have to understand how to deal with it. For example, I was delighted in learning, for example, of the tale of Lysistrata (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysistrata) and the "nookie" strike that occurred before the time of Christ. A problem came up; this was how they dealt with it.

It is no less true in understanding horse racing. This is an arena where the "powers that be" have really dropped the ball. I find that the rank and file handicapper are some of the most ignorant people (IGNORANT not stupid) who are wagering money using that small informational base. 99.9% of what goes on in racing has happened before. OF course that is what you want (to some degree) of people you are wagering against, but after awhile the prolonged losing will even get the most ardent fans to look for other alternative entertainment.

Of course nowadays it is all about short cuts. I see this all the time in the quasi medical fields of live cell microscopy and reflexology: completely bogus approaches to complex problems. Phineas T Barnum, ages ago, certainly had it right........Don't understand, don't learn but we have the pot of gold for you here at our website.......Amazing.

[tom]

That seems at odds with what you said in another thread:

CHANGE: Databases look back and what WAS, not what IS/

Isn't an informational base the same as a data base? The track model and profile are databases, as are, for that matter, the PPs. There is power in knowing what has happened before. My db told me that when Aqu is off and sealed for several days in a row, early loses it's power and late gets better on day 2 and day 3. Saturday was the third day in a row of being sealed, and I was able to catch several good prices on the late horses. All off tracks are now equal, even at the same track.

[Tim Y]

HISTORY is situationally specific, not NUMERICAL.

The lesson of the match race is the horse first out of the gate in these cat and mouse contests is usually the winner. No one says the Zev/Papyrus was a 5.6 versus the Armed Assault at 7.2 or the Alsab/Whirlaway was a 10 and the Nashua/Swaps was a 9.2, the Armed/Assault was a 8 or the match races within a race (Affirmed/Alydar Sunday Slience/Easy Goer) were 8.3. One learns the situation and applies it to use.

I always get a kick of the idiots using Beyers to tell us that an Affirmed Triple Crown was better/worse than a Citation or a Slew. They were situationally different.

[tom]

The point that the early speed diminished on day three of a continual wet/sealed track is situational. And History is numbers, too...you are the one who tells us that, concerning percent median for the Derby, E/L ranges for tracks.....very much numerical. You don't get to bet many match races, so I will pass on that example. The TM variants are a perfect example of a database's numerical importance. Unless you are doing it raw, you depend on those "man-made" class pars and variants.

[thelyingthief]

The extent of one's knowledge base is meaningless: it is the pertinence of the data one uses that is significant.

I confess that I am a bit confused by this post. Heretofore, OP has insisted on the particularity and non-repeatable nature of each race: that is, he has deemed the racing event as something anti- or non- historical. He has eschewed, even vilified, the maintenance of models, which, please correct me if I'm wrong, IS history--at least, a form of it. And now, suddenly, he embraces history as a means to understand the situations confronting the handicapper and his analysis. If I'm not mistaken, if a situation has any relevance to another event, it is because there are elements in each that transcend both. When we evaluate events with a desire to determine their similarities, we are modeling, seems to me. Enlighten us, then, why this is NOT modeled data, and why the application of modeled data is not a means therefore to understand said situationality? And please, Tim, also tell us, if you will, how are WE to use history, which history are WE to use, and what kinds of historical method are WE to apply to handicapping? I, for one, am eager to clone my understanding and methodology of handicapping after yours; and I'm very sure that I am not alone in this desire.

tlt

[Tim Y]

who the devil is OP?


BASIC RULE OF ENGLISH: Abbreviations are used SUBSEQUENT to the initial use of the full description of said abbreviation or the reader will have no frame of reference....

[thelyingthief]

OP original poster.

[gl45]

New people are coming to the site to express their handicapping ideas, new or old, and our selfprofessed Messiah of the handicapping cause is kepping chasing them away.
lbj

[Tim Y]

Originally Posted by lbj

New people are coming to the site to express their handicapping ideas, new or old, and our selfprofessed Messiah of the handicapping cause is kepping chasing them away.
lbj

If their opinions are that weak that they cannot back them up with data then t
hey wouldn't hold up to scientific scrutiny.

I learn all the time except that 85% of what is promoted is wishful thinking without a shred of actual evidence.

Have a point? PROVE IT ...simple as that

[Tim Y]

This O.P.posted this after a long discussion with my very pragmatic and brilliant Mrs.(she comes from a very good stock as her mother was a recent recipient of the Order of Ontario for her work with the senior woman's network of Toronto. Among other recipients were the inventor of the Blackberry and two physicians who did the foundation work in stem cell research). Her father, forced to leave school during the depression, returned to York University to get his bachelors at age 68. How could she miss with a background like that?

We started the conversation about the stupidity of war (NEVER learning but repeating the same mistakes over and over) and it expanded to handicapping (she is well versed in how the methodology works).

SITUATIONAL history repeats all the time. You cannot put a number on them: you just learn the outcomes of situational events. I brought up how ridiculous it was that idiots attribute Beyer NUMBERS to horses that NEVER ran against one another, having this misplaced confidence in inter-generational, or for that matter, inter-race comparisons that just do not work. Huge databases mixing tracks, performers, pace pressures and situations that have lost their specificity given the illusion that a reductionist approach is PRIMARY in understanding situationally specific events. Imagine a study of war, ethnic cleansing, prejudice etc. averaged out by attributing them to a situationally specific time, place and them trying to draw a logical conclusion....Well that was only a 4.5 war versus this one later that was a 6.......

Today's match up, tempered by a deep understanding and respect for all that has occurred before, is paramount in understanding Today's race outcome