The power of Total Energy #1
 

This can be a very complex game, as we know, but for newer players, or those having a difficult time, I would recommend something that is outside the standard practice of the Sartin method, but might be helpful in getting on track, as it has been to a friend of mine.

As we know, TE #1 wins more races than the lower ranks, for me .37 at all tracks, and .41 on the NY and CA circuits and at WO. I suggested to my friend that he simply bet this horse at all odds over 3-1. He's doing very well with this simple strategy, and just called me to say he had hit a 9-1 shot in the first race at AQU today using it. After congratulating him on this, I suggested that next time he call me before the race :-).

Cheers,

B Jennet

If only that will work in the 8th at AQU today. I've got a 15/1 shot there (the 5 horse) that also comes up second in BL, but first in EPR and FW - both of which have been producing the most winners at the distance.

If one looks at the horse's record, one sees the horse was shopping around the East coast and had to be dropped into a MC 7.5 at Finger Lakes to finally win. Then he stepped up to a NW2 there and won. Using that line (albeit a sloppy track) gives the horse some good figs against what is a likely prohibitive favorite.

I'd be interested though in how you arrive at those percentages. Specifically if you use other criteria to trim down a field in the first place, or do you knock them out starting with the lowest TE score?

Also, is this after hiding favorites?

I always trim a field down to five contenders. I never hide favorites. If a fave does appear to dominate, I just pass the race.

Presently I have 42% of 6F Inner Dirt winners coming from EPR and 50% of them from FW.

Dislaimer - only races for winners and only 20K claimers and up make my day. My own experience shows me that the biggest aberrations come from cheap claiming horses and I'm looking to have the percentages in my favor.

PS - I only bring up the eighth race as there are just six entrants to start with. I wait for scratches to trim a field before I do, until then I evaluate every entrant.

BJennet - Total Energy
 

Is this the one your friend bet?

From my Twinspires account:

2010-01-09 09:29:51 Bet* Aqueduct 1 Trifecta $1.00 2+3+9/10/1+2+3+5+9 $12.00 $869.50
2010-01-09 09:30:19 Bet* Aqueduct 1 Win $2.00 2+9 $4.00 $20.80

However in my case Total Energy wasn't the determinate. A questionable favorite and a horse who loves to hang pointed me in this direction. The favorite was out of the money, the hangar hung, and held for 2nd, the 9-1 horse won, and my other win bet, at 67-1, ran third. Made for a nice trifecta.

This is a case of the race informing the bet; didn't know who was going to win but was reasonably sure who wasn't, and had a strong sense of who was going to run second.

Rdss (Val 4) confirmed my choices, more rather than less, and so I went ahead. Don't remember how the horses were ranked/tiered, but don't have to because this exact race, with these combatants, at this distance, under these weather conditions, at this track, has a high probablility of never happening again.

A shame this race wasn't in our contest, but I am going to keep the money.

Bet a little to win a lot!

Chris

P.S. Don't post races in advance because I do them as I go along, and then quickly move to the next race.

Caveats
 

Hi Charlie,

If you scroll down, you find the TE results I originally put up in Richie's autopaceline thread.

http://paceandcap.com/forums/showthr...?t=6240&page=4

You can see that 3yos are among the groups I've filtered out, since I don't play them, finding them to be more erratic performers than I'd like, but that doesn't mean that TE won't win - I just can't confirm the hit rate.

Paceline selection is simply done by looking at the #1 'Energy' screen and, for each horse, taking the line with the best TE among 'last three comparable'. Obvious outliers should be eliminated and, of course, experienced handicappers should use their discretion, but I no longer use 'no wins showing' as a filter, since it was cutting out some good prices.

Also, re hiding, since I mentioned 3-1 as my lower betting limit, there usually is no need. The reason I mention this to newer players is that it will give them a higher hit rate than the other ranks, and hopefully build confidence.

#1 TE did especially well at AQU yesterday, taking not only R.1 but also R.6 @12-1, and R.7 @4-1.

As far as today's race goes, the 5 would fit the bill, but given a group of very lightly-raced horses with wide class differences, I would exercise caution. As Guy Wadsworth pointed out, the software works best using horses that are showing at least 10 races.

If you have any more questions, just post.

Best of luck.

Cheers,

B Jennet

Tremendous hit Chris!!!!! Man bets a little to win a lot :D

I'll check that out. I may have some questions later, thanks.

This post defines how I arrive at a pace line:
http://www.paceandcap.com/forums/sho...2412#post62412

I was quite pleased when Rich responded that it was quite similar to his own auto-selection process.

I'm not crazy about lightly raced horses either. Too much of a possibility of rapid improvement. The odds have to be favorable and if I'm having a good day, I might make an action bet, but otherwise I play with caution. I may dope out the races every day, but I don't wager every day. It tends to average one spot per day.

I was tempted to go with the 3 in the first at AQU today, he has the figs and the ability to run well fresh. Plus the odds are nice.

However the inner voice says to hold back and I trust my instincts.

$1739 all-TE tri/Whatever works
 

Hi Chris,

Congratulations on your hit. As I said, my post was mainly for newer handicappers looking for a simple, but relatively high-percentage play. Experienced players like yourself should continue to do what's been working for them.

Although TE-1 doesn't get many prices like this, it was good to see. Also worth mentioning, is that three of the four top TEs filled out the rest of the tri, while eliminating the top two favorites.

Re RDSS, I have mentioned before, that 'mechanical TE' often produces results similar to the BL/BL of the software, but, at least for me, higher ROI.

Continued good fortune.

Cheers,

B Jennet

Filtering outliers
 

Charles,

Agree with what you say here, and the paceline selection your link outlines sounds somewhat similar to what I described. Using a speed number as you do sounds like a very good way to filter high-TE outliers - I try to do the same kind of thing more informally, but I will keep it in mind.

Cheers,

B Jennet

How's this for a nice TE catch?

I have FW and HID as my top % winners at 1m/70 yds on the inner dirt, so this was a no brainer.

Paid $45.80, my only bet of the day.

I'd say that's a bonanza "catch" Charles!!!!

Very nice and there will be more! :)

good seeing this Charles....OHHH those long waits...PAYS OFF!!

Thanks Ritchie.

You and I have already discussed my method of selecting pace lines, in fact I linked to it above in this thread. I've been doing nicely on the inner dirt with my spot plays, hitting at 28% for an ROIR of $2.88.

But I will keep track of the TE rankings from now on. Until now I've been tracking DCL, the seven factors that make up the Primary Line Score and BL/BL.

Thanks Mike.

I've only made 18 wagers since the inner dirt track opened.

It's sometimes difficult to sit them out, and sometimes I get angry with myself for NOT playing a 2/1 horse that looks like an easy winner and ends up romping home by daylight.

I've deliberately avoided getting an internet-based account, sometimes just the act of having to go into the other room to make the call is enough to keep me from wagering. I try to pretend the phone is a mile away and ask myself if it's worth the walk.

Besides, I'd hate to disturb the cat on my lap. :)

i'd wait too if i had a pussy on my lap :D

good going buddy

01Jan10 8Aqu; clore1030
 

Impressive bet yesterday at Aquduct, even more so, is betting only 18 races for the meet, and doing it by telephone no less. I enjoyed your rationale for using the telephone instead of the internet.

Many of us have developed our own routines for slowing the engine a little and letting our better selves into the game.

Regards,
Chris

Yes I agree completely Chris! This man is out for the CASH and has a battle plan firmly in place. Plan your work and work your plan :)

You ain't doing so bad either btw!! :D

Thanks Chris and Ritchie. I've been working hard at accentuating the positive as the song goes, and eliminating the negative.

Knowing where one is weak, or where data is less supportive helps a lot. That's why I avoid claimers running for less than 20K. Or races where there is too much guesswork - such as first time grassers or races taken off the turf.

I focus better that way.

Congrats
 

Hi Charles,

Excellent hit at AQU. Also had this as an early-bird bettor - you can see how it fits my pattern - and was surprised by the price. From what you say, it sounds like our style of play is very similar. That great ROI shows how effective it can be.

BTW, if you're going to be tracking TE, I would be very interested in knowing what kind of results you get. My own experience confirms what Doc Sartin pointed out many times for those trying to do this - all of these readouts, TE, BL/BL, PLS, and TPP have very highly correlated results, to the point of near redundancy. But while this is generally true, I found TE to have slighly higher ROI for reasons I couldn't determine. If you get to 200 races or so, I would be grateful if you could let us know whether the hit rates are in the ballpark of those I posted, or whether they need to be revised. The bigger the database we get on this, the more accurate we'll be.

Thanks for posting.

Cheers,

B Jennet

I'll be glad to.

I do my tracking manually, and it's broken out into distances. When we hit the next two-day "dark" period, I'll go back and add the TE rankings for previously handicapped races.

Why by hand when I can export data from RDSS? Simple, the very process of inputting is more than one of just transposing figures from A to B, I'm making mental notations while doing so.

One good thing about the Inner Dirt track is that there are limitations on the number of distances. It's mostly 6F, 1M, 1M-70 and 1 1/16M. Since there's no turf racing, one gets to acquire data quicker. Races at 1 mile are relatively new, they must have gone 20 years before ever scheduling one at that distance. I had the first ever winner on the IDT, a legendary claimer named Rare Joel.

But I confine my tracking to the types of races that I play. I don't use lightly raced horses or cheap claimers. I also don't "retrofit" - sometimes in whittling a field down to five contenders from ten or more, one is bound to toss out a winner.

It would be easy to go back and toss one out to fit the winner into the mix of five (and I always reduce down to five), but I don't second guess myself. Sometimes one is just plain wrong or anyone of a thousand variables could have changed the outcome. I may make an observation that will pay off in the future, but my whole approach is to try to eliminate "guess work."

That's why I don't hide favorites - if they figure too strongly, I just pass the race, that's all. If I see a 6/5 shot with a 25% edge on BL over the next horse, I don't try to beat it. Experience has shown me that such an edge in that ranking is too much of an advantage.

Thanks
 

Charles,

Again, your approach sounds similar to my own, although re the TE stats I mentioned, they were not broken into subsets by distance. Although I started doing this in an informal manner, I found the results so homogenous that I didn't bother to continue, but I would be very interested in what you learn.

Just to be clear, when I was compiling the TE numbers, this was separate from my own play, although I used the same races. This was after I had begin to notice what seemed to be improved TE performance, and I wanted to use it as a benchmark. What I learned is that, assuming the filters I cited, it was difficult to beat as a paceline selector in roughly 80% of races. For the other 20%, which are essentially comprised by horses running at short sprints (5f, e.g.) or at tracks with an 'early' bias, and are best judged by the Velocity screen, as well as turf horses running to a very 'late' bias, and are best evaluated by DCL, I made my own judgement, noting whenever this was the case.

Agree also with your comments on not 'hiding', preferring to use my own judgement. I think this must have worked well when Doc Sartin first came up with the idea, and probably for a decade or so afterward, but the assumption that there will always be a sufficient supply of horses at long enough odds to offset losses on low-priced favorites no longer applies in today's much tougher mutuel price environment. Being selective really is crucial.

Best of luck with your research and parimutuel investments, although I think you hardly need it.

Cheers,

B Jennet

Thank you for the compliment, but I must tip my hat back to you as you've given me much to chew on.

My reason for keeping the favorites in was to "legitimize"the results.

For example, I show FW as the strongest factor on the IDT at 6 furlongs this season. 45% of the winners I have charted ranked first in this factor.

While there are a number at $5.00 or less, there is also quite a number of them paying $8.00 or better.

EP is the second highest, producing 39% winners at 6 furlongs. So, when I come across a horse that is top ranked in both, I can presume it's a legit candidate to have its picture taken. All I need is for the odds to be satisfactory. Even an 8/5 horse can be an overlay if the rankings match up well with my tracking., but generally I look for 5/2 or better.

Sure, I can go a couple of days without wagering, but it's a winning feeling to not watch my bankroll erode.

I go through the rankings looking for strong combos, and will now add TE to the list. I'll start compiling that on Tuesday and Wednesday, the dark days this week.

A perfect example of the above procedure occurred in the seventh at AQU.

I said above that EP and FW top-ranked horses were winning at relatively high rates on the IDT at 6 furlongs.

Here's a case where a horse came in as top-rated in both categories and won at $20.20 (yes, I had it - my first wager since the bomb of the other day):

Note:

Elusive Gift in the eighth at AQU is not only #1 in EPR and FW, but TE as well.

But, as it's likely to be 2/1 by post time, I'll pass. It's 5/2 now, but there are 7 minutes left. Had I not just scored, I probably would go for it.

Aqu 7th
 

Nice win....I tried for the big enchalada, instead made a small profit from the win. The exotic didn't pan out. I found two others at Aqu and came up with nothing. Many times you pay a price to bet exotics, and I'm aware that it's not for everyone.

COMPLETED: 09157399868197 AQU #7 $0.5 Superfecta 1,3,​WT,1,3,​WT,4,​WT,2,5,6,7,8 <none> $ 5.00 $ 0.00 - $ 5.00
COMPLETED: 76291421846758 AQU #7 $0.5 Superfecta 1,3,​WT,4,​WT,1,3,​WT,2,5,6,7,8 <none> $ 5.00 $ 0.00 - $ 5.00
COMPLETED: 75685322851953 AQU #7 $2 WP 3 <none> $ 4.00 $ 29.10 + $ 25.10

Regards,
Chris

Thanks Chris.

Once in a while, I may go for an exacta, but only when I have a short priced horse and pair him up in order to hopefully maximize the potential.

I've made four exacta bets in the last two years and cashed in on two of them. Neither of them paid more than $16.00.

Eventually I'll probably set aside a separate fund for exactas, but right now it would only cloud my focus and I'm quite pleased with the way things are going.