The Horse's Form Cycle
 

Everyone may have their own method to determine this ---As for myself
l look at the "Velocity screen" Total Energy in conjunction with the 2nd call#.
Yes, I know you can easily see if the horse is improving or not just by
eyeballing how it ran against the pace. But this gives me a give me a quick
quantitative overview as to how the horse is performing over the last 3 or more races.
For example: if the Total Energy #'s have been decreasing over the
last 3 or more sessions and the time to get to the 2nd call has been increasing,
I conclude that this horse is not in form. Conversely if the TE is increasing
and the 2nd call (fps) have been decreasing then this horse is in form and
is ready to win if it has not already done so.
Anything in-between is a judgement call but at least these numbers give
me some clue as to the horse's form cycle.

For horses that are entered after a layoff I like to see if the horse worked
out at least 5 furlongs within the past 2 weeks. I use 5F from a book
written by William Scott, "How Will Your Horse Run Today". The book
is out of print and I misplaced my copy but the author cited studies
made (back in the 80's) regarding the high percentage of layoff horse's
winning or running in the money with 5F workouts.
I also read, "Commonsense Handicapping" by Dick Mitchell and he
mentioned that it was the frequency of workouts that mattered most, not
the distance. So it always comes down to, whatever works for you.

Ernie

This one
 

Thanks Ernie

This horse # 8 WO race 12 12/6/09 won and Paid $20.00 plus.
Both TE and 2nd call are going up. Is this a good thing normally?

Bill

PS
"How will your horse run today" is one of my all time favorites

LOL Bill...we are on the same horse...2 minds alike..scary :eek:

I played this horse yesterday. She made a HUGE RUN (in relation to what was happening in the race; note the difference between her run and that of #6, Graeme Wafer) from 4F to 6F; then fizzled out late, understandably. Yesterday, she was cutting back 1/16, and a similar run would've put her right there.

If only someone had a program that picks out horses like this: those making DISTINCTIVE runs within the context of the RACE (shape).

In the meantime, we have to do it manually.

If the TE increases over, say, the past 3 races that is positive, the horse is
competing at a higher energy level. If the time it takes the horse to make it
to the 2nd call is increasing that is negative. The 2nd call is considered
the pivotal point of the race by the majority of the authors that I read.
It simply means that the horse is taking longer to reach the critical point
of competitiveness in the race. So both the TE and 2nd call time rising is
contradictory. This didn't stop the animal from winning, and at a high mutual
at that. The horse can and does win if the reverse were true, i.e.
The TE is going down(negative) and the 2nd call time is going down (positive).

So these are the gray areas and you certainly can't eliminate a contender
if these contradictory conditions occur. It is more predictive if both of these
conditions are in synch. I would weigh TE higher but without stats it is
only my feeling.

Oh yeah, "How will your horse run today" is a good one. I also use
the last race" up close" concept and it is strictly from memory.
I would love to have that book back. I am going to try
Amazon.com or the Gamblers Book Club and see if I can get a copy.

Ernie

mitchell(on the dvd's) explains how to 'cap horses off for a while(more then 60days and longer) by looking at there first time start. what the horse did first out.

Thanks for that. I also forgot to mention that if the pp's show that the
horse previously won after a long layoff (not counting first time start) then
you have a contender.

Ernie

Would such a program scan a current race's PPs for moves of a certain (recent) 'magnitude' (e.g. Southern Arch's gain of 5 positions through the Stretch) then drill down into the Result Chart of that PP line to further analyse the (non-returning today) competition, positional and/or velocity, to further weight the impact of that position gain somehow? Would such analysis serve to augment such a recent past line, or add a markup of some kind to bring such a move (in context with what it faced in the matchup of that prior race) to your attention in today's race? There was a markup on that horse's last race highlighting the move to the Stretch call. Something more involved?

Ted

Ted

If could could give you a general algorithm for it, I'd have already written it. The problem is that, as best as I can determine, this is just too complex to code. There are just too many possibilities. As a first step, you'd need to define an angle. Of course, one of the problems is that not only are there many angles, there are many variations of each angle. Here are a couple of more charts from horses that had a similar angle to Southern Arch -- a sharp move, against the grain, and then a cutback. (There have been many others, these are the two that come to mind at the moment.)

Reel Tipsy ran next out at 5F and won paying ~ 20:1

Skewed won next out going 5F paying ~ 23:1

Can you code this?

The sharp move you cite and your race graphs reminds me of the old 'Pace Vector Graph' which plotted horses' velocity gains against the pace of race, though that graph showed lines selected from horses' various past races - and your graphs are much easier to see the moves within a single race.

With respect to only the 3 examples you posted here, how about this approach:

1. for a race today, scan horses' PPs for a position gain of a specified magnitude in their last (or 2nd back?) race - e.g. 5 positions from 4f->Str (Southern Arch), 4 positions in 1st Fr (Real Tipsy), 3 positions from 4f->Str (Skewed) - and perhaps where the gain occurred is important

2. when found, check the result chart for that prior race and calculate a 'vector graph' of gains against the POR (measured by velocity or time), looking to see if position gain also translates to 'standout' vector gain (by some definition), and measuring how forwardly placed the gain was (e.g. Southern Arch's was more significant than Miss Smoothness who was not in the hunt), and also perhaps under how much 'pressure' the gain occurred, e.g. by measuring how tightly clustered the beaten lengths were at the ending call point

3. if the horse in question then faded (due to the exertion of the gain, or the pressure during the gain) or did not fade (Skewed) and today is shorter

4. then you have a markup to identify such horse in its race today and observe more closely versus the rest.

To clarify, I would define a computed 'vector gain' as the positive difference between the velocity of a horse during a split and the velocity of the Pace of Race during the split (e.g. F2_POH - F2_POR) - then compared to the other horses vectors.


Can you tell me the next race, for each of Real Tipsy and Skewed?

Thanks,

Ted