A great big THANK YOU
I would suggest to Tom to build his record keeping SLOWLY
Try not to track too many factors at first but
Slowly add additional factors, only after you are confident in what is happing with your beginning factors.
For me I only keep records for either Del Mar or Santa Anita*
I make my serious money betting into group tickets with sharp partners. at Socal .
When I got into making bets with big timers I realized I better know what I was bringing to the table, saying I like a horse because its tier 3 on blbl ...well
, I would just get blank stares, I also notice the winners I was with all kept RECORDS
Now Ray and Mitch you are so right. I track many things now but I constantly try to hone down my database into smaller bits.
Mitch I agree about the most recent 20 races being what Doc recommends.
I save everything so my model and profile always includes the date race
and race number as well as the winner, what it paid and any scratches
This way I can go back and start to add more factors to races in my database
by going back into the race , Lets say I want to add a factor like trainers who
win off long layoffs, since my model shows me the race info I just reopen RDSS and grab the trainers info , Since I already have the DSLR infor factor
Its a snap to add the trainer name ,
I record every race each day onto the main worksheet I then copy and paste
races onto other work sheets for example
My main Del Mar work sheet has 412 races
but after each race I copy the race and paste it to a specific type worksheet,
For Del Mar Turf races I have 4 separate worksheets
Turf Sprints, Turf 1 Mile, Turf Long ( 8.5 or longer ) and Maiden Turf
After awhile, I will break these specialized work sheets down again into
male of female, then by age maybe someday into purse value or claiming , non claiming ect.
This system helps me keep my sample sizes not to over whelming
I can also feel confident to single horses In Tims example above he mentioned a 45% trainer with 3 year old fillies,
I have this type info and if I can spot this pattern in a race were yes the 45 percent guy is sharp but I also can see what the other trainers in the race are capable of doing with 3 year old fillies Trainer info is a tool but any database is only as good as the quality of the paceline selection method
used to generate the numbers.
In summary.
Keep records but focus on pacelines and contenders and build your work slowly,
Good Sill
Bill
ps
*I have year's worth of Parx but being mostly on the west cost I am now spoiled. Now I love fast tracks with little DTV crap so I only "play" Parx and Monmouth and NYRA for entertainment and to help my dad