[Ted Craven]

Gary,

Good to see you digging into the models. I agree that there can be a slight difference in rank order between BL/BL and SPN, but never by more than 1 rank. In fact, SPN is a ranking of an intermediate state of BLBL before BLBL is adjusted in some cases to make adjacent values equal depending on the corresponding Primary Line Score value (and that is probably both too much, and unnecessary information). I believe that is precisely what Bill's short chart above is showing.

That said, I would be curious to see, from a model listing of your races so far, whether you have found a more significant difference than Bill in impact of the ranks of winners in your model, comparing BLBL rank to SPN rank. If you feel like either posting a spreadsheet here, or sending it privately to me, I would love to see it before blithely dismissing SPN further as irrelevant (though I indeed think it is).

The reason it appears in the model export is an oversight on my part - it should be removed so as to not cause this very confusion you are reporting. Internally in RDSS, there are numerous linked data structures for each race and horse, and values from these data structures are displayed in multiple places (i.e. on different screens), or on no screens at all in the case of obsolete factors or purely internal calculations. SPN is in the former category.

None the less, please let us know if you believe you have a case for the preservation of SPN ('Sartin Pace Number') and I will definitely give it respectful attention.

Welcome to the neighbourhood, and best wishes!

Ted