Thread: Tpr
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Old 07-17-2016, 02:35 PM   #5
Mark
Grade 1
 
Join Date: Jan 2013
Posts: 318
TPR and the Match Up

The vulnerability in literal interpretation of EPR-LPR and TPR is the assumption that should your selected horse run his EPR, that he will run his LPR as suggested by the selected paceline.
Early horses can run much better LPRs and subsequent TPRs if they are on an uncontested lead. So part of your evaluation is determining whether your best EPR horse got to that point slugging it out with other contenders or waltzed to it, reserving considerable energy for the stretch run. As Bill noted, you have to understand the concept of Running Styles. And Running styles are different than ESP. The former is based on visual evidence of a horse's preferred positon at the 1st Call when they run their top efforts, wins or very close finishes. ESP is a ratio of 2nd Call velocity divided by final fraction, IN THE PACELINE RACE YOU HAVE SELECTED. If you look at the Velocity -POH screen it will show you the ESP for each paceline. This tells you how the horse reacted to the POR of that paceline. An E means he was basically all done by the 2nd Call. And each additional designation, EP, P, SP, S and L have greater final fraction components often at the expense of 2nd call velocity.
So if you use the best of the last 3 comparable pacelines automatic paceline selection routines and the horses in question have had recent layoffs or have been running at higher classes and finishing poorly, in most cases your EPR best horses will have very poor LPRs and resulting TPRs. Or a S horse that closes into a slow final fraction will have a high LPR and better than normal
TPR.
This means two things:1) When you identify a horse's Running Style which you do without reference to pace or paceline, then to evaluate his potential you have to find a paceline where he ran well with a win or good finish. That may be his 8th line down or some such thing. You can always throw the horse out later because you feel his form is lousy and there is no way he will run back to that. 2). Also as Bill mentions, you have to know who will likely take the lead and what kind of early contention there will be. Generally, if there are 3 or more Es or EPs in a race, they will beat each other up and maybe one will hang on for 3rd. So you can not rely on the TPR method exclusively, you have to evaluate the 1st fraction and determine what kind of early pace will result. To me this has always been the problem with using TPR as a standalone handicapping method. Once you evaluate the runners, assign Running styles and select pacelines that show how the horses ran against that early pace, then you can throw them into TPR and have something meaningful.
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