Quote:
Originally Posted by Ted Craven
I take a different view. Times do change, sometimes. How do you analyse horses differently from the mainstream? The horse who wins is the horse who sets or best overcomes the fastest pace of race. Different horses in today's race set or overcome (or don't) different paces of race, at different distances, on different surfaces. They are held at less odds than they should, or more than they should.
One way of determining contenders is to look at their raw running lines - just like thousands of your competitors, then make a judgement as to whether they are worthy of a deeper look, of selecting a line for them.
Here are some winners from yesterday at Gulfstream. Looking only at their raw info, do you have the skill (or even the necessary info) to know whether the horse is worthy of 'putting in the computer', of taking a deeper look? I sure don't.
Attachment 25750
Attachment 25751
Attachment 25752
Attachment 25753
If your 'racing form' came with a little tick mark suggesting a line to look at to possibly represent the horse, and a summary at the bottom - a 'consensus' pick if you will - all automated - of promising horses based on those little tick marks, and you kept a record of the profitability of such information - why would you not use it? The old racing form (and perhaps even the current one - I haven't seen one recently) didn't provide this information, so you had to work it out yourself, rather laboriously.
Modern tools provide ... modern tools. I would always counsel using your brain, but if you have a tool you can trust (according to your records), then consider using the tool, and trusting it. If you have a tool that enables it, I suggest there is no downside in putting in a line for every horse (or letting the computer do it for starters, for you to investigate further). Sure, some horses in a grey zone (such as some of the above winners, and some losers not shown) will fool you and not perform even if they have have shiny numbers, and you will lose the race. But winning at racing involves anteing up to games where there is a chance to win good money where the public often doesn't think there is, from whatever pool offers the opportunity. Participating in such games (such races) involves losing some of them, but even as in Doc's day, or 20 years ago, we must be prepared to dig deeper than the public digs.
I don't doubt than some among us have the skills to recognize some of the above horses as true contenders without velocity or energy figures. But I don't.
BTW, all the above winners ranked well enough to be bet (at the odds offered) based on automated line selection (or even manual line selection).
Ted |
It should go without saying, but I will re-state what I have said many times before, you do an excellent job with your RDSS software.
In my post here, at no time did I make an attempt to compare the information within the Daily Racing Form publication to the information contained in your RDSS software.
My example comparison was that downloading a Trackmaster race file was like buying a racing form.
That the act of opening a Trackmaster race file was like opening a racing form to the track you want to play.
That opening a Trackmaster race file was like turning to the page in the racing form where the race you wanted to play was located.
The original poster simply stated that he had been listening to the old tapes and asked the question, “has downloading changed that?” And the simple answer is “NO”!
Anyone reading between the lines in my post can see that RDSS has the flexibility of being used with the original methodology guidelines, the modern guidelines and everything in between.
I will stand by what I did say in my post. Downloading files and working races with a computer verses working races with a racing form has not changed anything. You can do the same thing with downloaded files, today, as you did with a racing form, yesterday.
Nowhere in my post did I attempt to draw a comparison between the “use” of the old and the “use” of the new. Having been a handicapper for more than 45 years and also having developed my own software, I’m quite aware of the differences in that regard.
Not being an RDSS user, I am not aware of the little “bells and whistles” contained in your software, so there is no way I can address those issues, therefore I did not attempt to. However, as I stated, the biggest difference I see between the “old way” and the “new”, is the approach. That means handicapping the race, picking contenders, picking the lines for the contenders and then entering those horses and lines in the software, as compared to picking a line for every horse in the race on the basis of “best of last three distance surface”.
The most successful people using the “old way” would be those who have the best understanding of horse racing and handicapping, as my screen shot indicates. This was said about Tom Brohamer in a comparison to the other charter P.I.R.C.O. members. Naturally, the “old way” doesn’t have “mass” appeal. The new way requires no knowledge of anything, so it does have “mass” appeal. Which is more successful? I guess that is up to the user…in either case.
The bottom line here is, it seems you read more into what I said in my post than what was intended. If that is the case, I apologize for my less than clear presentation.