Woodbine 05/31 races

[Bill Lyster]

A good card to practice on.


This was race 2; race one only had 4 runner.



For this exercise I will use best of last three races and explain if I did not do that. There are very few exceptions. Here is the winner. The card is relatively early in the Woodbine meet so many horses took the winter off, but best of last three works just fine.

Here are the horses before evaluations and demotions from the L/P screen:


Before I get too far into the race I make sure that the running style is correct. An early horse is any horse that has lost ground at all calls or has never passed another horse. Even the slightest gain of either should classify the horse as EP. I look at all the horses races to see if can press even a little or if the race pace makes it an E type.


Many times, but not always, you can eliminate a horse that gets no Rx3 points. You can always do it from the Segments screen as well. For my handicapping I eliminate down to 5 horses so in this race I need to demote two horses.

The 5 is the first to go. then I go to Segments and sort in the RS column from early to late for a first look.



Each RS will be sorted by highest speed bias points. the higher the point total the closer the horse could/should run to the pace of race.

Ideally, you want to see the contenders as the best horses who either lead without much loss to the finish or who gain from 1F/SC/FIN.

The higher the number of speed points means that the horse should be closer to the lead than a horse with fewer points. So for this reason only slight losses of ground should be allowed. As the number of points in each RS classification decreases you want to see a greater number of lengths gained or lesser number of lengths lost.

Sustained horses NEED to, at best, maintain position to SC and then MUST gain to the finish and then not have the worst FIN values as shown on the segments chart (left side of screen)


So the 2 and the 7 are candidates to demote. The 2 gains to SC, but loses ground to the finish; the 7 had the most speed points, lost ground to SC and does not do enough to the finish.

The Sustained horse gains in both calls and could be a place or show horse no matter what the pace, especially if the early horses get in a dual. I kept the 2 because it had both PL and BPP top five ranks.

The L/P screen shows the winner top 2 Rx3 and the place horse as the best rx3.



Sometimes in the decision making process it helps to sort the Segments screen by either the 1F info or the SC info (whoever has the SC 0/0 value. With this info in mind you can look at the velocity screen and see 3F values to help decide whether to keep or demote a horse.

Not a big winner, but a winner.

[stormbringer]

Thank you Bill for this example race.

[kahunab]

Thanks Bill! Good insights!

[Lt1]

Hey Bill what about an early that goes WTW or is less then a length off the lead at the 1st call and wins is it not an early horse?
Tim

[Bill Lyster]

Originally Posted by Lt1

Hey Bill what about an early that goes WTW or is less then a length off the lead at the 1st call and wins is it not an early horse?
Tim

Sure Tim, when I wrote that it was from my discussions with FTL and his point was that any horse who PPs showed it never gained or passed another horse was some kind of early. So it could be an F, an E a E/p or even a P as far as ESP goes, but we should expect it not to keep up with the pace of race if it was faster than what you predicted in todays race.

[Bill Lyster]

Race 3 a six horse field

Notice that all the horses came from much shorter distances than the 4 and that the pace of race was much slower which is almost always the case with marathons vs mid distance routes.


When in form or when its competitive the horse will run speed ratings somewhere in the mid to high 70s. Its had one other long layoff so if you thought it would repeat that you could use line 8. I used line 2 and if the horse is good enough it will be in the mix.

When I leave the 12 f line in you can see how far back the horse is and even as a presser it loses ground from SC to FIN.






But I want to see how it would perform at a distance closer to today.


My goal is to get down to 5 horses so we look at who fades the most. The 3 could wire the field, the 6 gained to SC and lost a little to finish; our 4 now gains to SC and loses a little to FIN; the 5 gains to SC and loses the most to FIN and the 1 a S horse gains consistently but probably not enough to win, but is only one of two horses that gains throughout the race.

None of the horses %med is out of whack. Most turf routes are won with a %Med in the very low 67 usually 66 or even a little less.



Guess what the two who gained throughout the race came 1st and 3rd, the old split-zacta. The winner was 3rd Rx3 and one of the new pace horses.

If you look at the POR section of the P/L screen you see that even though the speed rating was one of the higher ones for this horse its pace of race in most categories was a 5.

[Lt1]

Thanks for the response that explains it.
Tim

[Bill Lyster]

First Look at the LP screen, notice the 3 and 6 have no Rx3 points and the two FTS horses have no PL rank - all good.



Look at Segments sorted by running style. Of the 4 pressers the 6 cannot compete early losing 4 lengths and it has the highest FIN and VDC% so demote it.

Looking at the S horses the 3 closes the worst and also has the worst FIN and VDC % of that group. Demote it.



Verifying the low ranking of the 3 and 6, see the only poly race for the 6 is not near the rest of the group whose SRs are mid 70s. The best the 3 can show is low 70s.



Of the final five the 11 shows signs of weakening between F1 and SC and the three who do not finish 1-2-3




The winner and place horse are Rx3 1 and 2, both are NP horses.


The winner had the largest NP graph with a 5 pt advantage over the nearest horse. In races 2-3-4 so far the horse with the largest graph number has finished on the board. Thanks to Dick Werpy for that info. On this card with the exception of race 1 which I passed because of 4 horses and race 11, in 9 out of the ten races the horse with the largest graph value was on the board. In my limited research as urged by Dick, this single factor points to a horse that could be wheeled for trifectas somewhere between 60 and 70 % of the time.

[Bill Lyster]

Again we start with two horses with no Rx3 pts, the 4 and 9. We can also note that the first three finishers came from horses with the 3 highest speed ratings, that all three top finishers were top 4 Rx3 and the win and show horses were NP horses.



Segments sorted by running style: The 5 is the only early horse but cannot lead because the 8 is 0-0-0 and is a presser, which means it does NOT have to lead but will cause pace pressure. Demote the 5. The 5 also loses ground to the finish is tied as the worst value in FIN and is the 2nd worst VDC%.




The 8 horse, an early presser or presser. Got to keep because it can lead all the way, maybe. Also it had the highest graph number at 91. He is probably not a win contender, because of no info in the arrow section and very little to recommend it in the Supplement and POR sections, but that does not mean it cannot hit the board, which it did.



So now we have eliminated the 4-5-9 and our group looks like this:



Nice 1$ exacta and reasonable trifecta for $1 at almost $96.

In case you are wondering, I self taught myself how to do this by looking at races with the results and began to spot information that repeatedly came up. Hundreds and hundreds of races over the last year while working with Ted and Dick

[Bill Lyster]

The 8 was a long sprinter going in a route. I have noticed that the most likely sprinters to do well in routes have good PL and BPP numbers as shown here.

If look at the %med for the 8 it is 69.4 whereas the other horses are mid to high 67s. While that is not an automatic toss out, it really depends on the relationship between this horse and the others in the race. You can learn this by observation or keeping track profiles like LT1 (Tim)