New Pace

[Ted Craven]

Originally Posted by RonP

Guys I am very new to RDSS. When you get into not only races but race cards with horses with so many bad running lines do you break any of the beaten lengths rules for letting a horse in? Do you pass it? Becasue the runners with decent running lines are going to be bet down but I am sure this race(s) will be chaos and prices will reflect that and I really don't want to miss some of the high payouts. In fact this is one of the reasons I have looked for and am using RDSS to help me here.

Hi Ron,

Welcome to PaceandCap! Not sure if your question relates specifically to this NewPace thread (as NewPace does not rely on beaten lengths or good or bad performance for its primary readout). But perhaps more to the type of murky race rmath is speaking about.

You will certainly get better prices for poorer apparent recent performance. If everyone looks bad, everyone is on equal footing: go ahead and look for any signs of current form (broke sharply, ran close to leader up to 1st or 2nd call, made a gaining positional or beaten length move during a call, ran evenly, gained on leader 3+ wide around the turn even if faded in stretch, especially if ran evenly against a fast Pace of Pace).

All of the foregoing scenarios may result in the horse fading out of the money, beaten by possibly many beaten lengths. Or, they may have run on a different surface to today, or a poly surface at a different track to today's poly surface, etc. You mission is to decide if you want to be in such races, to subject yourself to the chaos, or if you should pass and look for races with more 'knowns' (and more predictable prices, and no shame in that).

That decision is partly psychological on your part. Can you abide losing 6 or 7 out of 10 of these races, and make money from 3 long-shots? Can you develop a consistent paceline selection strategy even from hodge-podge races? For the track you are working, determine if you will accept Turf lines interchangeably with Poly lines (e.g. for poly tracks like WO, TP, AP, KEE). Select a line (or lines) for every horse from within the past 3 or so (say, within 90 days of today). Use Total Energy or Perceptor Total to rate pacelines, but seek at least some sign of life in the one you pick, as above. Permit RDSS to equalize different distances and surfaces for you with its DTV and ITV adjustments (though beware of mixing sprint lines in routes races and vice versa - do it if you have no choice but be wary of magical expectations, or demand price).

Then analyse the collection of horses and their representations from your chosen lines. If you use NewPace, see if any contenders fall outside your top 4 BL/BL contenders and examine those again for WHY they do and WHETHER you could re-rate those horses in any legitimate fashion from older pacelines (and not only for the Win pool, but for Place or vertical exotics).

Look at the early pace scenario, to the 1st call AND the 2nd call. Use the Projected Pace tool to see if any Early horse dominates the other Earlies, and by how much. Look at the Segments screen to see if any horse owns (or nearly does) BOTH the 1st 2 calls of Computed Beaten Lengths section. Examine the most Early E/L Difference paceline (TPR+E/L Diff screen) and the most Late of these. If the line chosen for the horse shows consistently such E/L differential sticks (i.e. your line is not the ONLY line which is Early, when all other pacelines for the horse are very late) - this horse may dominate Early or be there at the top of the stretch - AND, this energy-based ability may NOT be evident from raw running lines only (that's why we have all the compounded velocity and energy readouts).

People who focus on these kinds of mystery races do turn up some humdingers, and may also lose more than I myself sometimes feel comfortable doing. In the end, you should be able to write out a set of rules for yourself that you would apply over and over in a perfect world where there is infinite time and you don't get bored (that's what computer programs are for ...) - then apply them as best you can until you either have a good enough feeling about your top 3 contenders and are getting a decent price - OR, you just never get that good feeling and judge instead that the race is a PASS.

Actually, concrete examples are better than any amount of theoreticals like all the words above. Why not start another Topic and mention a few of the murky races you are considering. If you are downloading and analysing those races with RDSS, give a go at choosing some lines and pose your specific questions (screen shots help the discussion). We'll try to chime in lie many have done in other recent threads, debating paceline selection approaches and contender qualifications. Even though there may be divergences of opinions (a good thing, since such differences of opinion are what makes a horse-race) you may get specific nuggets you can experiment with personally along the way to developing your own version of this Methodology.

Good luck!

Ted