Pace lines

[Bill V.]

A Key factor

[For The Lead]

Bill,
Thanks for starting the thread on the captioned. As you stated, pace line selection IS "the heart and soul" of the methodology, however, in my opinion, the MOST ABUSED. As you can see, there have been no responses to this post and I wonder "why" since having read many of the posts on this site regarding line selection, people are all over the place. Quite naturally, you and Ted present the most logical approach. Now Richie, I want to tell you something. You have put up some posts that I think are just outstanding and I mean that sincerely, but in this case I'd like to speak directly to Bill and Ted.
You set forth the "guidelines" for pace line selection, but I think there is more to it than those guidelines and I don't think the topic gets its' just attention.
It is my intention to start an ongoing dialogue with you covering one point at a time, rather than bombard you with many scenarios all at once.

My first point has to do with “old” lines. These old lines do not necessarily mean they are at the bottom of the horses PP’s. Before I go any further, for many years I have been downloading every track, every day from the same service you use for RDSS. The exceptions would be tracks like, Prescott Downs, Blue Bonnet, Will Rodgers and others such as those. I keep all of that information, plus the information I create from that downloaded information in data base files. What I can tell you is this. I just decided to look at this past year.
Of all the horses whose last race was more than 90 days ago, only 4% won. Of all the horses whose last race was more than 60 days ago, only 8% won. (that includes the group previously mentioned)
Of all the horses whose last race was more than 45 days ago, only 13% won. (again, this includes the two groups previously mentioned)
So, if you are looking for horses to enter and the horse you are currently looking at doesn’t have a race in the past 45 days, is it wise to enter them off of any line, whether it is the last line, second line back or third line back, or even further back as I have seen in some cases?

[RichieP]

Originally Posted by For The Lead

Of all the horses whose last race was more than 45 days ago, only 13% won.

Morning "FTL"
Just a note that a friend who keeps copious records and database tells me the figure for horses winning off more than 45 days back is actually 18%. 45 days and sooner the number is 82%.

Class "A" and "B" tracks covered.

[Buzz]

Morning,

This is a subject that always interests me and I will glad to add my 2 cents to the discussion.

I am not sure what the focus and purpose of the thread is; however, I would like to suggest that you include price as a factor and break out wins by odds ranges as a criterion when appropriate.

If there is an agenda here please let me know so I don't contribute to thread drift.


Buzz

[For The Lead]

Originally Posted by Buzz

Morning,

This is a subject that always interests me and I will glad to add my 2 cents to the discussion.

I am not sure what the focus and purpose of the thread is; however, I would like to suggest that you include price as a factor and break out wins by odds ranges as a criterion when appropriate.

If there is an agenda here please let me know so I don't contribute to thread drift.


Buzz

Buzz,

The focus here is as indicated by Bill V., "Pace Line Selection". Bill set forth the methodology guidelines in this respect as "best of last three". I am just trying to stimulate a discusion on this topic, so anything you have to add is important to same.

[alydar_ David]

Originally Posted by For The Lead

Buzz,

The focus here is as indicated by Bill V., "Pace Line Selection". Bill set forth the methodology guidelines in this respect as "best of last three". I am just trying to stimulate a discusion on this topic, so anything you have to add is important to same.

For The Lead, thank you for sharing your database findings. They're quite interesting, to say the least.

Bill V., over the years I've saved posts on paceline selection that have been posted here and on other sites as well. I'm wondering how appropriate it would be to post some of them?

The pro would be showing different ways of selecting a paceline. The con would be confusing newcomers with arrows pointing in different directions.

I suppose I could post one a time and you could delete the ones you didn't think would be helpful. What do you think?

In the interim I'll post a quick one on recency.

[Bill Lyster]

Richie:

If you know or have access to the information, how many days do you have to account for from a last race in order to get 90% of all winners and 95% of all winners? Or put another way 90% of all winners have had a race within ___ days?; 95% of all winners have had a race within __ days?

Thanks,


Bill

[For The Lead]

Originally Posted by Bill Lyster

Richie:

If you know or have access to the information, how many days do you have to account for from a last race in order to get 90% of all winners and 95% of all winners? Or put another way 90% of all winners have had a race within ___ days?; 95% of all winners have had a race within __ days?

Thanks,


Bill

Bill,

If you don't mind an answer from me, in my first post to Bill V. in this thread, I mentioned that horses whose last race was more than 90 days ago won at a rate of 4%. Horses whose last race was more than 60 days ago won at a rate of 8%. Therefore the opposite of those numbers would be <61 days since last race=92% and <91 days since last race=96%.

[For The Lead]

Originally Posted by RichieP

Morning "FTL"
Just a note that a friend who keeps copious records and database tells me the figure for horses winning off more than 45 days back is actually 18%. 45 days and sooner the number is 82%.

Class "A" and "B" tracks covered.

Ritchie,

Thanks for that note. I’m quite sure that the information provided to you by your friend is accurate, in his data bases.
Let me take a minute to elaborate on my original post, since I thought providing the past years worth of statistics would be sufficient to make a point and evidently it was not. I am now in my 13th year of compiling data. You’ll recall that I download all the tracks I want, every day they run, 365 days a year. Although each year is not identical to any other year with regard to the number of races and horses in that year, each year does average approximately 350,000 horses. Doing the math you will see that I have well over 4,000,000 (four million) horses in my data bases. Now THAT is a copious amount of data! From these 4,000,000+ horses covering 12+ years, I can tell you with some degree of accuracy that the percentage of winners whose last race was more than 45 days ago falls between 12% and 13%.
With that much data, I’m just going to have to believe it.

[Charlie D]

The pace lines to select are those that best represent the horses ability against todays Projected Pace.

You can the narrow these down by distance, surface suitability, current form or whatever variable you think important

Match Up these horses so you are left with the:

Best Early
Best Sustained
Best Late

You then can either let the computer Match Up tell you who is ranked 1,2, 3 and make you betting decisions from these readouts or make a call on how you think the race may be won.

Using a creative approach or your intuition of what may be about to happen will probably help in finding those nicer priced horses.

I prefer Jim Bradshaw' s Match Up concepts