Why NOT Maidens?

[Bill V.]

5 6 7









Here is the result chart
The 3 did get the lead but tired the 1A battled but in the end
the 5 wins

[polambi]

Hi Bill V,
Thanks for the teaching. I have one quick question : What is considered a + paceline or plus race? Thanks.
Paul

[Bill V.]

Originally Posted by polambi

Hi Bill V,
Thanks for the teaching. I have one quick question : What is considered a + paceline or plus race? Thanks.
Paul

Hi Paul



A plus + pace line is any line in which the horse finishes first second or third

[polambi]

Thanks Bill V.
I wasn't sure. Now I know exctly what it is. Believe it or not, I had been looking for an imaginary + sign in the pacelines

Thanks again.
Paul

[vderdak]

Aqueduct Race 10 Winner #7 Bwana Booyah pays $44.20 to win, I saw the race to late to get my bet down, locked out, but again early speed wins.

I did get my bet down at Delta Race 10 - #7 Mission to Collect who paid $47.40 to win, he had the best two early fractions coming from the Fair Grounds.

I'm not very good a showing charts like the others but I hope some of my fellow handicapers collected on these two as well.

[For The Lead]

Sorry you missed getting a bet down on this horse.
Since you are not familiar with putting screen shots in your posts, I thought I would put up mine. I don't know if these are the horses and lines you used, but, it's what I used. By the way, I was not watching AQU on Saturday, so I didn't have this winner either. It's a good example though.

[vderdak]

Thanks for showing, I did have similar contenders.

[Bill Lyster]

FTL:
Occasionally I find races like this, where one horse has run against a significantly faster set of internal fractions than the others, but who, does not qualify under your usual qualification standards.

This is not the only example that I could post like this, but I was wondering, if you consider a play like this, how much better do the first and 2nd fractions need to be in order to not exclude horses like the 12 which paid$14.80? The 13 placed BTW.

Thanks,

[For The Lead]

Originally Posted by Bill Lyster

FTL:
Occasionally I find races like this, where one horse has run against a significantly faster set of internal fractions than the others, but who, does not qualify under your usual qualification standards.

This is not the only example that I could post like this, but I was wondering, if you consider a play like this, how much better do the first and 2nd fractions need to be in order to not exclude horses like the 12 which paid$14.80? The 13 placed BTW.

Thanks,

Hi Bill,

If a horse does not qualify under my usual standards and it wins, I lose the race if in fact I bet the race.

I don't pick contenders or pace lines based on time.
I pick contenders based on performance and then evaluate times.

I picked a random race from this thread. Here is the "original" screen shot.


From this screen shot you can see how each of these contenders might be expected to run, giving you an idea of which horse may benefit most from the match up of the contenders before ever looking at times. Your program of choice will help you with separating these contenders based on time or pointing out the horse that will benefit most from the match up.



Now let's take a look at the race you posted.


With respect to the eventual winner, #12, what can you learn from this original screen? Will this horse run early? Will it press? Will it run late? There is no "style" associated with the chosen line, so it's almost impossible to tell. In a 6 horse field it ran 6th at the first call beaten 4.1 lengths, 6th at the second call beaten 7.1 lengths, 6th at the stretch call beaten 9.6 lengths and 4th at the finish beaten 12 lengths. So while trailing the field the entire race to the stretch call and losing lengths at every call, it finally had a couple of tiring horses back up into it to be 4th at the finish.
Now some people will say, "the program will show us how the horse will disburse its' energy thereby telling us how it will run." In response I say, "good luck with that."

In my life, I have seen more horses than I could possibly count, or even imagine, that were slow horses coming out of a fast race, only to run another dull race in much slower time.

As I have said before, nothing in horse racing is 100% be it of a positive nature or a negative nature. The best we can hope for is to be right often enough to make a profit. The best way to achieve a profit is to be consistent in your approach. When I was a young guy in this game, I read a book where the author suggested that the worst thing you can do is get "caught in the switches". To "zig" when you should have "zagged". It made a big impression on me and taught me to be consistent in my approach.

Now this #12 horse had only one race and there are SO-O-O-O many things that may have gone wrong in that race that it is impossible to know which thing it made have been or maybe it was just the need of a competitive race rather than just a workout. Were blinkers added or any number of other corrections from the first race made? Perhaps a 40% drop in class helped.

[Bill Lyster]

FTL as always thanks for the detailed explanation. In this example, at least when I handicapped it, I noted that the #12 ran against the fastest pace of last race and did my matchup on that basis, matching it against the #3.

I agree that running style is still a mystery at this stage of this horses career, but the fact that it lost ground against a 21.3-44.2 looked like an early horse in a fast race. Adjusting by 4 and then by 5 lengths or positions at the first and second calls vs #3 puts it close to that pace of race should it be run again. And then, the fact that the other two race against 46 paces which makes their late runs even harder to produce against a 45.3 2nd fraction made the #12 my second choice.

I don't always get matchup pictures as clear as this, but it did help in this instance. Perhaps I should have posted this followup in the Matchup section.

A couple of years back I did a maiden study that focused on early fractions as shown on the TPR screen. My choice parameters were top three early figures from the best early race instead of last race, so my selection process was not as focused as yours. What seemed to be a cutoff point for inclusion of the best early times was any TPR that was within 12 points of the best TPL, so if the best horse had a TPR of 180, the lowest ranked of the top three EP would only be included if it had a TPR of 168. That in itself suggests but does not define a maximum positive E/L for horses that show early speed in their last race. so this is just a long winded way to my question.

At some point do you consider an E/L to be too high relative to the field to include as a contender, assuming the horse has met your other choice guidelines?

Thanks again for all your patience.

Bill