Recency Guidelines

[socantra]

There's a post on here where someone questions Binder's use of a line from a horse off for over nine months. Binder won that one.......... He'd lose it quite often.

I think everyone has some trouble with recency and how to handle long layoffs. If you read old handicapping books, you'll run into guidelines about not playing any horse who hasn't raced in the last 28 days, some even as restrictive as 14 days.

Obviously, the game has changed a lot since those books and methods were written, so how do you handle recency?

Quirin's work in "Winning at the Races" shows horses off more than 30 days at a significant disadvantage. That is simply not the case any longer

Recent queries of comprehensive data samples from the early years of this century show virtually no disadvantage at all until you hit a layoff point of 60 days. Then the win % drops off about 10%. At 120 days it drops off another !0%, then drops off very gradually, until at a full year layoff, a horse's chanches of winning are about half of what they were in the first 60 days.

Lately, I've been playing with the idea of avoiding any sort of cutoff date (short of a year) and considering the idea of simply downgrading a long layoff horse for the amount of time it has been away. It seems to hold some promise, but I'm still working on how much to downgrade. Obviously, the 10% figure is to extreme an adjustment as it would pull most horses away for more than 60 days completely out of contention, and that is certainly not the case.

Any thoughts?
dick...

[Fast4522]

Interesting observations with the fact you quantify by percent. The only thing I could add is that it does not hold up everywhere. What I mean is if you play cheep racing thats one thing, with the other being more like So. Ca. racing. An example would be Sundays Santa Anita Card, race 1 (Turf) 245 DSLR with a $8 winner and race 7 (Turf) 148 DSLR $6 winner, on the weed these runners hold up running from the barn. Make no mistake what you can do in one circuit does not apply in a much different circuit. I do like your perspective with what must have been from a large sample of races to draw your numbers from. Excelent thread with numbers to back it up.

[socantra]

The data is essentially a digest of several different threads on PA over the last few years, tapping the skills of some of the database guys. The queries turned up pretty similar results. Its applicable to U.S. racing in general. One of the databases included every race run in the country for the last few years, or a little over 370,000 entries.

One delightful statistic that emerged. If you are just out for a good time, want a winner in every race and don't mind dropping 23% of your money, you could bet every horse in every race. I guess you'd also have to pray that you were there when some of the longshots came in. It could get painful on the chalky days.

dick...

[Binder]

Originally Posted by socantra

There's a post on here where someone questions Binder's use of a line from a horse off for over nine months. Binder won that one.......... He'd lose it quite often.

.

Hi Dick I understand
However If we bet one horse to win your figures are stronger But My other win bet was the 4
who ran up the track . I really am just a Doc moonie and two two horse to win
part of the methododlogy has always been a saver for me
you can bet the iffy types The 2 was too good to miss

[socantra]

Don't misunderstand me, Binder. I'm not criticising your decision at all. I'm just looking for a new way to approach recency. I tend to bounce back and forth, though most of the time I have no recency requirement. From time to time, I start thinking I'm throwing away a lot of bets on horses coming from long layoffs that don't perform a lick. Then, one will come in at good odds and I'm back to accepting those nine month layoffs.

I also agree with taking an occasional flyer on your second bet. Someone in another thread mentioned a 120 day cutoff. In today's racing, such a line will put you out of the picture for many lucrative payoffs. I'm just considering the possibility that awarding a mental penalty for longer layoffs rather than even attempting to draw a line might be a more fruitful avenue, and wondering how much such a penalty might be.


dick...

[shoeless]

Dick,There were 2 horses I hit at Tampa on Sat one at 11-1 the other at 5-1.I usually wont do this but I put in pacelines from about a year ago that they had at Tampa.The only reason I did this was because of their fondness for the Tampa oval.There were more recent races but I knew from their trainers stats over the years these two usually have their runners geared for here.Have you done this in the past?Just not to hold any info back for anyone that plays here the 2 trainers Im referring to are Ronald Allen and Don Rice.Jeff

[RichieP]

Here are the pacelines from a horse last night that just missed at the wire.

For myself I have abandoned ALL rules as far as anything regarding racing. I wrote about a year ago that I had set 545 days as my limit to grab a line. That's gone too!

I think maybe a key to helping us is take each horse and treat it's pp's as a totally unique set of data unto itself.

Look at the pp's starting from the BOTTOM and work your way up. What are we seeing? layoffs? Patterns? Maybe a key such as "betting patterns or tote action" shows itself on layoff races. Maybe not.

What if the horse shows no layoffs? Maybe taking some TIME and looking at the conditions of today's race and what the horse has been running in could show us something. how is it spotted today? I believe Binder mentioned some thing about that "Novatuno" horse being apparently spotted kind of nice. That's how I interpreted it anyway. He took a bit of TIME and looked around a bit.Is it entered way over it's head? or is it dropping thru the roof? Either one of these 2 scenarios are most often not too good. Too me the first shows today as an exercise race and the latter is just a total toss for ME.

Removing horses with the above 2 extreme class scenarios now puts us in that "grey area". You know the HARD PART.

Couple of other factors to consider now:
ODDS - what are the odds on this horse today? IF u are considering a wager on him are u getting what u feel to be reasonable odds on him for the GUESS you are making on his readiness to run a good race? If u feel u are not hide him or remove him as a contender ( at least for the win, might want to keep him in if considering exactas).

Strenght of other cotenders OR your analysis - Assume this guy is NOT in the race for a minute. HONESTLY do you feel stongly about a wager in this race? I mean is something triggering you to fire here without question? IF the answer is NO a PASS on the race is probably something you would want to consider strongly at this stage.

However if the answer is YES and it is not the layoff question horse(s) maybe consider going ahead and fire your bullets on your strong plays. Now you can consider 2 options for the layoff guy:
a- SCREW HIM altogether. If he beats you he beats you.
b- LOOK at the exacta pools with him over the horse(s) you consider your strong plays. Shoot they might be flashing big enough that a "cover bet" is an easy option to consider. maybe even a box could work nicely.

2 final thoughts please:

1- When there remains doubt of any kind consider strongly PASSING. A confused mind never wins over a protracted series of events. NEVER.

2- keep your mind open and receptive to those little "clues" that come to us via that "little voice inside".

Richie

[tompkins]

with so many training facilities and swimming pools, layoffs aren't what they once were. Dr. Quirin found that one had to be very wary of layoffs with claimers on the dirt. Classier horse's and turfers don't seem to need that long foundation to come back to do well.

[alydar_ David]

When Dr. Quirin did his research tracks didn't run all year long.

If you owned a cheap claimer and only had X amount of time to run him, there'd usually be cause for concern paying for his stall, food, vet, etc. and not bringing in a check.

o/~ The times they are a changin'

It's helpful to keep those research findings in perspective.

Additionally, there are numerous places to work out privately, and even race without any mention of the fact in the DRF or other publications.

So, what's the answer?

I don't know.

However, one thing I'm sure of -- if I'm going to bet a horse like the one I mentioned it the selections section (coming back after 311 days) -- the statistics better show that the trainer is not hopeless in that kind of situation. Otherwise I'll tread lightly or not at all.

[shoeless]

David,Nice to see your posts once again and in my opinion right on the money as usual.Jeff