Sartin

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From a Google search

The greatest strength of the Sartin Methodology (an extremely popular and profitable race analysis approach from the 1980s) was the requirement that users study the race results in conjunction with the ratings generated by the various software applications. Sartin realized, as a psychologist, that the act of "searching for patterns and answers" was a great training method to develop decision making skills.

What the most sophisticated Sartin users quickly discovered was that the software was almost irrelevant; there was no "killer app" that would mechanically select enough winners, consistently enough, to be profitable over time. However, the more those users struggled in the assigned tasks of "isolating the true contenders in the race" and "finding the most predictive pace line" for each of those contenders, the better race analysts they became.

The more intelligent of the Sartin advocates caught on early; they realized that selecting the "proper pace lines" and "true contenders" essentially forced them to analyze the past performances in a completely new way. The most difficult part of the process for many "experienced handicappers" was the implication that in most cases, the winner was uncovered before the first pace line was entered into the computer. Specifically, the training process developed the skill of pre-race analysis to a sufficient degree that the "computer readouts" became almost irrelevant.

Because Sartin's income was derived from the sale of the steady stream of the "latest, greatest" software to "analyze races," the notion that those software applications were training devices, rather than "real" analysis aids was kept under wraps. Unfortunately, the fall from grace of the Sartin Methodology was based on all the wrong reasons; later users argued that the "software didn't really do anything" beyond generating simplistic pace ratings. That was true, as far as it went, but failed completely to explain how Sartin managed to train an entire generation of race analysts, a number of whom have been wagering successfully since the 1980s.