After watching a particularly good and profitable ride that allowed me to cash a longshot that actually won even though it did not earn the best figure in the race, I had an idea for some fig-based jockey stats that I think would be novel and useful.
The first is a stat that provides an \"objective\" way to identify a \"good\" ride – in this case, I will define \"good\" as winning a race in which the rider\'s horse did not earn the best figure in the race. The stat would be:
% of time that a jockey wins a race when his/her horse ran a figure that was not the best figure in the race (i.e., % of time that they \"out ride\" someone on a faster horse to win a race)
The second is a stat that provides an \"objective\" way to identify a \"bad\" ride – in this case, I will define \"bad\" as losing a race in which the rider\'s horse actually earned the best figure in the race. The stat would be:
% of time that a jockey wins a race when his/her horse ran the best figure
in the race (i.e., % of time that they \"cash in\" and win when they are on the fastest horse)
Ideally, you would break it out by turf/dirt and sprint/route and you would have information unavailable anywhere else that could point out some underrated and overrated riders and thus help uncover additional value. I think this would be more useful than the current path info.
Just an idea that might be worth kicking around since I think TG already tracks all the information that would be needed to produce it.
Chris
Chris, if I put George on this in the near future a friend of yours will be very upset, and my guess is that he is a lot bigger than you are, so I\'m more worried about him. Interesting line of thought, though. In a few months we can take a look at it, and there may be ways of developing it even further. The only use of the current stats that I really see now is if you are playing a circuit foreign to you, and you want to get a general idea of whether the jock can ride-- if we hadn\'t been able to squeeze the pattern stats in (turns out we can with no problem) they were getting thrown overboard. I would like to hear from anyone who is using them, and I\'m definitely open to ways to make useful jockey stats. But you gotta wait a while.