Against my better judgement (hope you enjoyed that one) I checked over here for the first time in eons out of surprise on the Elliot Walden thing just to get TG\'s side of it. (not that you believe me but who cares)
And I see my fans here are still ardent, and have posted some things that need clarification. This message is meant for the vast majority bb readers: reasonable TG users and interested others, not for the small but prolific attack pack -- I have no illusions about influencing their opinion, and have come not to place any value in their opinions.
Regardless of what JB says about Raggies, I would never say a bad word about the majority of TG users. As all but a few of you have the common sense to know, despite the way the feud is argued, the choice between TG & Rag is about a data product, not a lifestyle or moral code.
Anyway, here are my points. First, on Alydar: His quotes are correct. But an after-the-fact smile and \'thanks for defending us\' from someone in the Rag office is not at all the same as a before-the-fact encouragement. Especially when, as Alydar concedes, those words were followed one of the next times I went to the office to buy Sheets by Jake\'s wise counsel that responding to the attacks was futile and that I should stop wasting my time. (Call me a dummy all you want but don\'t lay that label on Jake.)
So Jake is absolutely correct in calling Alydar a baldfaced liar for saying the Rag office encouraged me. Aldyar tried to present the image that I am part of a Rag office-directed conspiracy to create conflict on this board. Bull. I didn\'t bother seconding Jake\'s post because there was nothing else to say without breaking a bargain I had made with Alydar.
When I made the mistake of exchanging a few e-mails with Alydar, I mistakenly thought a private context would produce a more interesting, less hostile exchange. I hoped to learn more about him and give him a less jaundiced view of me. To facilitate that, I asked and he agreed that the e-mail contents would remain between us. I guess he has conveniently forgotten about that little promise.
I have nothing to hide (which is why everybody, including the anonymous hit men here, know my name) and the e-mails would probably bore everyone to tears, but we did have a deal, and as far as I\'m concerned, still do. Never make a deal with someone who\'s wearing a mask.
As for HP, y\'all can decide whether I\'m totally off base, or whether he was guilty of sinking to Irwin\'s level by invoking the victims of 9/11 for no purpose other than to score points in the feud, and then sinking lower by words of violence.
I see HP was especially proud of having gotten away with a new secret identity from which to issue his on-line kicks to my teeth. Surely, he\'ll get a new bigger dagger badge at the next meeting of the attack pack. Alydar, with his demand for an apology from me, is clearly jealous. Congrats to HP. I stand exposed.
There you have it. Hope it wasn\'t too boring. I\'m sure a few of you will be glad at this opportunity to put more pins in my voodoo doll. But Before you nail me for posting on this board this once, consider the deal made by Alydar. Regardless, I\'m not going to bother reading or responding to the verbal lynching sure to follow, so enjoy the party without me. SP
Steve Plever wrote:
>
> Against my better judgement (hope you enjoyed that one) I
> checked over here for the first time in eons out of surprise
> on the Elliot Walden thing just to get TG\'s side of it. (not
> that you believe me but who cares)
>
> And I see my fans here are still ardent, and have posted some
> things that need clarification. This message is meant for
> the vast majority bb readers: reasonable TG users and
> interested others, not for the small but prolific attack pack
> -- I have no illusions about influencing their opinion, and
> have come not to place any value in their opinions.
>
> Regardless of what JB says about Raggies, I would never say a
> bad word about the majority of TG users. As all but a few of
> you have the common sense to know, despite the way the feud
> is argued, the choice between TG & Rag is about a data
> product, not a lifestyle or moral code.
>
> Anyway, here are my points. First, on Alydar: His quotes
> are correct. But an after-the-fact smile and \'thanks for
> defending us\' from someone in the Rag office is not at all
> the same as a before-the-fact encouragement. Especially
> when, as Alydar concedes, those words were followed one of
> the next times I went to the office to buy Sheets by Jake\'s
> wise counsel that responding to the attacks was futile and
> that I should stop wasting my time. (Call me a dummy all you
> want but don\'t lay that label on Jake.)
>
> So Jake is absolutely correct in calling Alydar a baldfaced
> liar for saying the Rag office encouraged me. Aldyar tried
> to present the image that I am part of a Rag office-directed
> conspiracy to create conflict on this board. Bull. I didn\'t
> bother seconding Jake\'s post because there was nothing else
> to say without breaking a bargain I had made with Alydar.
>
> When I made the mistake of exchanging a few e-mails with
> Alydar, I mistakenly thought a private context would produce
> a more interesting, less hostile exchange. I hoped to learn
> more about him and give him a less jaundiced view of me. To
> facilitate that, I asked and he agreed that the e-mail
> contents would remain between us. I guess he has
> conveniently forgotten about that little promise.
>
> I have nothing to hide (which is why everybody, including the
> anonymous hit men here, know my name) and the e-mails would
> probably bore everyone to tears, but we did have a deal, and
> as far as I\'m concerned, still do. Never make a deal with
> someone who\'s wearing a mask.
>
> As for HP, y\'all can decide whether I\'m totally off base, or
> whether he was guilty of sinking to Irwin\'s level by invoking
> the victims of 9/11 for no purpose other than to score points
> in the feud, and then sinking lower by words of violence.
>
> I see HP was especially proud of having gotten away with a
> new secret identity from which to issue his on-line kicks to
> my teeth. Surely, he\'ll get a new bigger dagger badge at the
> next meeting of the attack pack. Alydar, with his demand for
> an apology from me, is clearly jealous. Congrats to HP. I
> stand exposed.
>
> There you have it. Hope it wasn\'t too boring. I\'m sure a
> few of you will be glad at this opportunity to put more pins
> in my voodoo doll. But Before you nail me for posting on
> this board this once, consider the deal made by Alydar.
> Regardless, I\'m not going to bother reading or responding to
> the verbal lynching sure to follow, so enjoy the party
> without me. SP
Tg--I\'m not going to \"nail you for posting\", despite 5 or 6 things that I could call you on myself. I\'m going to let Alydar do it, if he doesn\'t have a stroke reading your post. You may also have provided a great public service--coaxing HP out of retirement.
Nice work with the reasonable-despite-injured tone. I particularly liked the passive-aggressive I won\'t read your response bit.
Steve Plever,
You are making two charges against me:
1: That I told Jake a bold-faced lie in an attempt to \"present the image\" that you are part of a Rags office-directed conspiracy to create conflict on this board.
This is what I wrote to Jake: \"This from a guy whose office was encouraging Plever to harass JB on the TG board.\"
The present-the-image-of-a-conspiracy part is patently, pathologically ludicrous. Jake had just blasted JB for not confining his posts to his own board, and I was pointing out that you were getting encouragement from Jake\'s office to post on JB\'s board.
Your point about the encouragement (thanks and chuckles) coming after the fact is demented logic. Encouragement after one fact sets up similar facts in the future. That is the whole point of encouragement. If I cheer Patrick Roy for making a great save, it\'s because I appreciate what he did and want him to do it again.
You harassed JB for several years. In April of last year, you wrote that you received \"thanks\" and \"chuckles,\" and that \"LATER\" (emphasis mine) they told you to stop because it was \"futile.\" Well, it obviously wasn\'t \"futile\" at the time they were giving you encouragement through thanks and chuckles, which means something happened in the interim: JB started kicking the hell out of you and your points. To imply otherwise is utterly insane. It is to say to Patrick Roy: \"Great save. Don\'t do it again. It\'s futile.\"
And now we get to your second charge:
2: I violated the sanctity of private email by posting your comments about the encouragement you received from Ragozin\'s office.
You\'ve got a bit of a problem here, Steve. I did NOTHING of the kind. I didn\'t get your comments from an email. Every single word came from your post of April 6th, 2001: titled: \"before it\'s deleted.\" It is in the archives.
And you\'ve got another problem, Steve. This is the second time that YOU have violated the sanctity of our private email. The first time was with your \"arms length\" comment on the other board. I am not going to retaliate by revealing anything that you wrote privately. I will be content to repeat what I wrote to you on the last day we exchanged emails: \"I keep my word. Your dishonest, inept display will remain private. And I honestly wish you and your family the best, but, AGAIN, I hate what you\'re doing here. You could be so much better than this.\"
I want to end by urging HP not to reply to you. He has no need to defend himself on this, and he has nothing to feel sorry about, though I suspect he has someone to feel sorry for. I know I do.
I have to say to all parties that it is REALLY bad business to air your personal grievances publicly. I\'m tired of having to sift through the rubble of this bitchy cat fight to find anything worth reading. Please STOP.
JR: This goes back a long way, and it\'s boring, but there was simply no way that I was going to allow a pathological dissembler and half-wit like Steve Plever to get away with making false and defamatory statements. That sort of reckless disregard for the truth needs to be opposed. If Plever stops making these types of statements, you will see no more posts of this sort from me. If he continues, be sure to skip my replies. Since I was the one who got JB to lift the Plever ban, I have a special obligation in this area.
JR wrote:
>
> I have to say to all parties that it is REALLY bad business
> to air your personal grievances publicly. I\'m tired of having
> to sift through the rubble of this bitchy cat fight to find
> anything worth reading. Please STOP.
>
>
Tg--I\'m not arguing with you--but what should I do when guys like Jim and Plever post?
Ignore them. You will be the better person for it.
President Dukakis certainly is.
Another matter I find much more interesting is the read on War Emblem\'s 3yo line. What do you make of it? 8, 10, 1, 1 and a neg? Have you ever seen a 3yo line like this?
I haven\'t, but he reminds me of Balto Star a bit. Balto, also a frontrunner, made a 7.5 point jump to a 3, followed that with another huge race when everyone except Nunzio thought he would bounce, and then came undone when the pace went against him, if I\'m not mistaken.
I\'m pretty sure he was a 4yr old & I don\'t remember the exact nos., but my vague recollection is that Tiznow\'s line looked a little like WE\'s after he won the Super Derby & his 1st Classic. The earlier dialogue reminds me of one of H. Pack\'s(himself involved in one or more of the feuds described on the Bd) favorite sayings, namely that if you live long enough you don\'t even have to make a bet because you will hate or have a grudge against someone connected with every horse in the race & will be rooting for everyone to lose.
I sure hope I don\'t live long enough to quote H. Pack, but let me ask you a question, Mall. It concerns your herd theory. Are you saying that closers will run just slow enough to avoid passing frontrunners? If so, doesn\'t it follow that closers will run faster numbers when they step up in class and slower numbers when they drop in class? After all, higher class races have faster frontrunners. Are you familiar with Mark Cramer\'s research on this subject? I\'m not trying to put the knock on your theory. I think it is very interesting.
JR wrote:
>
> Another matter I find much more interesting is the read on
> War Emblem\'s 3yo line. What do you make of it? 8, 10, 1, 1
> and a neg? Have you ever seen a 3yo line like this?
>
>
TG--Since 3yo\'s are getting faster, I doubt it. But you might find one who is similar but a few points slower.
It isn\'t so much a matter of the fast numbers he is running now that I find improbable, it is that this wasn\'t a remarkably fast colt back as late as Feb 17. Then suddenly he pops a 7 point new top, equals it and moves forward off of it in the Derby. Am I to accept that this horse freaked not once but three times in a row? Or should I believe that this maturing 3yo became a \"man\" in just about a month?
To add to that, I don\'t like Proud Citizen\'s line any better.
Charismatic!
Believe it or not Alydar, H Pack is still alive, or at least he was as of last summer, so even someone as young as you could be quoting him if you were so inclined. It\'s nice to see you back in action, but alas I do not have definitive answers to either of your Qs. In fact, I don\'t even have enough of an opinion to start an argument, & HP would not be around to break it up anyway. I haven\'t read Scared Money(although at times I am painfully aware of the concept) & although I have some of Mark\'s other stuff, I\'m not sure what you\'re referring to. Perhaps you could provide a reference.
I\'m puzzled by your first sentence, Mall. Are you saying that we can only quote people who are alive? That would rule out Hank the Angry Dwarf, but it wouldn\'t rule out Treadhead. Forgive me for thinking we can do better than that.
To answer your question: \"Value Handicapping\"
Sample of 1000 class droppers: 68 percent increased their Beyer figure significantly on the drop. \"Taking all droppers, including those 29 percent whose Beyer figures decreased, the average improvement in Beyer fig on the class drop was an impressive 7 points!\"
Class risers: Their figure decreases by an average of four points.
My off the top of my head reaction to Cramer\'s research is that it is consistent with my latest bugaboo, namely that recent research tends to indicate that horses do not bounce with anywhere near the frequency that sheets players seem to believe. That research includes horses such as a winner of a mdn clming race who runs a career best no. & is entered in a NW1. There are situations when such horses win, but if the horse is more typical & regresses, is it because of a bounce or because the horse is at a level of competition where it cannot compete? If such horses are excluded from the database, the % which bounce is even lower.
I have my own idea about this. As you have displayed, the majority of horses improve their Beyers when dropping in class and conversely run slower Beyers when moving up. Could it be that horses who run new tops are often moved up in class which, coincidently, just happens to be about the time they are due to bounce thus creating the appearance that they earned the inferior figure due to the class hike? The reverse being true for the class drop?
Steve: The archives are working again:
Steve Plever on 5-9-2002, in part: \"Anyway, here are my points. First, on Alydar: His quotes are correct. But an after-the-fact smile and \'thanks for defending us\' from someone in the Rag office is not at all the same as a before-the-fact encouragement. Especially when, as Alydar concedes, those words were followed one of the next times I went to the office to buy Sheets by Jake\'s wise counsel that responding to the attacks was futile and that I should stop wasting my time. (Call me a dummy all you want but don\'t lay that label on Jake.)
So Jake is absolutely correct in calling Alydar a baldfaced liar for saying the Rag office encouraged me. Aldyar tried to present the image that I am part of a Rag office-directed conspiracy to create conflict on this board. Bull. I didn\'t bother seconding Jake\'s post because there was nothing else to say without breaking a bargain I had made with Alydar.
When I made the mistake of exchanging a few e-mails with Alydar, I mistakenly thought a private context would produce a more interesting, less hostile exchange. I hoped to learn more about him and give him a less jaundiced view of me. To facilitate that, I asked and he agreed that the e-mail contents would remain between us. I guess he has conveniently forgotten about that little promise.
But Before you nail me for posting on this board this once, consider the deal made by Alydar.\"
Posted by Steve Plever on April 06, 2001 at 14:12:24:
In Reply to: Re: before it\'s deleted--TGJB--TG posted by TGJB on April 06, 2001 at 07:45:45:
TGJB:
Appreciate your good faith, which seems in regrettably short supply in this arena. The reason I don\'t go your suggested route is as follows...
You know that the Rag office has never badmouthed you to me. But I thought you\'d be interested in the very few occasions that they did talk about your operation with me: I did get some thank-yous for defending them on your site. (Later, I got some friendly advice to the effect that continuing was pretty pointless, and wasn\'t I wasting too much time on the Internet?)
I also got some chuckles at the Rag office for pestering you into admitting your Gulfstream clocker\'s inexperienced mistake a few years back.
But they also told me you were being absolutely truthful about the Belmont turf watering story you posted -- they volunteered that you were right and they were wrong without me asking.
So for me to come to them now, and demand to know whether they run around lying about you, would be insulting, unwarranted and wrong.
I am not only skeptical of your claims of rampant dirty tricks, but I also have trouble believing that there are more than a handful of sheet players stupid enough to be influenced by the conduct your lawyer\'s letter alleges. And without a small stack of affidavits from misled players a court case is indeed out of the question.
Does that excuse the conduct? If it actually took place as you described (which I doubt, given my experience), no. But it does reduce the alleged crime to the level of a stupid sophomoric prank -- like nasty grafitti from one frat dissing another. Which is also what many of the posts on this Web site look like.
So rather than asking either office what they did or didn\'t do in the past, customers should urge both sides to stop any future ugliness from this point on -- it is an embarressment to the handicapping community.
Before I had ever been to the Rag office, I posted on their site urging them to stop some nasty posts I saw about your product. They did. (I\'m sure the timing was a coincidence -- I was a new customer they had never met.)
The juvenile name calling on this site is one thing. But the recent exchanges -- which could trigger fistfights if they were face to face instead of keyboard to keyboard -- are another. They should lead you to reconsider your bb policies and your approach to this whole dispute.
I am glad that at least you and I are having a more respectful exchange than in the past, so this seems like the right moment to ban myself again, this time for good. HP, you say you made your last post on the Rag board -- this\'ll be my last post here. (I know, JB, you\'ll believe that when you see it.)
Peace,
SP