We\'re putting up the three big Fair Grounds races from last Saturday, with the numbers they ran, for a couple of reasons. First of all, while I was away there was a lot of discussion about pace affecting the performances, and some performances being better or worse than they looked-- without offering any opinion on the specific cases, see how the three different pace scenarios affected the final figures, or did not.
Secondly, take a look at how tight the figures come out-- remember that the relationships between the horses are prescribed by beaten lengths, weight and ground loss relationships. If we change one horse in a race, we have to change the others by the same amount (and incidentally, although the track was changing speed throughout the day, those 3 races were at about the same speed-- our clocker had the Derby going a couple of fifths slower than the track time). See what happens if you add or subtract a couple of points from each race, even without tying the races together-- it doesn\'t work.
Now, these are stake horses, which are very easy to work with-- but this is what I mean by the level of the decisions being very sophisticated. If we distorted the figures due to High Limit getting a soft trip, for example, the figures would not hold together as they do.
Click on the following link to view or download the sheets.
http://www.thorograph.com/hold/fg031205.pdf
TGJB,
> If we distorted the figures due to High Limit getting a soft trip, for example, the figures would not hold together as they do.<
This is a misunderstanding of the point.
Your figure would be totally accurate for how fast the horse ran. However, if the conditions were highly favorable for running fast, the figure itself would overrate the performance relative to what would have been earned under tougher conditions. If several of recent races were similar trips, then (all else being equal) the figures would pair up but both/all would overrate his ability under more average conditions.
In High Limit\'s case I will express a clear cut opinion.
His performance in this last race may be a 1 in terms of speed, but it was not as good as the typcial horse that earns a 1.
He earned his 1 with a loose lead, in a moderate pace, on a track that may have been inside speed favoring. All those conditions tend to enhance a horse\'s ability to run his fastest possible speed figure.
If he comes back next time is pressed on the lead by a quality horse and runs a 3. IMO, it won\'t be a bounce. It will be a similar performance even though he ran slower.
If he comes back next time is pressed on the lead by a quality horse and runs another 1 (or better), it won\'t be a pair up. He will be a lightly raced 3YO 2nd off a layoff that moved forward a bit.
This is obviously a subjective difference of opinion on how some things like pace and trip can impact final time and can account for variances in speed figures that are usually referred to as bounces or moves forward.
Post Edited (03-17-05 16:43)
I didn\'t misunderstand your position at all.You made another point-- that in the case of runaway winners, we give the winner a better figure than he deserves to give the others decent figures. Look carefully at the Derby and the Oaks figures, and think about that.
I have been using T-graph for a long time, and The Sheets before that, and still do. But since you guys are talking pace, I wonder if any of you have seen this pace figures guy that has a new site? I don\'t know exactly what he is measuring, but I assume it has something to do with pace and speed combined from what I can tell. You can\'t argue with the results, and now I use both Tgraph and the pace figures stuff to look at most races. Does anyone know about this place? I kind of stumbled on it accidentally looking for something else a few months ago.
What site, and can\'t argue with what results?
pacefigures.com
He has had four rules up that he uses to bet every race for the four tracks he posts, and is showing a decent profit, 15% or so. Its under weekend results. I\'ve been tracking the weekday results and they are just as good. This week has been over 20%, and that is every race, I kid you not.
He does say if you write that he does not bet this way, just a guideline to show how good the numbers are.
TGJB,
>I didn\'t misunderstand your position at all.You made another point-- that in the case of runaway winners, we give the winner a better figure than he deserves to give the others decent figures.<
OK. That\'s another issue. It\'s a \"potential\" problem and would (\'if\' true) explain why some of your runaway winners have huge figures relative to other figure makers.
It\'s difficult to describe except numerically. I also cannot point to any specific race because I would have to know if you broke the race out. I just believe that some of the major discrepancies I have seen involved lightly raced big winners that towered over their field. That\'s why I raised the question.
Here\'s the \"potential problem\" using Beyer figures *just because that\'s the way I think when using pace figures).
Assume these horses are all front runner/pressers and A is a lightly raced huge stickout at this class.
Horse A: Pace - 100 Final Figure - 100
Horse B: Pace - 90 Final Figure - 90
Horse C: Pace - 87 Final Figure - 87
Horse D: Pace - 91 Final Figure - 91
Given these four horses, at 6F, horse A figures to beat B and D by about 4 lengths and horse C by about 5. He is much better than they are.
Now let\'s suppose horse \"A\" goes out and sets his normal pace. Instead of running their normal paces, B, C, and D go out press A the way they usually do. So instead of running their normal pace they run 100 or close.
Now here\'s the result.
Horse A: Pace - 100 Final Figure - 100
Horse B: Pace - 100 Final Figure - 82
Horse C: Pace - 97 Final Figure - 79
Horse D: Pace - 99 Final Figure - 83
Horse \"A\" wins the race by 7-8 lengths instead of 4-5.
You are now required to make a figure for this race.
Did \"A\" win by 7-8 lengths because he improved and the other 3 ran their typical race or because he ran his typical race and they ran slower.
Without pace figures and a belief in their usefulness and impact, you would probably assume A improved because it is more likely that 1 lightly raced horse got better than 3 consistent horses got worse.
With pace figures it is more likely that \"A\" ran his normal race and B, C, D, ran their normal race also, but a slower final time because they were exhausted by the faster pace.
If you are the type of person that also breaks races out when you make figures, you might give \"A\" a 108 and B, C, and D, figures that correspond to their normal races.
When they all come back B, C, D would return to their normal figures because they would face a normal pace.
You\'d would say \"See the figures were right. They paired up\".
When \"A\" goes back to his 100, you\'d say \"he ran too fast last time and bounced\".
However, he never really earned a 108. You just gave him a 108 to make sense out of the slower performaces of the horses that were cooked by his fast pace.
There aren\'t many races like this and usually there are enough quality closers in the race to clarify the situation. However, that\'s not always the case.
His pace figures are pretty darn good and unfortunately for me, if they become too popular they will kill a lot of great bets for me.
http://www.pacefigures.com/
The guy\'s name is CJ.. He\'s a regular poster at Pace Advantage and very knowledgeable and pleasant, (if a bit cynical..)
We actually had an exchange today over Lost/Fog because he said Aleo was foolish not to have sold the horse if he wasn\'t going TC event(s) with him. I argued that octogenarian Aleo was thrilled to have perhaps the best sprinter to come along in decades, and would race him in events that were best suited for the colt\'s talents.. A rare prudent decision from a sophomore horse owner these days..
(JB.. Thanks for sharing the FG nums.. I was VERY curious how the Derby translated as I thought people were being harder on the \"also rans\" than they needed to be..)
Post Edited (03-17-05 18:12)
Hey CTC, Watch out for WANDERING BOY next out...Got that bounce I was hoping for. I got a move on Real Dandy just wasn\'t large enough.
Kev,
>Hey CTC, Watch out for WANDERING BOY next out...Got that bounce I was hoping for.<
I believe Wandering Boy will come back with a much improved effort next time out if he is spotted against horses of similar ability. He was cooked by Badge of Silver\'s (a superior horse) hot pace.
CH-- I haven\'t got time now to go into it, but you are missing my point entirely. I know what your position is-- you have made it clear enough. Mine is that those of you out there who don\'t have all the data-- ground and weight corrections-- don\'t have the ability to accurately assess the question, and the examples you cite are way too simplistic. In the FG races you had 3 completely different pace scenarios, and all the horses ran very tight to their figures once you worked out the corrections-- there is no way, for example, that someone would have known how well Kansas City Boy ran without that stuff. Or to put it another way, when you make the corrections and look at the figures the horses ran in the three races, it appears that the pace made no difference at all, while ground loss made a big difference.
As far as Wandering Boy goes, the simplest way to look at it is that he ran to the same level he had in two of his last 3 races.
And whether we break out a race or not-- when you get figures that come out as tight as these did, right down the line, they are right, and the figures they are based on are right. Either that or it\'s one hell of a coincidence.
TGJB,
My examples have to be simplistic because the impact of pace is a complicated enough issue without adding in weight and ground loss.
That\'s why I kept it on a theoretical basis.
None of the stakes races at FG fit into the category I was describing, but Wandering Boy as an individual horse definitely does. There is no question in my mind at all that his hard effort against Badge of Silver early caused him to run a slower final time than he would have had he been matched up against a horse of similar ability to himself in a slower pace on the front end.
He did not bouce. He ran another big race. He just recorded a slower final time because he used himself harder early this time than last time.
He was just one horse among many contenders. So that single horse could not distort the figure given to the race. But if all the contenders had battled BOS on the front end it could.
I\'ll drop it and move on.
Post Edited (03-17-05 19:08)
That\'s not why I say it\'s simplistic-- I\'m talking about your appraisal of the figure relationships, and how we determine them. Which is no slight-- an outsider can\'t know this stuff unless he pays trackmen all over the place, hires people to input huge amounts of day to day data, and works for an extended period of time with the product of all that. The figure relationships are often not what they appear to the outsider, unless the outsider is someone who has been using all our data for a long time, knows the formulas, ground, etc.
Just for future reference, whether you are right or not, \"there is no doubt in my mind\" and \"we know that this effort was better because of the pace\" (paraphrase), which I noticed while I was away, are not evidence. That\'s why I said \"appears\" before when talking about cause and effect relationships.
\" there is no way, for example, that someone would have known how well Kansas City Boy ran without that stuff. Or to put it another way, when you make the corrections and look at the figures the horses ran in the three races, it appears that the pace made no difference at all, while ground loss made a big difference\"
Kansas City Boy ran well to you as a figure maker by your formula. He was totally empty and the fact that he was caught wide in a modest pace and received a 4(only three lenghts) off the winner is a very weak fig from a future handicapping standpoint to anyone with any breadth of knowledge.
Ken Mcpeek told me he couldn\'t believe KCB was that \"empty\" since he trained fantastic. At no point in the race did KCB grab the bit.KCB is the poster boy for horses that receive good figs mainly for ground loss only.
Miff-- unless you think the rail was dead (pretty unlikely considering the success of the inside speed), you need to have a word with Mr. Archimedes, Mr. Pythagorus, and the other boys at the frat house.
Two points re: KC Boy..
I also thought he ran better than it looked. Besides the wide run into the first turn, if you watch the replay note that when he finds his best stride at the top of the stretch, he is slightly impeded and jostled at the 16th pole and pushed a path left..
I would also suggest, based on his two visits to the Big Easy, Fair Grounds may simply not be a surface he cares for. That\'s not an unusual situation, as it has always been a notoriously difficult ship-in track.
JB,
Eventually you will gain the necessary handicapping knowledge required to fully comprehend that wide is wide, not FAST.That type of handicapping knowledge has nothing to do with making accurate speed figures, however.
KASEPT,
KCB was slightly impeded at the 16th pole,while looking for a place to lay down. I have the tape also.KCB never ran a step, never accelerated and was one of the FEW horses on the card that raced close to a modest pace and faded.FG appeared to favor inside speed on the whole.
Again, the absolute poster horse for a phony wide fig.
miff wrote:
> JB,
>
> Eventually you will gain the necessary handicapping knowledge
> required to fully comprehend that wide is wide, not FAST.That
> type of handicapping knowledge has nothing to do with making
> accurate speed figures, however.
Falbrav, a loser (the irony), is the only Euro to go into a BC turf race holding the top number. Juxtapose this fact against their turf record. Ground flattery is part of why though not the whole.
TGJB,
I didn\'t say there is \"no doubt\".
I said there\'s \"no doubt in MY MIND\".
When you\'ve been making pace figures for a couple of decades, studying the relationship between pace and final time for about 15 years, and observing the figures horses earn in and out of these scenarios, sometimes there is little doubt in \"your own mind\". That goes double when there are dozens of other people that have done the same thing and come to same conclusion.
I\'m sure that people that haven\'t used pace figures have lots of doubts. That\'s why there are still good prices to had.
Here\'s one for you.
Check the speed figure for Afleet Alex on 8/21/04.
Did you give that race a faster speed figure than Beyer?
Did you break that race out?
Here are pace/speed figures earned by Afleet Alex that day from 3 sources.
Beyer - F90.
Logic Dictates - P96 - F88
Pace Figures - P99 - F89
Essentially they all agreed on the final time speed figure (it was slow) and both sources of pace figures said he ran faster early than his final time despite running off the pace - which translates into \"he is better than the 88,89,90 final time figure we gave him\".
Here are pace/final figures given to the race itself (the frontrunners and winner)
Logic Dicatates - P105 - F88
Pace Figures - P106 - F89
This race screams that the slow final time given to the race and all the horses that raced near the pace the day (by Beyer, Logic, and Pacefigures) was the result of an extremely fast early pace.
The race should not have been broken out for track variant/final time purposes. The horses \"did\" run a slow final time, but an astute pace handicapper would understand why. He would also not overrate any horses that raced well off that pace and were not impacted by the pace by breaking out the race.
This is one application that can be very valuable in the figure maing process, but there are literally dozens every day.
One other potential use is the one I have been describing. The lightly race 3YO that dominates a weaker field and puts up a pace that is way too fast for the other horses. He wipes them out, runs his usual final time figure, and goes on to win by a much larger margin than final time figures would indicated coming in.
Post Edited (03-18-05 08:45)
miff,
There is at least some possibility that KCB didn\'t run as well as some people expected because the outside part of the track wasn\'t as good as the inside. I\'m not talking about ground loss here because his final time is easily adjusted for ground loss. I am talking about bias. To me, he was working so well coming into the LA Derby that I thought he would fire an improved race. The only reason I didn\'t play him was because of the outside post. IMO he made no real effort. He was close to that slow pace and got passed by a bunch of dogs with fleas without making any real move. If it wasn\'t bias, then maybe he\'s just heading in the wrong direction.
Class -
I\'m interested in your theory regarding the effect of a dominating winner on the speed figure given a race. I just read an account of Bellamy Road\'s race last Saturday. Would that be an example of what you are talking about?
CLASS,
My point is strictly related to the assigned final fig given by TG.The fig shows KCB \"ran well\" according to JB, figurewise!!
The reality is KCB was awful and the fig(4) is weak and misleading due to the TG formula of \"over-rewarding\" runners for being wide.In many instances, e.g. on turf, such wide buried figs have made me big scores but this is a case where a horse was totally empty and still looked, fig wise, to have ran only 3 lenghts off the winner.That\'s not buried, that\'s misleading from any common sense viewing of the race.
Why he ran poor was maybe the Blinks off, the FG surface, a bad scope,or an X.
Bit,
I didn\'t review the race you are talking about, but I describe what I am talking about (numerically) earlier in this thread in the 4th or 5th post.
Basically, if one horse is WAY better than the rest of the field, if he goes out and sets \"his\" normal pace, it will be much too fast for the other horses because they are inferior. So not only will he beat them by a lot because he is better, but he will beat them by even more than expected because his pace wipes them out.
That could confuse a speed figure maker because he won\'t know if the dominant horse won by so much because he got better or because all the other horses got worse.
The answer is \"neither\".
The dominant horse ran his usual race and so did the others. The others just ran slower final times than expected because they were used harder than usual early.
\"If\" the figure maker assigns a huge figure to that dominant winner to account for the fact that the weaker horses ran so slow, the figure is wrong and overstates the performance.
You will see this pace matchup happen among lightly raced 2YOs and 3YOs in maiden and limited allowance races once in awhile because the very top young prospects often work their way through the ranks of weak horses for a few starts and blow everyone out.
To know if a figure is wrong or not though you need to have a good set of pace figures, understand how to use them, and you have to know if the speed figure maker broke the race out incorrectly. That would account for a false huge figure.
Why cant we leave this poor overhyped animal (KCB) alone-- he is still eligible for non winners of 2 lifetime-- and focus on the real Derby contenders, some of whom are rumored to be running this weekend?
Post Edited (03-18-05 09:57)
Class -
I understand the theory, and it sounds logical to me. On the other hand, lots of things that sound logical to me turn out not to be true. That\'s why I thought it might be useful to focus on a specific example to start testing the theory.
In the allowance race I\'m talking about, Bellamy Road (Zito\'s latest Derby hopeful) hooked Dearest Mon early, then left him for dead to win by 15 lengths. Brisnet gave Bellamy Road a 106 (same as High Limit\'s Louisiana Derby), whereas Beyer gave him a pedestrian 96 (I think).
If you have occasion to look at the race at some point and formulate a view on it, I\'d be interested to read your opinion.
Bit,
I took a quick look at the race and day in question. I don\'t have accurate pace tables for Gulfstream (new track), but fortunately there were 6 1M races that day. So it makes for an easier analysis of the fractions relative to final time.
My analysis of the Belamy Road race indicates that the pace of the race was approximately in line with the final time of the race (give or take a couple of Beyer points in either direction for both the 4F call and 6F call).
I am assuming by the margin of victory that Belamy Road put up an above average speed figure for that class. So that would mean he was also cutting an above average pace relative to what is typical for those other horses (since the pace figure and speed figure look to be approximately equal give or take).
So yes, based on this analysis I think it is highly likely that Dearest Mon\'s final speed figure was impacted negatively by chasing Belamy Road there.
I am less certain about some of the others because they were further off the pace and I don\'t have rock hard pace figures to work with. I would guess a couple of others could have been impacted slightly also, but to a lesser extent.
I don\'t know anyhing about the Bris figures, but if Andy gave the race a 96, I think you can safely assume that Dearest Mon ran better than the 61 he was given that day. He got torched early. \"All else being equal\", he will run a higher Beyer next time out if he spotted properly and avoids another duel. If you are correct about the 96 from Beyer, it does not look like he broke the race out. So the figures themselves are an accurate reflection of how fast the horses ran (to the extent of Beyer\'s skill).
There would only be a problem if someone decided to break out that race and give Belamy Road a much bigger figure than he deserved to make sense out of Dearest Mon\'s figure. That seems unlikely because it was only one horse that clearly got torched by the pace.
I hope that makes sense.
Post Edited (03-18-05 14:01)