Recently, Jim inquired (joke) as to the circumstances surrounding my leaving Ragozin and setting up my own shop (as Soup put it).
Among his other qualities, Alydar has the memory of an elephant, and although a portion of the archives index is corrupt, he was able to remember the title and approximate date of a post of mine on the subject. Paul did some heroic work to rescue it, so here it is, if anyone cares.
Briefly:
I went to work for Ragozin in the 70\'s, for a little money and free use of the data. Ragozin was managing a stable for the Esposito brothers, and I was training and studying to go into that end of it. In 1976 a guy named Dennis Heard approached Ragozin to manage his stable (2 horses). Ragozin didn\'t like him, and instead sent him to me. I began to manage Dennis\'s outfit, with Ragozin getting a big piece of the profits.
I claimed a few for Dennis right away (Penn Peg, Market Forge, and Stern). They won their first six starts for us, 8 of our first 12, and we never looked back. Three years later, in 1979, we finished third in the country in wins. (It\'s also worthy of note that at almost the exact moment I took over the Heard operation, August 1976, I started winning as a bettor, having 18 straight winning months. When Len found out I was winning, my deal for free sheets for work all of a sudden became a bad idea, after years of being a good idea. He wanted 1/3 of profits, and I gave it to him - he was the only game in town.)
Anyway, at the end of 1979 Dennis and I called it quits. Since he and I had a profit sharing arrangement (and I had left all my profits in the stable) I was entitiled to quite a bit, which I took in horses, some of which was breeding stock. At this point Len figured he had me over a barrel - I was 28, the best in my field, and had no marketable skills in any other, and needed his unique data to continue. He tried to raise my rates through the roof - 10% of the capitalization of the stable (which was substantial, I think around a million) per year, plus a chunk of profits. This meant if I broke even for five years he would own half my stable. This was far more than he ever tried to get from anyone else, before or since, and it was just for data - the expertise would come from me.
Anyway, we went back and forth for a while, and eventually I walked, between Genuine Risk and Codex in May of 1980. Len knew me pretty well, and it\'s possible he may have done this to force me out since I was having far more success than he both with the stable and as a bettor.
So I went out to the Hamptons and found myself going nuts. I also found out that breeding stock eats and doesn\'t earn any purse money, and that the bloodstock market was heading south quickly. I only had one area of expertise, so in the fall of 81 I began to create a data base, initially for my own use, and that of the horseman I had developed into sheet users - Leatherbury, Forbes, and Sedlacek. Obviously, we\'ve come a long way from there.
\"August 1976, I started winning as a bettor, having 18 straight winning months. When Len found out I was winning, my deal for free sheets for work all of a sudden became a bad idea, after years of being a good idea\"
were you using Sheets or Thorograph back then?
Yeah, I was paying Ragozin a third of my profits using TG. You don\'t want to go where you\'re heading. But you will.
aha.
Thanks for the story Jerry - it was quite interesting.
I just wanted to help that other guy out who said you saw how you could improve the Ragozin numbers and set out on your own to be a competitor.
Well isn\'t it an improvisation if your opinions on track variants differ?
I think the variant he makes for each race is improvisation.
\"I was paying Ragozin a third of my profits....\"
must\'ve been a pretty good deal, or you wouldn\'t have cut it.
maybe you should have left, and used your valuable \"expertise\" elsewhere, w/o len.
from the sound of it, you made a pretty good buck off len\'s #\'s ---- maybe it should have been a 50/50 split.
I wonder where you\'d be today, if not for len ragozin.........
\"I wonder where you\'d be today, if not for len ragozin.........\"
Probably the same place YOU would be... some loser who doesn\'t make his own speed figures but spends his worthless life trashing someone who does.
you think that\'s where jerry would be?
sounds about right, but I was thinking he\'d be writing scripts in his mother\'s basement.
anyway, I\'m very grateful to len ragozin, unlike some people.....
As you stated, you were using Ragozin\'s numbers and doing pretty well with them. But when you started making your own numbers, you departed from, or at least altered the Ragozin methodology somewhat. Why? Did you, at the time you were using the Ragozin numbers, identify a flaw in them? Were you making adjustments to his figures and was it working?
Well then he\' doing a real good job .You guys want it both ways ,first you claim he ripped off Ragozin ,then you say his product isn\'t worth anything .If both things are true ,then he ripped off a bad product.
no.
first of all, I don\'t \'claim\' anything.
take a look at both products --- you\'d have to be blind not to see it.
secondly, it would appear to me that he ripped off a great product and tinkered w/it until it\'s at the point it is today.
jerry\'s ego comes before the #\'s.
My mistake ,you imply.
Good point teekay - you seem much smarter than the average Graphie.
Jerry only stole the intellectual property of Ragozin. How he applied it to his knock-off is the point of much debate. Many feel that Jerry massages his numbers in such a way that you get a smoother line, making it harder to toss horses and use pattern handicapping.
In addition, he takes the cheap way out at many (to be fairer, let\'s say more) tracks. He\'ll say he has someone doing live ground when that person may only be watching 1/2 the races live because they are doing another job at the track.
Jerry, JR.
Well like I say ,it all comes down to taking scores no matter how you do it.I really do not know much about figure making ,however I know a whole lot about the bottom line.I see your point sometimes on TG I find it difficult to differentiate between rival horses .Value is always the key .That is what makes up most of my decisions ,that, post position and likleyhood of decent trip.
Can\'t help notice, supe and Jerry Jr., that there is no way in hell they are going to post those Belmont Day numbers except for those in the Belmont Stakes. This is kind of a surprise, given Patent\'s amazing performance that day, and the fact that they would simply delete the kind of discussions that would take place over here. You would think they would want to highlight their product. Maybe they could make up a sheet for that McLaughlin horse to make Supe look good too.
This, by the way, is true, unlike Jerry\'s Jr.\'s slanderous points on trackmen above. HP
A good example of this was the grass race Sat. @ Bel .Both of Clement\'s horses had similar #\'s to VM ,Mott\'s horse off a layoff ran good #\'s last year ,had a license to improve ,but VM could also improve ,looked likely to stay out of the early mix,and hailed from a barn who\'s runners were doing well recently especially on the turf.Bottom line you have to go with value and not be afraid of the big bad stables of Mott & Clement.
Yep, the Model T Ford and the Porsche both have 4 wheels, an engine, a steering wheel...what a rip off.
the reason they look like that, is because jerry has the weird idea that repeating identical efforts is \'normal\' for a racehorse, while deviation from one race to the next is \'abnormal\'.
you can see this attitude in his constant harping on his peter pan #\'s.
he likes to say that horses do strange things, but groups of horses don\'t\'.
for the moment, just overlook the offensive inaccuracy in that --- the point is, groups of horses pairing up WOULD BE strange, but he feels it\'s the norm.
next, you might not make figures, but you may have read jerry\'s methodology on this board.
when I came here, I had no idea how he made his #\'s, and had no real opinion on them.
but, apparently, he adjusts the variant for each race until it fits his projection of what \'horses SHOULD run\', and we already know what that is.
the result is what you see.
as a sidenote, what he does in the process of making numbers is almost identical to day to day handicapping.
he looks at each race individually, and projects a number for the horses in each, based on his own judgement.
in the real world, when he takes these projections to the windows, there\'s a teller there to tell him that he\'s wrong.
when he\'s making numbers in his secret laboratory there\'re no tellers around to comment.
JB ,I pay you the highest compliment any horseplayer can offer ,the respect of your opinion .I fully believe in the edge TG offers,and it is always first on my list of things needed for a sucessful day at the track.
I did have some arguments about making figures with Ragozin when I was there, but you have to remember that when I was there no-one else was publishing any ready to use figures, let alone ones using ground and weight, on a graph. Beyer figures in the paper were 15 years away, and Ragozin didn\'t even have a copy machine--the figures didn\'t have to be that good in order to give a tremendous edge.
When I began making my own figures I had no idea what to expect--I believed all the stuff Ragozin said about his own ability, much as the Raggies do now. After about a year it became clear the figures couldn\'t be as accurate as he claimed--the underlying data (ground, wind etc.) wasn\'t accurate enough for it to be. I had already begun to question a lot of his approaches when the famous Belmont turf course incident occurred, and that crystallized a lot of my thinking. Since then I\'ve been much less dogmatic.
\"You would think they would want to highlight their product. \"
no.
apparently YOU would.
based on the posts you\'ve made, I\'d appreciate it if you wouldn\'t project your thoughts onto other people.
that is really the height of vanity....
\"Maybe they could make up a sheet for that McLaughlin horse to make Supe look good too.\"
while you were apparently handicapping that one horse, I was handicapping the whole race.
try that next time --- maybe you\'ll come out on the plus side.
Yeah, that\'s why I\'ve done so well since, and why I spend all this time pointing out flaws in his methods, and why his employees spend so much time lying about me--because he\'s so good and I\'m not. Without meeting Ragozin I would have been a total failure.
\"Yep, the Model T Ford and the Porsche both have 4 wheels, an engine, a steering wheel...what a rip off.\"
good analogy.
those 2 products are so identical it\'s creepy.
So they put up the numbers for Derby Day and Preakness Day and they\'re going to leave out Belmont Day. Even though some of their pets did so well. Hmmmm. I wouldn\'t want to project anything onto that. Where\'s the \'spin doctor\' when you need him. I guess they want to let Patent\'s drubbing die down. I can\'t wait for the next contest, where for an encore Patent will get a zero return with his contest wagers and tell us he wiped out Saratoga for good by winning every wager on the card. I must say, as clever as you are, you are second rate compared to the top guns. Patent and Plever could talk a hungry cat off a fish truck. You\'re nowhere near as much fun.
That\'s the power of Rags, Dave, play the horse with no sheet and you\'re all set! That Slew is a pisser.
Nice defense there on the \'vanity\' thing. You have completely turned it around on me. HP
Anyone who has followed the discussion here knows that the post above could only have been posted by someone with an agenda or an idiot (or both). Anyone who has not followed the discussion should go to the dialogue between Jason Litt and myself (Figure Making Methodology II, 6/10/02) for a discussion between intelligent adults.
Factoid Man, you\'re still a lot smarter than all those who followed the discussion--so smart that you don\'t have to know what you\'re talking about. I await your wisecrack.
So are these. Again, you are so much smarter than all those who see those imaginary differences--huge differences in figures, additional info--you know layout is everything.
Jim, it\'s getting to the point someone is going to think that you\'re an invention of mine to make a point.
1- Our trackmen not only watch the races, they watch reruns, and sometimes Steward\'s tape.
2- How many people do you think Jim has said this to at Gulfstream and Calder, when there is no-one there to refute it?
3- Why do you suppose he said it?
\"huge differences in figures, additional info--you know layout is everything.\"
if layout is nothing, then I\'d think you\'d have come up w/your own when you came up w/\'your own\' product.
and yes, I\'m quite sure there are huge differences in the #\'s.....
\"I can\'t wait for the next contest, where for an encore Patent will get a zero return with his contest wagers and tell us he wiped out Saratoga for good by winning every wager on the card.\"
I thought that was mall\'s bit...
Then you have no axe to grind. Right? I used the layout because that was what I was familiar with, and I didn\'t start out to sell--I was using the data for myself, and 3 or 4 others, until Ragozin (who until then had kept it as a private club) started marketing like crazy (mainly via Bob Beinish and Harvey Pack, who aired an interview with Ragozin 3 times). At that point I decided there was no reason I shouldn\'t enter the market as well.
HP, now\'s your chance. How were my comments about the ground at Calder untrue and slanderous?
Unless Jerry has hired someone new to do the ground, you are gonna have to back down. If I\'m wrong I\'ll apologize.
Perhaps you should consult Jerry on some of these things - he does not want them discussed.
Jerry, JR.
Poppa Jer, there is the slanderous comment. I have never discussed your product with anyone at the track, not once. Please stop the lying. Frankly, I have never seen anyone using it.
While the track purchases Ragozin for the big bettors here, your\'s is almost non-existent. That is why you got kicked off a couple of years ago.
\"1- Our trackmen not only watch the races, they watch reruns, and sometimes Steward\'s tape.\"
Well, at least now you are giving us a trickle of the truth. Like Clinton, we must examine this statement carefully because it is only partially true. Your trackman do watch races live, I agree. But, they don\'t watch all the races live. They are employed by the track and may be busy doing something else. So I guess they aren\'t able to hand time them all either, are they?
Next time try your spin on someone that doesn\'t know the truth.
Jerry, JR.
I don\'t have to back down or do anything. Regards to Nebel. HP
But HP, you just did. You didn\'t tell me how I was wrong. That\'s a problem isn\'t it? You are starting to understand that I know the truth.
You guys should be politicians. It\'s nothing but double-speak with you Graphies. Just remember, backing down is the only thing works for you Graphies. I don\'t leave lies left unanswered.
Jerry, JR.
P.S. Nebel\'s not at Calder - I never see him there - you must have a real hard-on for him.
Jerry,
This board has just gotten silly. Obviously, some of these posters are agents of Rags or else they wouldn\'t spend so many hours posting this one-sided crap. Jerry Jr\'s post about no one doing ground live at Calder comes from insiders in the figures game. I really wouldn\'t care if you wathced it on tape or not. I assume it is easier to focus on all the horses using tape then watching them only during the race. What a poster without ties to Rags would gain by slamming this board with negative posts is beyond me so I must assume you are right about their agenda and their unrelenting zeal must logically carry over to the track where they must spend hours bad mouthing the TG product. It must make it hard to handicap when they spend so much time blasting a competitors numbers.
I will probably always be a TG user because Rags does not offer downloads of his product, does not give multiple track discounts, offer the multitude of statistics that TG does and I find his sheets to be nearly illegible. However, I would never bother blasting his product to anyone and couldn\'t care less if someone likes Rags more. However, this board should be renamed, \"ask the Rags\' Sycophants\". This board will never be able to sustain handicapping threads as long as you allow a few zealots to monopolize the board and run off legitimate posters with insults and illogical arguments. Use your new software for its intended purpose and ban Soupie Sales and Jerry Jr and let the grown-ups talk for a while. I do have to admit that at least Soup seems to want to discuss handicapping occassionally as opposed to Jerry Jr\'s unrelenting terrorist attacks.
Jerry,
This board has just gotten silly. Obviously, some of these posters are agents of Rags or else they wouldn\'t spend so many hours posting this one-sided crap. Jerry Jr\'s post about no one doing ground live at Calder comes from insiders in the figures game. I really wouldn\'t care if you wathced it on tape or not. I assume it is easier to focus on all the horses using tape then watching them only during the race. What a poster without ties to Rags would gain by slamming this board with negative posts is beyond me so I must assume you are right about their agenda and their unrelenting zeal must logically carry over to the track where they must spend hours bad mouthing the TG product. It must make it hard to handicap when they spend so much time blasting a competitors numbers.
I will probably always be a TG user because Rags does not offer downloads of his product, does not give multiple track discounts, offer the multitude of statistics that TG does and I find his sheets to be nearly illegible. However, I would never bother blasting his product to anyone and couldn\'t care less if someone likes Rags more. However, this board should be renamed, \"ask the Rags\' Sycophants\". This board will never be able to sustain handicapping threads as long as you allow a few zealots to monopolize the board and run off legitimate posters with insults and illogical arguments. Use your new software for its intended purpose and ban Soupie Sales and Jerry Jr and let the grown-ups talk for a while. I do have to admit that at least Soup seems to want to discuss handicapping occassionally as opposed to Jerry Jr\'s unrelenting terrorist attacks.
Okay, I had no real desire to enter the name calling war, but I am getting a little tired of the Model T analogy.
The analogy makes no sense because the Porsche, as far as I know, was not designed by a former Ford employee who had access to trade secrets. Perhaps a little lesson on the law of intellectual property is needed.
There are patents and trade secrets. A patent protects one for a limited period of time from someone copying the idea or design process. However, in addition to being restricted in terms of time, it requires a public explanation of the patented product, making it easier to legally copy once the patent expires. There are also other restrictions that I won\'t discuss. That is why many products are never patented. Presumably Ragozin has not attempted to patent his sheet making process.
If a an idea is not patented, it can legally be copied. Thus, if there were no patent for the Model T (and I don\'t know whether there was or not) anybody could buy a Model T, take it apart and copy it piece by piece (this is called reverse engineering, which is perfectly legal). Similarly, I could buy Thorograph Sheets, take the information provided on this board, and copy the sheet maing process, and JB could do nothing about it (presumably though I have insufficient information to do that from purchasing his product).
Now, trade secrets are a different animal. It is unlawful to use proprietary information obtained through a confidential relationship. Now, I have no idea whether that is what JB did, and I don\'t want to speculate, but I let\'s discuss a hypothetical.
An employee of Thorograph takes JB\'s database and everything he learned about figure making and makes an identical product. Is that illegal? Probably. It depends on what steps JB used to keep his information secret, whether the information is readily available to the public and whether the employee had a confidential relationship (most employees do). Is it immoral? Well, that is for each individual to decide.
My point in this is not to accuse JB of anything. I have no idea what information he had access to, what information he took and whether that information was proprietary or not. What I do know is that the Model T analogy is stupid, and hopefully will not surface again.
BTW, while we are talking about law. JB\'s assertions that Ragozin must be guilty of slander because he never \"answered\" his public letter is even more silly than his Model T analogy. No lawyer would ever advise a client to answer such allegations, as it could only be used against him in the future. If JB really wanted an answer instead of a publicity stunt, he would have sued.
Boy, there’s a lot to work with here.
1. You have never discussed our product with anyone at the track. You won’t find a living human who believes that one.
2. We sell okay at Gulfstream (so you’ve definitely seen someone using it—and you know Bill Goldsmith), less so at Calder, which couldn’t have anything to do with you and Nebel telling people we don’t use live ground, could it? By the way, Suffolk Racing Forum, Albany Teletheater, Connecticut OTB, Monmouth, and Meadowlands all buy our product to give as comps to big bettors.
3. Among our trackmen are the DRF’s Dave Litfin and five Equibase trackmen. Most watch the races live, all watch tapes—as do the Ragozin trackmen. There was (and I believe still is) one Ragozin trackman who does 5 tracks daily from his living room via satellite dish. He hand times races, same as ours do.
4. You’re the same guy who parsed the truth about your mentor Charlie Nebel—splitting hairs about which track he was barred from (for being dishonest), to make it appear it never happened. You really want to accuse us of half truths? Nebel’s still barred at Calder—that’s why you haven’t seen him there, right? Wonder why you didn’t mention that.
5. Our Florida trackman watches most of the races live, and all of them on both pan and head-on tapes. You weren’t parsing the truth to make it appear he was doing a bad job, were you?
6. Ragozin outsells us on weekends at Calder, we’ve been outselling him slightly during the week. Overall they outsell us, but by roughly 10 sets a week, or 2 a day. Which doesn’t matter, except in judging your credibility.
Jason,
How long did it take you to think up all that crap? Life is too short matey, stop wasting your time. There is some good racing this w/e; save you energy, put up a few posts on Friday, and show us if you really know anything about horse racing..... Cheers
After 20 or so posts that have nothing to do with horse racing (90 percent of this board has nothing to do with handicapping), I get accused of wasting everyone\'s time.
Anybody following the Ascot meet? Great racing all week. I think a number of horses running will be at Belmont and Arlington this fall. I have a friend there, so I should get some feedback on the big ones. I would appreciate it if anybody else who follows European racing (TG included) would join in on the discussion.
I\'m going to make the assumption that you haven\'t been reading all the posts recently, because I have a higher opinion of you than of the run of the mill Raggies psychos we\'ve been getting here, and I\'ve covered pretty much all these points recently. Just a couple of things, because I\'ve had a long day, and I\'m going home.
1. Re trade secrets--as I said recently, when I was in Ragozin\'s office he said repeatedly, in front of lots of people, that anyone could take anything they wanted. He knew that the formulas were the least of it--you still needed capital, live ground, judgement, and a willingness to work incredibly hard for a long time. In point of fact, I didn\'t touch his database and took very little else--we use slightly different wind and ground formulas and, as you have noticed, very different methods to make figures. We made our database from scratch.
2. Given the above there is nothing stupid about the analogy at all, and there wasn\'t anyway. No-one takes the position that the inventor of cars is the best or should be the only maker of cars, and in this case Ragozin didn\'t invent one damn element of his product other than his father\'s idea, the use of the graph, and you tell me whether putting figures on a graph would be copyright infringement in any business.
3. I don\'t remember saying Ragozin was guilty of slander. I did say his employees are guilty of lying, which I know and can prove because we got them on tape, and sent transcripts to Ragozin. You\'re damn right his lawyer told him to clam up--my point was that it should be obvious to anyone that if I didn\'t have the goods they could have shoved it up my butt in public, and anyone with a brain can draw their own conclusions.
4. In one of the posts you didn\'t read I explained why I didn\'t sue (again). My lawyer, who is very good, explained that to win I would have to prove both that Ragzoin had prior knowledge of his employees actions, and damages on a case by case basis. If you can figure out a cost effective way to do that let me know, and I\'ll give you half the net profit from the suit.
ahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!
I should have guessed!!!!
that guy makes crist look like nostradamus!!
I guess it\'s true, what they say about birds of a feather...
I know you are, but what am I?
Hey don\'t laugh at Dave Litfin... he made a whole $500 betting on horses last year (as he claimed himself in a column).
Supe, what does handicapping have to do with taking ground and timing the races? Another wizard-like mental leap from you. HP
You don\'t think accuracy of figures (especially when there are huge discrepancies) has anything to do with handicapping? You don\'t think I should use the only available forum to defend myself against lying that\'s going on daily, nationwide?
FYI, on-line sales are up so much it\'s not funny--somebody seems to think it\'s relevant.