Jerry, if I\'m misrepresenting anything, it isn\'t intentional.  Saying you lost your temper is hardly an insult, and is borne out BY ALL THOSE CAPS TYPED IN FRUSTRATION WITH ME.  You\'re hardly the only person on earth who doesn\'t see it when they get a little past the line.  Sorry, If I\'ve gone past your lines.

I\'m not trying to make you look bad.  I\'ve expressed agreement with some of your thoughts on changing track speed.  I acknowledge that your figs fit together well and that some make money off them (if I had in my trial of them, I might be your customer).  Is that some partisan Rag agenda?

However, since this is the Kool Aid free zone where challenges are OK, I did point out that it takes faith in you to believe you can tell that the track is getting slower, then faster, then slower again from race to race without obvious changes in weather or maintenance.  I wonder how many people here are satisfied with your answer to Bit Player\'s questions on the Probability string -- I\'m not.

I can see the legitimacy of slides.  Or a track speeding (or slowing) as it dries, then drying too much and the variant reversing directions.  Call me thick, or a fundamentalist, or anything else you like, but nothing you\'ve written convinces me that there is a geological reason for a track variant to ping pong without obvious weather/maintenance changes.  I\'ll keep reading and watching for something that might.

You seem really frustrated that I\'m not sufficiently acknowledging the difficulty of trying to research the impact of changes in track moisture.  Perhaps I\'m a moron for believing that the challenges, while steeper, don\'t seem impossibly different than those involved in making decent pars to start making good figures.  I\'ve been wrong before.  But what I\'m expressing is honest disagreement, and surprise that you haven\'t tried the research, not some agenda to make you look bad.

Look, why is it so weird to you that Rag customers like me -- who are by definition skeptical about your approach -- would want you to prove your point with research?  Even if you used your own figures to demonstrate it, that would mean something to me, since I believe you have a passion for trying to perfect your figs, and I don\'t believe for a minute you would compromise the accuracy of your figs to prove your theory.  If your past performances hold up, you would adjust your figs in light of new research and tout your new improved method to the public, belittling the competition for not keeping pace.

Listen, just when I thought there was nothing new for me to read about figure making, we had this exchange, and I learned more, even if I\'m not \"converted,\" so I\'m grateful for that.  Sorry to tick you  off.  I said in our e-mail exchange where you said I\'d be welcome to post here again, I don\'t really belong here since I\'m not a customer.  Challenges understandably feel different/better coming from customers.  People like Bit & Jimbo will continue to post challenges.  Mine don\'t feel good to you.  I understand that.  Perhaps you & yours should also understand why your challenges aren\'t welcome over at the Rag site.

I\'ll say sayonara for real now and save you the energy of having to decide whether I\'m worth more effort.  If I have a question or issue, I\'ll e-mail.  The last word is yours.
Peace,
SP

I need to remember and take to heart what you said about continuing to disagree on this board after getting an explanation being a waste of time.  Thanks.

By the way, I\'ve found the attitude in person in the Rag office to be much different than what you see on the bb over there.  Given that they\'re the big name, and the constant attacks from here, I understand their public stance.  That said, I appreciate it that JB does have the discussion (at least the parts before he loses his temper) since I\'ve learned a lot from it.

Jerry, you & Jimbo often manage to make your points without calling Rag customers blind zealots and suicidal fools.

I wasn\'t trying to equate my instincts as a very recreational player with expertise gained from your full-time skilled immersion.  But the Rag staff has also been at it a long time.  As a consumer, I\'m left trying to compare two competing approaches to sampling and variant-making.

You present good arguments that tracks do change speed, but you feel you don\'t need to research how to measure the size and direction of those changes because you can infer it accurately.  How can anyone tell whether your corrections are always called for, or are worse than none at all?  All I can do is read all the arguments, try both products and then go by my instincts (and my ROI).

As for the other things I wrote, I\'m sorry -- especially after asking such good questions -- to have disappointed you with such nonsense.  No need to respond further.

Jimbo, the periodic repetitions of the Jim Jones analogy cause lots of bad vibes.  Can you refrain?

But the cult/faith analogy has validity in certain aspects.  This site has the righteous zeal of people trying to "deprogram" cult followers.  The other side is insular.  And both sides are going on faith.  "Both sides," I hear you asking?

Well if you think that JB can determine the precise extent that track speed has changed each 30-60 minutes, within a tenth of a point, as it apparently swings back and forth, changing directions from faster to slower to faster to slower (see his BC day – variant making post) without any dramatic changes in weather, and maybe not even any watering...  And if you think he is justified in dismissing the idea of statistical studies of the impact of track watering to verify his theories...  You have a lot of faith in the guy.  I was really surprised, given the sharpness of many posters here, that no one questioned Jerry on either of those.

But I can understand your faith if you're cashing a lot of tickets.  Looking at the BC graphs, JB's work looks internally consistent and predictive, too.  I may have different instincts than Jerry on which samples to use in calculating variants, but I'm not trying to be dismissive, either.

What I don't get is the dismissive attitude toward the Rag approach.  The "laws of probability say that so many horses can't go back at the same time except once in a blue moon" argument is being applied in a distorted way.  You base your figs on projections, so projections based on Rag figs must also be taken into account in analyzing whether Rag figs are also predictive.

Looking at the Distaff on Ragozin before the race, I felt that most of the field would go back.  This wasn't a random set of #s to analyze -- this was a set of past performances.  I know you share my belief that Xs are much more likely in some situations than others.  So the exercise in coming up with some abstract % of how often a set of horses "X," and then trying to judge a particular situation based on that generic %, was irrelevant.

I also looked at TG's BC figs, and found that 9 of the 10 horses in the Juvenile Fillies went back on your #s.  These were young, developing fillies pointed for the richest race many will every race in.  How often had these fillies bounced before?  Was this defying the laws of probability?  Do I question your figs on that race?  No.  Just your willingness to say Rag has no right to have a different field of horses, older females no less, going back 3 points.

I also looked at the JC Gold Cup horses that ran back in the BC.  Sun King, given a big bounce by Rag in the Gold Cup, was coming off a new top.  He had bounced almost 5 points off his last top and it took him half a year of steady racing to get close to it again.  If I were playing the Gold Cup, I'd have played SK to bounce big – that fig made sense.

Suave was coming into the GC off a 3, one point off his top.  He had bounced big off an 8 top, bigger off a pair of 8-, bounced again off a 5 top, and again off a 2 top.  The bounce to a 9 in the GC off the 3 looks appropriate on the Rag sheet.  I thought he'd run better in the BC.  Flower Alley came into the GC off three straight big efforts, the last two of which were a pair of zeros, which represented a 3-point top.   He figured to bounce big in the Gold Cup just as he did off of 3 big efforts at the start of the year.  I also played him to run well in the BC and hit the tri with him.

Borrego also figured to bounce off the 2+ (equal to his prior top) he ran right before the Gold Cup.  He had bounced off the 2+ the first time he ran it, just as he had bounced off his 5- top, and a pair of 5+ tops.  So the 5 he got in the Gold Cup also makes sense on his sheet.  I know he won big.  But what if his saddle slipped coming out of the gate.  Wouldn't that have made Suave a very impressive almost 6-length winner in that big race?

Your figs make sense on the patterns one sees on TG.  The Rag figs also make sense and are predictive, using the very different patterns one sees on Rag sheets.  Your arguments that Rag must be getting some races wrong are persuasive – the concept of changing track speed makes sense.  But it is impossible for me to imagine that with the small sample sizes you're using, and your willingness to cut races off without weather changes, that you aren't getting some races quite wrong too.  Given your belief in the impact of changing track speed, your lack of enthusiasm for the idea of rudimentary research on the impact of watering was surprising.

Back to the Kool Aid -- it is time to retire that offensive analogy.  If it were Kool Aid, we mindless, brainwashed Raggies would all be "dead" – and you'd have all our $$ by now.  And you wouldn't periodically be reading how Raggies had success in major handicapping tournaments.  It just looks like Kool Aid.  But it's really tasty, nutritious concord grape juice.  Enjoy your fresh squeezed OJ and see you at the windows.

Hey Jerry.  I actually did go and read the stuff on changing track speed and learned some from it.  I\'m not at all dismissive of it, or of your approach.  

I guess if I\'m being blind here, I\'m not going to realize my own misperception, but I\'m not trying to be dogmatic or ignore the complexities of how weather and racing surfaces interact.  Agreeing that conditions for each race may be different doesn\'t change my skepticism about anyone\'s ability to infer the precise changes in variant from race to race.  That\'s why I suggested a little statistical research to test whether cutting a race off due to watering is valid.

I understand your objections to using averages of larger samples of races run under similar, albeit, I concede, far from identical conditions.  But didn\'t you, like all figure makers, start out by generating pars from large samples of races run over many months, years, under very different conditions?

If the original pars that led to the original variants that led to the figures that enabled you to make the first projections that generated variants that eventually led to today\'s figures, projections & variants... if these were originally based on large samples with varying conditions, then couldn\'t that same \"start with a rough estimate and keep refining it\" approach be used to solve similar problems today?  (how\'s that for a sentence?!)

Might there not be something to be learned if you could find a sample of, say, 100 late afternoon, temp in the 40s Belmont fast/dry track races that took place after the day\'s first watering?  Add harrowing as a factor for analysis.  Admit that each event was unique but look for trends anyway.  You might learn that there was relatively little change from the prior race (which would reinforce Rag\'s view), learn a general trend (which would help you decide how to handle a race like the Distaff), or learn that the impact varied wildly (which would support your view that one can\'t generalize so you should continue to let horses\' past figs be the determining factor in the variant).  Maybe you could never get such a sample, but from your posts, it seems like you keep notes on track maintenance the way some guys keep trip notes.

I understand that what I\'m advocating is imprecise, but in a race like the Distaff, even the most precise fig makers are left weighing which scenario is most improbable.  Races like that, where you could have ended up with a different figure for 12 other horses if PH didn\'t run, point up the limitations of current methodology and the need to test and refine one\'s assumptions with more data.

Yes, of course Rags\' variants are also subjective because they too make projections.  They\'re not making fewer assumptions, just different ones -- assuming that changing track conditions and the part of the track that is used in the race have less impact that than you thnk they do.  My guess (feel free to call it a cop-out) is that their assumptions are generally correct on some days, and  yours are generally correct on others.  The \"tightness\" you see as verification of your approach isn\'t persuasive unless one shares your views of the consistency of equine performance.  I can\'t think of a comparison test with any validity other than my own ROI with the product.  

I appreciate any time you decide to spend on a response.  I\'m going to read it & think, and leave it at that, so we can both get back to the rest of what we do.  Thanks for an interesting discussion.

Best,
SP

Relax, Jerry.  Len\'s put up the BC #s every year for quite some time.  Not the whole sheets, just the #s run in the BC.  And since the only reason I saw Robes\' picks before the BC was that you got someone to post them on your site, for free viewing, while he was still selling them for $35, you shouldn\'t begrudge him his $5 for anyone wanting to hear the seminar after the fact.  The side jabs aren\'t necessary.

Your discussion of variant-making, however, is admirable & still educational, even after all these years.  Thanks.  And I\'m glad you appreciated my question.  I understand the answer, but the problem I have with it is that PH had no impact on how fast the fillies back behind her ran.  So if the variant for that race would be different had she been pulled up, as you say it would likely be, we\'re then moving from art/science toward the territory of educated guesswork.

Please don\'t take that as a stab.  I believe that in many races -- especially the two race cards you mentioned, or 1 turf race a day with different weather each day scenarios -- every figure maker is reduced to educated guesswork.  So I understand your digs at Raggies\' 1/4-point line-drawing on condition.  The issue is -- what data should one use to make one\'s guess more educated?

Your own answer also shows why those who say your figs are too self-fulfilling may have a case.  Your strong feeling that it would be totally improbably for the whole Distaff field except PH to run more than 3 points off their tops comes from looking at your own figs -- figs generated by tweaking the variant, albeit sometimes slightly, in almost every race.

I don\'t have your figs.  I do have Rags.  So I reviewed them to see how likely it might be for the entire field to run poorly.  On Rags, almost every filly in that field ran more than 3 points off her top in at least half her races this year.  So for all of them to do so in the same race wouldn\'t happen that often, but it certainly isn\'t unfathomable.  Especially on that particular Saturday, when most of their patterns looked to me to be iffy-to-negative.

With Rags, Xs are commonplace so I imagine they\'ll give the winner less of a jump than you, and give everyone worse figs.  But let\'s wait and see what Len posts.  You expected many in the field to \'run their race,\' so you won\'t be assigning many Xs.  Who\'s right?

For me, the most logical thing to do would be to look at Belmont days with similar weather over many seasons and see what impact that watering had in the race or two following.  I know they don\'t drive exactly the same speed in those water trucks every time, but they\'re pretty close, and if we looked at enough races, we could probably get a general view of whether & approximately how much that water mattered.  I\'m only an outsider with limited fig-making experience looking in, but to me that approach is closer to science/probability than trying to use one field\'s worth of horses\' performances to determine exactly how extremely one filly freaked or how slowly a dozen others plodded.

I could say that is why I stay with Rags.  But the real reason is just that I started with them and somehow continue to stumble into profits with them despite whatever flaws they may have.  Robes cashed two races I lost. And I presume y\'all cash many races that leave all us Raggies scratching our do Rags.  So I suspect that although you and Len passionately disagree, you\'re probably both right.

Some questions on fig methodology...  

Jerry, you've been pointing out what you see as implausible #s on Rags leading up to the BC.  Whether you're right about those specific figs or not, I'm not in position to comment since I'm on sabbatical from serious horseplaying -- the BC was only the second race card I've handicapped all year.  (maybe I should do that every year – less fun, but the ROI would be wonderful)

Anyway, your arguments against those Rag figs sounded reasonable enough to honestly give me pause, but then came a race like the Distaff, won by Shug's filly by an acre, a few races after a colt broke a rein and was pulled up.  Got me thinking...

Pleasant Home surely got a new top, probably a big new top, no?  Or did the field collapse behind her?  Both a rest-of-field collapse and a big new top?  How can we tell?  On Rags, almost the whole field had iffy to bad patterns, but the winner was forward moving in general.  Problem (for me) was that she had short rest coming off a top – I didn't play her.  

OK, back to your fig methodology...  Imagine for a minute that Pleasant Home broke a rein coming out of the gate and was pulled up.  If the rest of the field ran poorly, as the runaway winner may make things appear on your figs, how would you have known without the runaway winner?

You argued in your pre-BC posts something like \'how could a horse get a worse figure destroying a top GR I field than someone else did running second in a lowly allowance field?\'  Well, if Shug\'s filly were pulled up early in the race, that would have still left 12 of America's top fillies & mares, all pointed for the richest race of the season... so wouldn't you have been in the position of needing to infer some change of track speed so that the "winner" (in real life, the filly who actually ran 2nd) would get a better fig -- the decent fig it takes to defeat a field of America's top females?  Or would the absence of Pleasant Home not made any difference in the # you assigned for others in the race?

I'm genuinely interested in your response – I know these issues aren't easy, you've thought a lot about this, you score plenty using your figs, and I'm sure there are plenty of times you are right about changing track speed.  Slides, I'd bet happen often.  But jump shifts without weather/maintenance shifts... well, let's see your response.

Jerry, sorry you had a rough day – and I'm glad at least some of your customers had a good one.  At least on BC days, there's more than enough in the pools for all of us.

Best,
SP

My request to be let back on???  You invited me here with a good-natured quasi-friendly post entitled \"Hey Plever.\"  And when I tried to post, I had no problem at all -- my old bb account from a few years ago was still there and valid.  No request was needed, and this time around, I would not have made one.  

However, since I was trying to avoid the old hostility and offer an apology, I did e-mail your office seeking a new user name (SP) instead of the provocative one I had used on that one post a few years ago (\"The one you love to hate\"). I was glad Paul was willing to make that change. But it seems that the old user name is still pretty accurate, eh?

I\'ll let readers decide whether it was appropriate for you, after my first post on this string, to start trying to use me to provide ammunition against the Raggies, and whether casting you as Lucy was unfair -- damning evidence of whatever \"my nature\" is.  If I had it to do over again, my response to your question would have been \"Go hire your own consultant -- I smell it coming, I\'m outtahere.\"  And now I am.

In my first post, I had written: \"I don't see objectionable things in your recent posts. Just jousting over variant theory and quality control,\" so I was already on record agreeing that criticizing your competition\'s methodology & practice is not in and of itself foul play, and that you had not in recent posts done so in an objectionable way.

As for letting some things go, there\'s no other way to have civil dialogue with folks one disagrees with and dislikes.  I\'m letting things go too and it isn\'t easy for me either, but it beats the alternative.  This is a good place to let go of this exchange altogether.

Nice try on the rhetorical question approach.  The issue -- in general and in this particular dispute -- always was and will be the manner in which people \"hold up to public scrutiny one\'s competition\'s policies, products and public utterances.\"  Is it done with accuracy, fairness, and a frequency and intensity suitable to the alleged grievances?  Is it done with professional integrity or out of personal malice?

Everyone in this dispute has problems with everyone else\'s personal attacks.  Claiming the other party to have cast the first stone has proven as productive here as it has in acheiving justice and peace in the Mid East.

You just wrote a post entitled something like \"I know I shouldn\'t...\"  You were right.  If you truly want a decrease or even ultimately an end to personal attacks, stop making them even in response.  You can defend your reputation more effectively in other ways -- ways that don\'t reinforce the negative things being posted about you.

On the other hand, if you want the insult war to heat up again either for personal reasons or because you think the increased attention level will boost sales, hey, you have the right and ability to do so, but don\'t expect too many people to buy into the victim schtick.  And don\'t expect me to come each time you call \"hey.\"

Obviously I was not trying to be stealthy – I have perused here on some recent occasions, and did so to see what was drawing the previously isolationist CC into the fray.  I gotta say, even though I'm now reading a very small sample, I don't see objectionable things in your recent posts.  Just jousting over variant theory and quality control -- no name-calling, no lawyers, no sins from 18 years ago left on base.

In fact, the air of jihad is refreshingly absent here and your own product is more front and center.  By the way, I think some of the extras in your product (I also peeked at the sample put up by TGAB today) are good innovations that I would use in my handicapping, if only they weren't based on figures I totally don't trust.
 
Anyway, the reason I'm posting is that I appreciate that you took my Rag-board post in good humor, but I nonetheless want to apologize.  Given the history of bad blood, I should have let pass the opportunity for humor at your expense.  I'm glad that reading posts here no longer is a risk to my blood pressure, but I won't be here often.  At this point, I log onto the Rag site more out of habit than anything else – I don't get to handicap enough (maybe 15 races so far this year, sigh) to feel so much connection.  Maybe when I quit teaching and the kids get older...

I am much more of a passionate and involved foodie than horseplayer at this point.  And on the all-important pink fowl issue, I am solidly with you.  I eat all the sashimi I can afford and enjoy my meat quite juicy.  But half-raw duck?  Yuck.  Was the poor drake to be served as by overpriced "food stylists" on this side of the Atlantic -- with a mango-wasabe-goat-cheese-pesto flan surrounded by artfully arranged lavender petals and shavings of clove cigarette butts? Give me a fully-roasted duck from a Chinatown window, hacked with a cleaver and eaten out of the to-go package with no other embellishment than Chinese spiced salt any old day.  Just don't do this over your keyboard or your variants will slide right off the chart.

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