Okay Alydar, here is your quote, \"Ragozin makes use of claiming race averages when trying to determine how fast horses were EXPECTED to run today. Do you trust these averages?\"  Now, was it an exaggeration to say that you don\'t believe in averages for figure making?  Maybe a little, but not much (if these averages don\'t work then what averages do work?).

Look, both sides have been guilty of exaggerating the other\'s position, and I will try to put a stop to it on my part, as it really does not advance the discussion.  The point was that we cannot seriously discuss standard deviations in regards to JB\'s numbers, when JB acknowledges that many of his numbers are generated, not based on a statistical analysis of a large number of data points, but based on assuming that horses tend to pair up their numbers in a particular race.

I have never said that JB is necessarily \"wrong\" in his methodology. If we all accept that there are \"some\" races that cannot be accurately determined by establishing a variant through statistical analysis, then JB\'s method is as good as any, maybe better for those races.  I am just skeptical at the number of times these conditions exist, and that it works in the long run.

I am sure the tight line issue has given everyone a headache by now.  I guess JB believes he has \"destroyed\" my argument.  I don\'t seem to recall that.  But, in any event, everyone\'s position is clear, so I don\'t see a lot of point beating that dead horse on a theoretical level.  I do think it was helpful seeing the Wood and what happened afterward.  For one thing, part of the tight line issue comes from the pure visual presentation and difference in scales between the products, which has absolutely nothing to do with figure making.

Alydar, I don\'t really understand your problem. Do you really think I am trying to harm JB\'s business?  (If you need assurance, I am not.)   Is this some epic moral battle?  JB has seemed to be able to handle his own in defending his actions and decisions relative to Ragozin.  I think it is a little disingenuous for him to compare his actions to Porsche improving on the Model T, when he previously worked for Ragozin.  I stand by that.  But, based on what he has said, it seems pretty clear that he did nothing unlawful (and even if he did, the statute of limitations ran out long ago). So, personally, I don\'t plan to discuss that issue anymore.

I am not sure how you can conclude that the vast majority of Ragozin\'s numbers are not within 2 standard deviations, as you do not know the mean and you do not know the standard deviation.  Further, you certainly cannot conclude that JB\'s numbers are within 2 standard deviations because, as many have told me on this board,  TG users do not believe in averages in relation to figure making, so I don\'t know how they can believe in standard deviations? (I don\'t recall JB making such an extreme statement, but other\'s certainly have.)

Speaking of exaggeration, nobody ever contended that JB \"forces his numbers into tight patterns.\"  That is a straw man argument invented by the TG folks to attack the actual criticism.  The actual criticism is not that JB goes back and forces tight patterns. The criticism is that everytime JB senses an \"anomoly\" he makes the numbers come out the way he subjectively thinks they should have come out based on the patterns of the horses in that particular race.  On this point, I don\'t think I am exaggerating.  This necessarily results in tighter patterns, particularly with horses who have run few races, such as young 3 year-olds.  If you have faith in JB\'s ability to do that, you should be a TG user.

Go to JB\'s sheets of the Wood that he posted.  Then subtract a few points from the Wood number that he claims Ragozin got wrong.  If you do this, you are likely to conclude that this debate is kind of pointless because there can be no \"proof.\"  I can make the case  that based on the numbers that followed to the end of the year and subsequent years, the numbers make more sense on several horses if you did subtract the points. What does that prove?  Not much. To me, it proves what I have always contended, that there is no way to determine the truly \"correct number\" and there is really no way to tell whether an incorrect number would make a sheet fall apart in the long run, so you should go with who uses a methodology you trust is correct the majority of the time, not on one particular race.

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.

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.

Though I don\'t look at trainer stats, I do look at how a horse has trained up to a race off a layoff.  As to your point that they are usually shorts odds, that is not my experience.  People tend not to bet on horses coming off of a layoff, particularly when there are other horses in the race that have run well recently.  It depends on the race and it depends on how the racing form shows that prior number.  I have gotten a good price on many of these types of horses.

My comment on timeform is not silly.  Ragozin\'s European numbers are extremely accurate and have made for some very good scores in the Breeder\'s Cup, particularly in the pick 6s.  But they only make such numbers for days like the BC, probably because it is too much work and not enough demand.  Though you cannot get anything as accurate as such numbers from the Timeforem rating alone, you can get a good approximation, as they seem to be better than Beyer numbers.  The approximation can tell you if a horse is competitive, too slow, or much faster than the U.S. competition.  And because people like you don\'t know how to make such an approximation, and don\'t seem to really care to learn, those who do know how can bet competitive horses at good prices and throw out the short price one\'s that are too slow.

I have a good Belmont story.  I have a friend whom I work with who is not a big gambler but likes horse racing.  He and his wife were at home and decided to bet the Belmont.  They were going to bet $20.00.  He chose an exacta including Perfect Drift.  His wife chose a $5.00 Sarava/Medaglio D\'Oro exacta box (primarily based on the names of the horses).  

My friend knew from me that you could bet on the internet, but he had only been to Santa Anita.  So, he went to the Santa Anita site, which links to xpressbet.  He openend the account for $20.00.  He then realized that xpressbet did not have the Belmont.  So, he made a random bet at Penn National and won $33.00, instead of the $5,000.00 he (actually his wife) would have won had he gone to tvg or youbet instead.

Well, for analyzing the question of whether your sheet would collapse if we deducted 2-3 points from the Wood, I don\'t see how it matters what the Ragozin sheets show.

I don\'t really care about \"the Freak\'s\" picks, but I disagree with your analysis on which horse\'s the sheets provide valuable information.  

First, on a horse coming off a layoff.  I never look at trainer stats, but when a two year-old runs a good number first time out and then comes back off a layoff as a 3 year old, they often move forward.  I make money on these plays all the time (though this one was not a great price). You cannot make this play if you don\'t know what number the horse ran at 2.

Second, on Euro horses.  It is not that hard to approximate timeform ratings into sheet numbers.  Thus, you can often make good money either throwing out horses or using horses by comparing the timeform ratings to the sheet numbers.  That horse\'s timeform ratings made it very competitive in that race at a good price.

Thank you for posting the Wood, which I find very helpful in this discussion.  I have not had time to look at it closely yet, but can you tell me how big the point different was between you and Ragozin that day?  In other words, how much would I have to deduct from each point in the Wood from your sheets if you had used Ragoznin\'s variant?

I don\'t remember him saying that he hit the tris for $2.00.  Cut that in half, and wow, it works out.

10 to 1 says you cannot do so without multiple ad hominem attaks.

Also, if we want to advance this discussion any, why doesn\'t JB post some sheets from the last several years and identify races where the variant was changed for anomolies. If we then look at all of the horses who ran in those races over a period of time, maybe we can have a concrete discussion instead of an abstract one, where all of us \"idiots\" who do not believe that tight lines prove accurate numbers are simply termed idiots or, the nicer way of putting, \"those who just don\'t understand what it means to make figures.\" We can start with the the Wood from a couple of years ago that JB keeps bringin up.

My point is that you and Alydar keep saying if you are wrong about the numbers adjusted for anomolies, you will not get tight patterns.  Thus, as you accuse Ragozin of failing to adjust for anomolies, the same would be true.  My point is that there are several tracks and types of races where Ragozin\'s patterns look very \"tight.\"  Further, though I can only say this through my own experience, the patterns on Ragozin have generally gotten less \"tight\" over the last 10 years.  This to me is easily explained by the changes in horse racing.  But if Ragozin\'s numbers being all over the place is due to their inability to get the variant correct, and not due to the horses, then why is this phenomenon seem recent and why does it only affect certain tracks?

Yes, I believe that averages used correctly are the most accurate way of determining variants.  That is the core of this debate.  If you don\'t believe in them, then you are only left with the TG methodology, so obviously you should use TG.

I think of \"bad rails\" the same way I think of changing track speeds on the same day, they happen, but nearly as often as people think.

I can\'t argue that any of these \"anomolies\" don\'t exist.  But if I take seriously everything you say, then I would buy nobody\'s sheets because they really just made up.  The real question is how often does this stuff happen and how do you know it happened.  When JB adjusts for anomolies, I would guess that sometimes he is right, sometimes he is wrong, and the same with Ragozin.

One inaccurate number for all horses in a race may or may not show up through examination. It depends on the types of horses, how they run the next time, and how \"inaccurate\" the number is.  Further, what if the \"real\" number is somewhere in between the Ragozin and Thorograph number.  More importantly, we always have these debates about a particular day that just occurred, thus it is impossible to see if what you are saying is true.  That is why it wouled be necessary to look at a number of sheets over the last three years and have JB point out where he adjusted for \"anomolies\" and then maybe we could see what happened.

I\'ll close by asking you and JB a question.  I live in So. Cal. and own a couple of horses.  I can tell you that horse racing today is not the same as it was even 5 years ago.  More horses are souped up on steroids and god knows what elese (mostly legally).  This makes horses run big efforts, sustain them for a small period of time and then fall apart.  They cannot fill any races here other than maiden races.  Thus, seeing sheets that show horses doing crazy things at the major tracks corresponds with I see happening to racing.  (I won\'t name anybody on this board, but I would be interested in seeing the TG sheets for a couple of trainers in So. Cal.)

Why is it that Ragozin\'s sheets for mid-level claiming races at small tracks where horses run every two weeks have much more consistent running lines?  Are only the big tracks \"variable\" in major cities?  Why is that when I started betting in the early \'90s did the Ragozin sheets look much smoother?  Did these track issues only surface recently?

1.  I really don\'t have a problem with you providing analysis.  It takes a long time to become a proficient sheet user and this is obviously a service to some of your customers.  I do have a problem with comparing your analsyis to Friedman\'s, as they are done for different purposes and are irrelevant in any event to the determining the quality of the sheets.

2.   I am not saying that $1,000 was not enough for the contest.  My point was that unless you spent half your money on the Belmont in the contest, you were unlikely to hit that trifecta.  On Belmont day, it was worth spending several hundred dollars to hit that trifecta.  (As one who got cheap and shaved a few horses off of the top of my tri, I wish I had bet a little more).

3.  I believe you on Sarava.  Some Ragozin people did not think he had a positive pattern. I liked it more than others, and thought he had a good shot to hit the board.  But many here keep missing the point.  The key to that race was not Sarava per se, but in confidently throwing out War Emblem completely and being very negative on Proud Citizen.  I will agree that Friedman did not make these comments, but that was my reading of the sheets. That only left about 6 horses who had any chance to finish in the tri, Sarava being one of them.  Also, as Sarava was the best value in the race (Perfect Drift ended up being no value), I bet him to win.

4.  The ROI comment was lame because, the tri was a $15,000 one.  Further, it is a generalization that minimizes the value of the sheets.  In some races, you have a strong horse that you bet to win and key in exotics.  Those races obviously have the best chance of hitting and certaily a more predictable ROI.  Some races, are races like the Belmont where you throw out an even money favorite in an 11 horse field.  There, you may bet dozens of races before you hit one.  If your only point was that stating that you hit a tax ticket does not mean you made money, then we are agreed.

5.   I don\'t disagree, but it is often also true that the series of efforts is the reason for the excuse.  As an owner of a few horses over the years, if a horse is sore, it not unusual to stumble at the start.  

6.  Well, this debate keeps shifting.  I will reiterate that I don\'t see any point in determining who are better handicapers.  We are trying to determine who makes better sheets.  By constantly criticizing Ragozin\'s methodology, you are arguing that his sheets are not a good handicapping tool and yours are better.  That is how this contest started.  My point is that the Ragozin Sheets did very well that day.  I am open to comparing TG\'s when they are posted.  Also, I would be interested in hearing other TG\'s users big scores on the day and their reasons for playing them, as I really do not know whether Ragozin patterns work the same with Thorograph.

It not only shows how hard it is to pick winners in advance, but how stupid it is as well.  I still want someone to tell me who picking winners benefits?  Well, I will answer it:  lazy handicappers and self-promoters.