i read this article in wired last weekend. outside of the massive handle and numerous attempts to devise computer driven models, the thing that was most startling was the \"130 factors\" which were arbitrarily relied upon to construct a morning line. moreover, the happy valley race course only has supposedly 1,200 horses stabled in the area. does anybody know why the hong kong jockey club won\'t have more dates, either there or in sha tin?

TGJB or TGAB,
i just got back from tampa so i\'m sorry i couldn\'t ask you sooner. i was wondering how you would have interpreted Ponche\'s Image\'s line. i keyed him underneath the top three choices and lost. otherwise the day wasn\'t bad thanks to fafnir later on the card. i\'ll say one thing, new york tracks aren\'t the ones in need of video lottery terminals. it\'s kind of sad to see such thin fields on saturdays down there.

by the way, i always wanted to ask you a question about ground loss versus individual horses\' running styes. i ran into alan upstate two years ago and asked about a NWX1 horse (it may have been Rate Base) who seemed to be getting sucked along to fourth and fifth-palce finishes. however, he had earned some very competitive figures, which were concealed due to the fact that he\'d been running wide quite frequently. he was something like 20-1 that day, despite his good numbers and ran out. however, alan said he wouldn\'t play him, citing prior disappointments.
i was curious to know at what point one gives up on such horses? do either of you, or anybody else out there, look at figures earned on certain part of the tracks, maybe similarly to the way another poster mentioned that figures should be interpreted by track surface and specific tracks? i\'m not talking about track biases presumably affecting all horses, but horses always preferring to be wide (e.g. young horses off the rail).
also, trainers for instance, especially in california, are generally hesitant about horses starting from the one post... is there anything you guys do to determine whether or not certain horses aren\'t benefitting from 1w1w notations and may perhaps prefer to be 3w3w, for instance?
thanks
(remember www.abebooks.com!)

sounds like a good idea.i don\'t know who would be the best choice as far as broadcasters. the espn people do a creditable job, but their not like martin and cantey on WOR. (i think they may have been pre-empted by kiner\'s corner on occasion).

in any event, if, according to today\'s ny post (page six), the fox network can present celebrity boxing (tanya harding vs. amy fisher...is this legally possible?) than i think turning primetime tv into a national pick six tournament is not only feasible, but a much better alternative for the masses.

assuming heston isn\'t around, maybe you should be a consultant, TGJB. but i don\'t know about monster\'s ball. the idea of one having to overcome a racist background in order to have sex with halle barry is a little farfetched.

what chapter in the book is beyer\'s study? there are chapters devoted to australia, sartin, trips/pace, and exotic wagering...but i can\'t recall anything about a weight and figure study.

i also don\'t remember him talking about sheet methodology in a very favorable light. i think that he mentioned that horses aren\'t susceptible to some form of \"determinism\" after efforts, but that subsequent poor performances were more a function of biases/pace/trips.

just out of curiousity, would you say that he has become more receptive to certain sheet concepts (i.e. form cycles/bounces), or does he still kind of view these ideas as some weird calvinistic notions?
(regardless of whether he\'s on amphetamines or not)

by the way isn\'t jimmy stewart the lawyer to whom you\'re referring in \"anatomy of a murder\"?