Rags to Riches: "Chuckles won't have me to kick around any more."

[BitPlayer]

http://www.drf.com/news/article/93176.html

[fkach]

What a shame. :-(

[Chuckles_the_Clown2]

Thanks bit, I\'ve been busy and missed that til just now.

I\'m not the least bit surprised, though I am disappointed. I really wanted another crack or two at that Belmont Stakes number.

She went out a loser and was good for at least one more cash.

CtC

BitPlayer Wrote:
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> http://www.drf.com/news/article/93176.html

[TGJB]

CTC-- you had several \"cracks at that Belmont number\". Like, every time Hard Spun and Curlin ran the rest of the year, among others.

[Chuckles_the_Clown2]

With all due respect, any Belmont Stakes is about impossible to figure and last year\'s was all the more difficult.

I\'m not prepared to acquiesce that Curlin and Hard Spun\'s Belmont\'s were representative. Hard Spun was right with the leaders to 10 poles crawling 25 second quarters all the way around and then stopped like he was shot. If Curlin and Hard Spun had been able to come into the Belmont with Rag\'s rest, they would have beaten her by daylight and then they\'d have to both been assigned Negative 5\'s.

Lears Princess was a TFig 3 horse or thereabouts that year. Rags certainly didn\'t run back to the assigned Belmont Fig in the Gazelle. I know some will say \"oh she ran hurt and didn\'t give it her all.\"

Horses run through pain every time they race and the best ones run harder through it.





Rags ran one more race and TGJB Wrote:
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> CTC-- you had several \"cracks at that Belmont
> number\". Like, every time Hard Spun and Curlin ran
> the rest of the year, among others.

[congaree1]

This guy has some serious problems.Does it really matter, what the # was? Retire to bingo, i am sure that is what kind of player you are anyway.

[basket777]

Am I wrong but what Chuckles wrote is exactly how we handicap.  Ie if they had rest they could ,should have won. If she wasn\'t hurt she would have run a better fig. 0\'s have a tendency to make filly\'s ouchy. These are called betting opportunities.

Thanks  for letting us know why we us the numbers

[Favorite Trick]

A chuckles if you expect rags to run harder when she hurt than cant u say u should expect Curlin and Hard Spun to run harder when their a little tired.Next stop for Rags to Riches is the Hall of Fame.Next stop for Chuckles is Hall of Shame.

[TGJB]

CTC-- last year\'s Belmont evidently was tough to figure for YOU. As I said at the time (and I posted the sheets, you can go back and find them), it fit together very well, both within the race and with the day. It was a no-brainer. Leave figure making to the figure makers.

As I recall Hard Spun did not run his race (figure), but it looked worse than it was due to a wide trip.

And for those of us who use TG and made large bets on Lear\'s Princess when she beat RTR GETTING WEIGHT, it\'s going to be tough to convince us the figures were wrong.

[Chuckles_the_Clown2]

The point wasn\'t that Rags was not \"figure handicapping\" positioned to take advantage of \"Off-Race\" colts.

In hindsight, I believe that is precisely what happened. However, I don\'t think Jerry believes the colts Off-Raced at all.

My interpretation is that the colts did Off-Race and thus calculating Rags Belmont Stakes figure as a Career Top off \"representative\" races by the colts was an error.

I did state Post Belmont that you would not see Rags run negative again...and you didn\'t. She ran a number in the Gazelle I stated she would and its a shame we didn\'t get other opportunities to wager on subsequent races she entered.

Among fillies a 2 is a pretty good number, but she was not in a league of her own.





basket777 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Am I wrong but what Chuckles wrote is exactly how
> we handicap.  Ie if they had rest they could
> ,should have won. If she wasn\'t hurt she would
> have run a better fig. 0\'s have a tendency to make
> filly\'s ouchy. These are called betting
> opportunities.
>
> Thanks  for letting us know why we us the numbers

[fkach]

I have no opinion on the Belmont figure, but there is a difference between getting a speed figure right and giving out a figure that reflects the ability of horses well. It\'s a subtle difference (that many don\'t comprehend) that is at the core of many of the figure disagreements that have been debated here over the years.  

The Belmont pace was pretty slow, they horses finished quite fast, and it was the only 2 turn race of the day.

Even if the time fit well with the rest of the day, I don\'t think that makes it certain that the horses ran fast for 12F. What is clear is that they ran very well. That was clarified further by looking at subsequent results.

That\'s probably not the point Chuckles has been making. He seems to think they didn\'t run fast or well. On 1 of the 2, he is clearly wrong and he could easily be wrong on both.

[miff]

JB said:

\"The Pyro thing is really screwy.From another post it sounds like they did it as a \"pace\" race and still gave him a new top, which is the same nonsense they did with last year\'s Blue Grass. Hard to believe\"


JB,

The problem with slow races that get fast figs is that fig makers have to give slower horses faster numbers then they ran too. Remember, in very slow paced races they usually sprint only the last quarter and a far superior horse cannot run that far away from an inferior horse in that short distance. The result in that scenario shows beaten lengths closer than normal, giving a slower horse the benefit of not having been run away from as far as in a normal race.

There is no justification for a slow race (adjusted) to get anything but a true slow fig regardless of what a horse normally runs.Slow is slow is slow!!

Mike

[fkach]

Miff,

I agree with you in a theoretical sense, but that\'s because we are advanced enough to understand the implications of a slow pace on the final time. If the figure maker assigns a slow figure, some horse players are going to think the best horses ran poorly and then question the figure maker for that reason. I think figure makers that sell their work are sometimes in a difficult psoition. ;-)  

The other problem is that it\'s very difficult to seperate the impact of pace from the impact of track speed.

If the track just happened to have changed speeds for a slow paced race, it\'s hard to know how much the change in speed impacted the fractions relative to the final time (remember it doesn\'t always change in a uniform way around the whole surface), how much the pace impacted the final time etc...

It really turns the whole thing into a guess even if you are quite advanced in these pace and figure issues.

I sort of disregard the figures for slow paced races and make a subjective evaluation of how well I think the horses ran based on the quality of the field and how well they ran relative to each other given their trips.

[miff]

Fkach,

I understand, but in evaluating races, I am only concerned with how FAST they run. How WELL people think a horse ran is way too subjective for my small brain.Determining track speed on the average day is fairly easy, it\'s the tricky days where problems crop up re track speed.

To oversimplify it, on the average day when the Gr 1\'s crawl around the track(as we have seen a few times on poly or the Belmont) the horses ran slow, period, and the figures should reflect that with the proper notation. It is way too subjective for fig makers to toss the clock just because they choose not to give fast horses slow figs.


Mike