Stop The Presses - Part II

[TGJB]

For those of you who are wondering what Friedman\'s \"To Unbridled\" post was about-- the following was put up last night on the Ragozin board, and taken down this morning, and Len is \"responding\". Neither I nor anyone in this office wrote the post or is Unbridled or the person he refers to. I had to do a search to find out what a \"Krontstadt Moment\" was.



Robes,
I usually avoid discussing figure-making in my posts, preferring to leave this subject to the guys in the office, but your response to Classhandicapper about how you adjust the figures of certain horses individually in slow-pace races has created a stir off-line that is filling up my email box. I\'m surprised there has not been more discussion here. So I beg your indulgence.
 
  Tongue only half in cheek, one friend of mine is calling this practice \"a Kronstadt moment\" (whatever that means) and, twinkle in eye, is calling himself \"utterly appalled.\" Here are some of his points, copied by me from his email:
 
  \"1: How many customers actually knew he was adjusting figures individually in this manner? I\'d bet almost none knew. Hell, Classhandicapper didn\'t know, and he\'s been around a long time, and he\'s completely obsessed with this subject.
 
  2: The ones who didn\'t know? Guess what: If they were adjusting the figures themselves for slow paces, then they were adjusting an already-adjusted number: double counting, in other words.
 
  3: Yes, I know about the \"adjusted\" symbol, but one can adjust a race (cutting it loose of the others) as well as a horse. What\'s happening here is different. In effect the final time/groundloss/weight result is being rewritten in accordance with a pace theory put forward by the same people who spent years denouncing pace theory.
 
  4: The last time I heard a genuine pace theory from the Ragozin Sheets, it was that pace was unimportant. They ignored it. Now they understand pace so well that they can adjust figures individually for its effects? Something seem wrong about this?
 
  5: Are they adjusting by formula? If so, where on earth did they get this formula, which has eluded people who have been studying pace much of their lives?
 
  6: Or are they adjusting by looking at the previous figures of the horses? In other words, how much of these adjustments is rooted in the previous figures of the horses supposedly harmed by today\'s slow pace?
 
  7: Are they adjusting at all tracks and class levels, or is this mainly a major-track, let\'s-smooth-out-the-lines-of-some-Grade-One-closers thing?
 
  8: If someone wants to make his own pace adjustments, how, short of a major project, does he go about de-pacing the adjusted Sheet number?
 
  9: Why are the posters over there collectively imitating corpses on this subject?\"

[P-Dub]

They give out \"quit\" figures?? What the hell is that.

So if they run a mile, and a horse \"quits\" after 6 furlongs, he adjusts the figure to what the horse ran up to the point of \"quitting\"??

Am I reading this correctly??

Here\'s my favorite quote of the year:

\"Making these corrections is a skill based on decades of experience and analysis.\"

[richiebee]

\"All truth passes through three stages:

First it is ridiculed.

Then it is violently opposed.

Finally, it is accepted as self evident.\"

Arthur Schopenhouer
German Philosopher
1788- 1860

[smalltimer]

Artie was quite the little philosopher.

[TGJB]

Okay, Friedman has given a couple more non-answers about the adjustment-within-a-slow-paced-race-nonsense. So let me make a point here.

The relationships between horses in a race, in figure terms, are fixed, as anyone who makes figures knows. For Beyer they are fixed by beaten lengths, for those of use who make performance figures, also by weight and ground loss. This is the one unbreakable rule.

And that\'s even MORE true with \"Slow Pace\" races. By definition, in those cases you are not using the final time, because the pace of the race made it impossible for horses to run as fast as they ordinarily would. So what do you use? THE HORSES. It\'s all you have. You use the relationships between the horses to try and figure out what happened-- the winner runs a lot of 5\'s, and if we give him that let\'s see if the second horse gets the 7 he usually runs, etc. But that, of course, depends on those relationships being solid-- the winner ran 2 points better than the second horse, on down the line.

So what Friedman is saying is this-- we are going to figure out what the horses would (should) have run, base the relationships on that, THEN do a figure for the race. OR, we will do the race based on the actual relationships, which we think are wrong, then change the figures for individual horses to make them come out better.

This is from a guy who on several occasions has falsely accused me of \"giving them whatever figure I wanted to\". Which you can\'t do unless you do exactly what those guys are now doing, and what I have never done-- break the mathematically fixed relationships within a race.

Len, prove me wrong. Give us an example of a race you adjusted, go through the method you used to come up with the figures, which people PAY for. If there really is a formula, instead of Ragozin\'s ego making the decision that he can figure out what every horse is GOING to run, show us how it works, WHAT IT\'S BASED ON, and what it came up with in one race. You guys went to great lengths to explain your methodology in Ragozin\'s book, you should want to do this.

And show us some races that are not stakes, or at NY, Cal or the other big circuits, where you did this-- it\'s even worse if you do it for some races but not others.