Fear And Disorientation In Las Vegas

[TGJB]

                     


      I've made about 100 appearances on TV, but all of them were taped, meaning if I screwed up I got a do-over. Like a lot of people, I'm nervous about speaking in public, so I avoid public appearances and live TV—I have enough stress in my life. The last (and only) appearance I've made in front of people for Thoro-Graph was a NYOTB seminar in 1994.

     So when the DRF asked me to appear at their expo, in front of about 200 people, with Friedman and Beyer (who have done lots of these), on a panel that was being taped for a DVD, I was a little nervous. But I had to go, because it was the only time I would ever be able to get Friedman in my sights, in public, where he couldn't delete the questions. Which means the stakes were pretty high, and the stress level incredible.

    I hadn't been in Vegas in 20 years, and it was pretty jaw-dropping. Also disorienting—we were at the Paris, where the entire ceiling of the huge ground floor is painted realistically to look like the late afternoon sky. Whether it was 8 in the morning or midnight, it was 4:30 in the afternoon, and trying to keep time zones,  post times and meal times straight had me all screwed up—between that and the stress I was a wreck. I learned that the human body can produce an incredible amount of adrenalin, and that a person can have an elevated heart beat for 48 hours straight (and the better part of 2 weeks) and not die.

    Maury Wolff was moderating my panel, and I had two 45 minute conversations with him in the weeks leading up to it. He appeared to have a grasp of the material and no axe to grind—he gave me an idea of what ground he was going to cover, which included questions about which figures were tough to do, and whether track speed remained constant, and how you know your speed chart was accurate. I told him that was good, because I wanted to get into the baby races at Keeneland, and I had prepared a whole presentation showing definitively that tracks changed speed during the day, and the relationships between distances (one and two turn races) were not constant. I had made a whole power point (slide show) presentation about it with some ground breaking stuff, and I sent it to him.

    Which brings us to the panel itself, which was by far the most stressful experience of my life. It went by in a blur, and technically I probably ended up with amnesia (for real)—I was on auto-pilot, and remembered very little when it was over. Hours later I started to remember bits and pieces, and have continued to pick up pieces in the days since. I'll be interested in seeing the DVD to see all of what I and the others had to say, but on balance I don't really have a sense of how it played.

What I do remember—

1—Ten minutes before the panel, Wolff informed me that he would not be asking a question about track speeds, but I could use my (long) presentation as closing remarks. I was screwed—it left me in the position of bringing the subject up out of the blue, which made it an attack on Ragozin (Friedman) rather than a response to a position they were taking.

2—Wolf didn't ask the question about difficult figures to do. In fact, I don\'t remember him asking ANY questions that brought out differences in the way Ragozin and I do figures. All the focus was on the differences between (Beyer) speed figures and performance figures, which left Friedman and me in general agreement about most things. Wolff appeared to want to keep things nice—then  he finished with the question part and wanted to move to closing remarks, which left it to me to bring up the question of the Keeneland 2yo races, again making me the aggressor.

3—But when we got to those Keeneland races, which Ragozin makes and Andy and I know not to make, I made an amazing discovery. I had assumed Len had just been evasive when I brought up the issue here previously. I was wrong—he really has no clue, and in response to my questions (I came back at him a second time), he brought up the 4 ½ furlong races at Timonium (they are actually 4f), saying it wasn\'t hard to make 4 1/2f figures.

     Len, look—it doesn't matter that those Keenland races are 4 1/2f, they could be 6f and the issues would be the same. The point is this—ALL of us who make figures do so using the previous figures of the horses to judge the track speed. In the case of the Keeneland baby races, there is no way to judge track SPEED day to day—the only horses who race over THAT course are first time starters, and you can't use the surrounding races because the other horses  race over a DIFFERENT track. You also have the additional problem of being unable to set up an accurate SPEED CHART to begin with, both because proven older horses don't race the distance, and because it's a downhill course, unlike the other distances run at the track. You can try to extrapolate by looking at other tracks that have pitched chutes, but you have no way of knowing the degree to which the situations (and the distances run downhill) vary, among other variables. Those Timonium races you brought up couldn't be more different—they are run over the MAIN track, which is FLAT, by OLDER horses as well as 2 year olds, so it's easy to do figures. There ain't no such thing as accurate figures for those Keenland races-- it\'s a pure guess.

4—And then it really hit the fan. Wolff said "Now we'll have closing remarks, and Jerry Brown has a presentation," and I was stuck with a 20 slide show with comments about a subject that hadn't come up, to an audience that had sat through a lot and wanted to ask questions. When you look at the slides you will see that this was indeed groundbreaking stuff, and a lot of people were interested. But a lot were not, too, and I can't really blame them—they got restless, and a few got rowdy, including one asshole  pace-figure maker who was not even a paying customer, and should have had more consideration since he had been on 2 panels himself. We had words at the cocktail party later. Wolff, of course, said not a word to help out, and several people walked out.

5—I'll give Friedman this—his response to the final question asked was great, and I hope they got it because they were running out of tape. A guy asked why us sheet guys didn't tell him in our product who to bet, like Beyer did when he picked Cajun Beat. Len was the most eloquent and animated I've ever seen him, describing the way we all feel when we sit down to handicap a card, trying to figure out the answers for ourselves, and how much he loved it. He was great.

     Anyway, lots of people came up to me afterward telling me how much they liked it, and several said I shot myself in the foot at the end, which I knew, but Wolff had painted me into a corner. Two separate scientists (a chemist and a physicist) came up and told me the slide presentation was the only science anyone presented. If you check it out you will see that it definitely and conclusively proves once and for all that the two assumptions upon which Ragozin figures are based—that the track doesn't change speed unless something extraordinary happens, and that the relationships between distances are fixed—are completely false. Check it out at

http://www.drf.com/expo/powerpoint

We'll be posting it in the archives section of our site soon as well. The DRF version starts with info about the Donaldson book, which I used for my opening, and which you've seen already here, before moving to the science.

You\'ll need Microsoft Powerpoint or the FREE Powerpoint viewer to access the presentation.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.aspx?displaylang=en&categoryid=9


     As I said, I look forward to seeing the DVD, thought I'm sure I'll be cringing at the end. And oh yeah—Steve Crist (who should have moderated the panel) had a good line at the closing banquet. He said they were a room short, so Len and I were sharing one.

     Anyway, I survived.

[Thehoarsehorseplayer]

Hey, I\'m sure you did well.
The reason is that you\'re a likeable guy, sincere and accessible. And I\'m sure those qualities manifested themselves in your presentation.
You know, I got the hoarseness in my nickname the hoarsehorseplayer from screaming matches (well, usually written screaming matches) with many of the illuminaries in the Racing World.  And the truth of the matter is I find most the \"cottage industry\" guys small minded and self-aggrandizing.
But I\'ve always enjoyed the respect and generosity you extend to the people that contact you through this page.  Always get the feeling you\'re trying to learn as well as provide the best product you can.
Again, sincerety, concern, generosity are all qualities which I am sure shone through during your presentation.
Bravo

[fager22]

I was at the conference and listened attentively to Jerry's presentation. I am one of the scientists (the biochemist) that Jerry referred to in his post. I have the following observations on his presentation:

1)   Having presented at many scientific conferences and at the FDA, I know very well the stress levels that public speakers incur. Having said that, I did not think that Jerry appeared nervous during his presentation. On the contrary, he presented his points confidently and strongly albeit mostly on deaf ears. Many of the attendees misinterpreted confidence and strength as arrogance.

2)   A lot of the presentation went over the heads of most of the group because, in my opinion, they were not listening and/or were listening but with closed minds—a terrible disease in any field of endeavor

3)   The data and physical explanation by Dr. Pratt et al on how tracks can change substantively during the course of a day without a severe weather event is groundbreaking. For those who did listen, it clearly proved that splitting variants for sprints, one turn routes and/or 2 turn routes can and should be done on certain racing days. Jerry has cited several of those days on this site. Many apparently aberrant numbers can be "corrected" and made meaningful using such analysis.

4)   I very much respect Andy Beyer for his contributions to handicapping and usually enjoy the humor in his presentations. I did think however that Andy was uncharacteristically speechless at times during the discussion. For example, he had no comments on the discussion of Donaldson's 1936 book on making speed figures. Perhaps this is because he believes that he invented speed figures.  Also, he had no retort to the point that both Jerry and Len made that, relative to 20 or 30 years ago, there are a lot MORE fast horses now than then. Jerry cited this as a reason why it so hard to win the triple crown in this era.

5)   I had never heard Len Friedman speak before. Most (not all) of his responses were pretty much straight out of "The Odds Must Be Crazy", i.e., (paraphrasing) "we have our secret formulas which are time tested and we do very well with them". When pushed to elaborate on the physical rationale for certain key points such as not splitting variants or making impossible figures for 4.5f 2yo races at Keenland, his responses were exercises in tail chasing. He was very eloquent though on the fact that horses are getting faster and that he and Jerry don't give you a horse in the 5th at Belmont, rather they give you a framework and methodology to analyze that race in a way that will provide value over the long run. Many attendees wanted simple answers (who's going to win) or formulas or single numbers when in fact the fun and reward in this game is the complex analysis that leads to information of value which very few of your competitors (the general public and the other "experts") have.

6)   I was disappointed that Jerry did not present some of the trainer and sire info contained in Thorograph sheets. This is powerful stuff. In my limited survey, the Expo attendees were largely unaware of that information.

7)   Finally, there are two ways to look at the mostly negative (my limited survey of the attendees) response to Jerry's presentation. On the one hand, if you regularly analyze races using the Thorograph approach, you should be happy because your competitors will be using information of lesser wagering value. On the other hand, I'm sure that Jerry would have liked a more positive response to increase his client base.  In any event, I hope that Jerry will be invited to speak again at the next Expo because I personally enjoyed the fact-based substantiation of his approach.

[Chuckles_the_Clown2]

Oh no.

I had written a lengthy question about moisture and breaking off individual races and I lost it to the page going stale. Would you read my mind and post the answer so I don\'t have to write it again?

lol

In short I agree, the trick is being experienced and astute enough to know when to break races and when not to break races. Race patterns exist just like fig patterns exist for individual horses. But when you break races don\'t you indeed risk a race that was fast or slow unrelated to track change? Though I concede that failure to break risks a race that was fast or slow due to moisture change.

One other question. Its my assumption (without any reason to base it upon) that nature is going to change the track much more than man is able to do with a pass or two of the sprinkle truck. Do you find yourself breaking races on sprinkle truck changes?

CtC



Post Edited (03-04-04 17:52)

[Mall]

To me at least, is the message itself & not the manner in which the message was delivered, although posts & comments I have heard from attendees raises the possibility that a combination of stress & high expectations have had the not-unheard-of effect of making it seem to the person who made the presentation that things went a lot worse than they actually did.

What interests me a great deal more than that subject is what the slides & scientific studies have to say on the subject of split variants, an issue of fundamental importance to accurate figure-making. It seems to me that the scientific evidence is now in, & that the only logical conclusion that a fair-minded person can reach is that Dr. Peterson was right when he essentially endorsed the approach of splitting the variant. In assessing the emails of Dr. Peterson & the other scientists, it is noteworthy that they originally looked at & analyzed the data to see if they could come up with a way to make things safer for the jockeys & horses. There is no reason I can think of to believe that what the scientists say in their emails represents anything other than the unvarnished scientific truth, & there simply is no debating technique or argument which has sufficient force to overcome that kind of proof.

The bottom line is that for one party in the debate, the real question is not the difference between 4f races at Tim & 4.5f races at Kee. It\'s how to respond to & deal with proof that a life\'s work was & is based on a premise that has been scientifically demonstrated to be false. Let me suggest that to a thinking person that question would be a far more important one than tallying up the number of points each party made at a round table discussion.

[Chuckles_the_Clown2]

Agreed. What TGJB\'s post points out is how in tune he is to subtleties. Most people wanting to make that presentation probably wouldn\'t have become cognizant that without the lead questions it could appear as an impeachment technique. It wasn\'t of course. But TGJB is reflective and thats probably what makes him the best in this business and a dang good handicapper.

I use to have big days on those baby races and when I\'m convinced the old days are over, I\'ll let it out one day. They\'re tough and getting tougher.

You have to wonder when you see a story like this. Colic is discovered that very day and the horse is too far gone to be saved. It seems a little early yet to determine if a covered mare is in foal but according to this story Booklet only got 2-3 of 16-17 covered in foal:

http://news.bloodhorse.com/viewstory.asp?id=21062

When money and animals are involved, I don\'t think you should ever really trust people.

P.P. is out of the Big Cap. Interesting race for 1,000,000 now.

Master David came down with the same 102 fever as P.P. and will miss the Florida Derby. You have to wonder if its going around Santa Anita and if it is could it impact the Big Cap.

CtC



Post Edited (03-05-04 23:55)

[Michael D.]

hmmmmmmmmmmm ............. mandella was in such good shape that he decides to take the $650g with the second string horse, then take either first or second in dubai. sounds like a smart financial decision to me.

[Chuckles_the_Clown2]

Theres sneaky guys in horseracing. I could be wrong but I think Mandella is the real deal. I think he cares about his horses and I don\'t think he juices them.

I thought pointing out another real horseman was appropriate: Allen Jerken\'s Puzzlement is fighting for his life. Heres what Allen said:

\"I just hope they can save his life first,\" he said. \"We\'ll worry about racing later.\":

http://drf.com/news/article/53831.html



I like his 2nd string horse but you have to wonder if 10 marks is going to be an issue, at what class will it show itself. Granted the two fading 9 mark losses were to Mineshaft and Megadeath. But I do get the sense he may be better suited to a different surface. (Or maybe he just likes the Fairgrounds - Spanish Empire however did not beat much on New Orleans Day) Caveat: His last work sure looks like Mandella tried to put a little more pizazz in him.

Theres some interesting horses in here, the scratch made it a better race.



Post Edited (03-05-04 23:49)

[Michael D.]

yea, i like mandella as well, seems like one of the good guys in the game. given the fact that the horse is fine, however, i would have to assume that the thought of $650g and somewhere between $1.5m and $4m (depending on whether PP can beat Md\'O in dubai) was starting to sound too good to pass up. the big cap is turning out to be weak gdII race at best. i will be surprised if any of them aside from the mandella second stringer cross the wire faster than 2:01 and change (and even he has his own question marks). still, you are correct, the race now becomes a better betting event.

[Silver Charm]

Mall wrote,

 \"It\'s how to respond to & deal with proof that a life\'s work was & is based on a premise that has been scientifically demonstrated to be false.\"

You have hit the ball out of the park with this one. When the Chilukki came up on this Board it originally began if I remember correctly when you posted regarding a device that would allow track crews to probe into the soil after the morning works and determine the firmness or lack thereof in the racetrack therefore being better able to determine track speed.

I was brand new to these Boards naive and green as grass. I pointed out how that wouldn\'t work when there were days such as when Chilukki broke her maiden because on that particular day the racing surface changed considerably three different times on one racing card. Beyer gave Chilukki a 109 figure, Ragozin/Friedman gave her a 6, Brown gave her a box. The box was probably more accurate because both Beyer and Ragozin based their ENTIRE CARDS on the results of that 4 1/2 furlong baby race.

More to the point though was the ensuing war of words that began where Friedman basically called me a liar, bozo, partisan and a toady sicko. He put a post up that I will never forget--We have tested these types of races on our track model 1000\'s of times. I couldn\'t help but picture an image of he and Jake holding plastic toy horses and racing each other around a makeshift racetrack on a card table in their offices. He then stated they verified their results with the 100\'s of races run at 4 1/2 furlongs at Churchill Downs. Let me tell you I\'m from there and they RUN ABOUT 2-3 A YEAR.

At this point TGJB stepped in and put up a post that caused Friedman to not only TAKE THE FIFTH AND REFUSE TO DISCUSS THE SUBJECT any longer but he then unleashed his attack dogs on this Board. Here came Alydar, Marc, Soup, Jerry JR. and numerous other GOONS specifically to try and destroy TGJB and Thorograph.

The point really became then, not who did the day correctly when Chilukki broke her maiden but how the otherside deals with challenges to their methodology.

The answer is quite simple, they don\'t because they can\'t.

[Chuckles_the_Clown2]

There is a process the truth goes through. Initally, the truth is ridiculed as not being worthy of consideration. Then as the debate progresses, the truth is attacked by those that have the most to lose about the truth being revealed. Ultimately, the truth is universally accepted and considered by all to be self evident. The process applies equally in all searches for truth, from searches as diverse as the validity of performance figures to the validity of war.  

CtC

[Silver Charm]

Well put CtC.

Chris I didn\'t want to push this string down just yet but to answer your question about who is Ralph Nicks. He was the longtime assistant to Bill Mott. Kind of like Dallas Stewart to Wayne Lukas. Where is the parallel there. Stewart trained the dam of Shaniko, Sapphire n Silk--a very fast runner who won the LeTroienne at CD. She kind of fell apart by the end of the year-I bet her in the Test. But make no mistake she was a huge talent.

Nicks worked the Kentucky circuit for Mott and was the on-track trainer at Gulfstream. Mott spent most of his days at Payson. Nicks has had his hands on good horses before and comes from a family of horsemen just like none other than who???

Todd Pletcher