Mistakes in figures? Result?

[jimbo66]

Jerry,

I am joining this thread late in the game, but I have a question or two.  Having read through your comments and looked at the Derby, you convinced me and I guess most of us that Rags did make a mistake on the Derby.  And it is a valid point that he ignores it.  And it is a valid point that if he can\'t get the Derby right, what does that say about the rest of the figures they do on a daily basis.

But...

1.  Do you actually think that a majority of Sheets players go back and try to recalculate yours or Len\'s figures and check for accuracy?  Probably not.  There are also only a small percentage of the users that post and look at yours and Len\'s message boards.  Don\'t you think that most of us \"grade\" the products based on the results we achieve at the track?  I find it hard to believe that Rags users would continue to shell out $25 a pop for sheets if they weren\'t helping them at the races.  I don\'t buy that Rags users are less intelligent.  I am pretty sure if we took an \"aggregate IQ\" of T-Graph users and compared it to Rags users, we wouldn\'t see a difference.  

2.  I looked at the mistake you pointed out in the Derby and looked at subsequent races for those horses and couldn\'t find any betting opportunities that resulted in using your figures over Len\'s figures for the Derby.  That is what this is all about, isn\'t it?  Even though he was wrong and you were right, it didn\'t help in picking any future races.  

3.  Why does Len have a bigger market share than you do?  This is not a sarcastic question, I am being serious.  I am curious.  It seems unlikely to be methodology.  Is it \"brand\"?  Better distribution channels?  Or, is Len a superior handicapper?  I don\'t know any of these answers, and I haven\'t seen a Ragozin sheet yet, but with all the points you have made about faulty figures, it strikes me as strange that he has a bigger market share.

4.  How do you tie better figures to more winners?  This is what I have legitimate trouble with.  I have read through your posts here over the past 6 months, listened to the seminars, read the ROTW regularly.   It all sounds good and it strikes me as probable that your figures are better than the Beyer figures and possibly Ragozin.  But I honestly don\'t see it manifesting itself in picking more winners.  I don\'t want to take any more shots at the ROTW, but it has not pointed to winners in a while.  I have looked at every analysis for every track you did it for since July 1 (except for 6 days I missed) and have \"graded out\" your picks and although I won\'t post it here (don\'t want to be inflammatory), lets just say the results aren\'t convincing.

So here is the dilemma that poses to me (and maybe others).  If the guy who is the authority on the figures and the best figure maker out there, is not good enough to use those figures to pick winners, how can I do it using his product?  There are two possible answers to that.  One, I would have to believe that I am a superior handicapper. Or two, I would have to believe that you are a MISERABLE handicapper.  Either one is a pretty big leap of faith.  I am not that arrogant and I doubt you are miserable.  

To any Rags users on this board, does Len have the reputation of being a great handicapper, in addition to figure maker?  Do they have an analysis product? Is their track record with this type of product superior to T-Graph\'s record?

Last point.  Not related.  I asked for an ID to the Rags board a few weeks ago just to see what types of things are posted there, and I still haven\'t heard back from them with a password.  I followed up the request with an email and also got no answer.  Not very customer friendly.

[Josephus]

jimbo66

I know you addresed your question to JB, but here are my 2 cents.  First where I coming from: playing the races for the past 25+ years; used to make my own figs for a while (I don\'t pretend that they were anywhere near TG or Rags)but they got me into the BIG A semis one year in the days when the attendance was 20,00;spent a couple of years on weekend training hours with my trainer friend who was who was in the top 3 in NJ at the time; have used the sheets for the past 6-7 yrs., primarily Rags up until the Volponi BC and TG exclusively ever since; I have listened to all the Rags tapes and worked through them, as well as TG tapes and have been to many Rags seminars.

To answer your points as they are posted:

1. I check over the figs after every race REALIZING THAT THE FASTEST HORSE IS NOT ALWAYS THE MOST LIKELY WINNER.  With TG, even though I most obviousely don\'t cash every race, I can at least \"figure\" the horse or horses that beat me.  With Rags from the last 6 mths or so that I used them, that OFTEN was not the case, especially in grass races.
Hence I switched over to TG.  You need to look at the ENTIRE TG sheet esp. trainer stats and the outstanding last 3 out-tops line which I think is great.

2. I don\'t compre the 2 sheets with each other, but I did mention in a previous post an example that occurred at SAR.

3. I buy my TG at the Med . The guy I get it from there noticed my switch from Rags to TG. and told he\'s heard from a number of players who were dissatisfied and switched to TG, including himself.

4.I have respect for both Len and Jerry and as I have posted before, I have been to many Rags seminars where Len is \"right\" 10% of the time if that much. Picking winners and expecting to make money is very hard, the game is too unpredictable, one must look for value.
I\'ve had a nunber of big scores from TG ROTW lately, namely LIONTAMER, and WILDCAT HEIR  - remember I am using TG to look for value.

 I am not a heavy bettor by any means. I play within my level of comfort and enjoy the intellectual challenge, but also, like everyone, I enjoy cashing

[TGJB]

Jim-- I might not get to this until tomorrow (I haven\'t even been able to start my regular work yet today), but I will get to it.

Michael, I do expect to get to you later. Meanwhile, I would love to hear what you found from watching the BC Sprint replay, about the ground, and now the Clockstopper off poorly, which Friedman implies is the reason for the discrepency.

[TGJB]

Jim--

1-- No, I don\'t think most sheet players go back and check for accuracy-- in fact, most Ragozin players don\'t come on the internet, so they have no way of comparing. I wish they did. But I don\'t think it\'s true that people make decisions strictly on the basis of results, either. Peer pressure and comfort zones have a big effect-- some of us recall how hard a time the Racing Times had in getting DRF readers to switch. Ultimately, the DRF pretty much became the RT. Hypothetical-- if you did an IQ test, how do you think RT and DRF customers would have stacked up? Why?

And by the way, I don\'t think Ragozin players are dumb. There are other things at work here.

2-- The point about mistakes (and I\'m not talking about judgement calls here) in big races is that they tell you about the level of accuracy of the data in general, and give you a means to evaluate all the claims the owners of the company make. These are the biggest races of the year, and we\'re talking about outright screwups, followed by the reaction we\'ve come to expect from the Ragozin office-- stonewalling, not fixing the mistakes. As Mike said earlier in a different context, there is a credibility issue here-- you guys are paying money for data, and are dependent on us to do our job so that you DON\'T have to check everything.

It should be obvious that if there are mistakes like these on days like these, there are many, many more during the year. Without doubt, some of those have cost customers money. And a point or two difference within a horse\'s pattern could certainly affect the \"condition\" reads that Friedman is always talking about. In case it\'s not already clear, I think that making fine line reads off data as grossly innacurate as theirs is a joke.

3-- Aside from being in business long before us, Len \"computerized\" long before we did-- we had a hand written product until 1994. So when we first got a website (1997), Len probably outsold us about 3 or 4-1. As far as we can tell, he now might outsell us 3/2. It\'s tough to know, since we don\'t know his on-line sales, and since 2/3 of ours are on-line. We do virtually no marketing in the field, meaning with those who buy hard copy-- we don\'t give seminars any more, we have only one field op (Bill Spillane), who only spends maybe 50 days a year at tracks. Ragozin has several full time field ops.

But there are other reasons as well. Aside from peer pressure and comfort, there are psychological factors-- and as someone who might have been the most successful there was at using Ragozin data, I know it well. You become invested-- you want to believe the data is infallible, and you don\'t want to believe the score you made on a \"pattern read\" might have been lucky. In the end this is a game of probability-- you have to do a lot of things right to win. Ragozin\'s data certainly helped me-- but so did the fact that no one else had figures back then, that I knew what I was doing, and I worked my ass off. It took me quite a while to realize this-- until long after I left that office.

4-- Again-- we are not picking winners in ROTW (and I\'m not not even writing it these days, by the way). We are trying to teach people how to use the data. ROTW has no other function, and the only way to really test it would be to go back and make an odds line based on the comments, look at what the horses went off at, and see how you would have done betting the overlays over a long period.

But that\'s not the test of the data. The tests are a) does the internal logic hold up, b) is it relatively accurate for what it is supposed to be, and c) does it work for you. If you really have not looked at Ragozin, you owe it to yourself to check it out and compare-- I\'m not worried about what you will find. But at the end of the day, this is a tough game with a lot of randomness in it-- even the best data is just part of beating a game with a tough takeout.

[jimbo66]

Josephus and Jerry,

thanks for the responses.

Jerry,

I guess point 4 is where I just can\'t rationalize your conclusion.  Perhaps from your perspective, this isn\'t about \"picking winners\" and more about \"internal logic\" and \"accurate numbers\".  But I am sure you realize that your customer base (the gamblers, not the owners), use the product for a different reason.  I am not just referring to the ROTW, you have made your point clear about the purpose of it.  I am also referring to the analysis product.  I doubt anybody has spent as much time as I have tracking the redboard room since July 1 and calculating the results.  

And let me make it clear on the analysis product.  I am not criticizing the product.  What I am saying is that if I consider a few things:

1.  Horse raciing is your profession. I have a different one, which consumes about 60 hour per week for me.  So, I submit you know more than I do about horses.

2.  You have been doing this a long time.  

3.  You probably have access to a ton more information than I do, through contacts, etc.etc.

4.  You still return a pretty poor result with your handicapping product.  

I know the takeout in this game is ridiculous.  I am a very big gambler and my bets are 70/30 team sports versus horses and it is no accident that in 6 of the last 7 years, the results for me were better in sports than horses.  The take out is a killer.  I lay -105 on football and hoops, -104 on bases, and the takeout is 16 to 25 percent on ponies!!  Tough game.  I have been studying your results since July 1 and using the product as well, to gauge whether it helps.  The \"six month study\" is up on December 31.

As for Rags.  I do want to take a look at the product.  The problem is that he doesn\'t make it as easy as you do to gauge his product.  I don\'t see a redboard room or an analysis product.  The only option I have is to use the product for a while and see what happens.

[TGJB]

If you would, send me whatever you have done studying the analysis via e-mail, showing how you broke it down-- last time you did this you did a pretty reasonable job. I\'m pretty surprised we\'ve done poorly given my knowledge of our picks during that time, but for me it\'s totally anecdotal-- I only hear about it from customers when our guys crush one or have a very bad period. I myself only probably did 5-10 individual cards over that period-- the big days, like BC and Travers.

[jimbo66]

Ok Jerry, I will send it you.

Just realized I missed my \"concluding sentence\" after point 4 above.

What I wanted to say was that considering those 4 points, it is hard for me to believe I can use your product to get better results with it, than you yourself do.  I got sidetracked with the takeout stuff, which is certainly a problem.