Keen Ice

[atakante]

Is Haskin right?  Can lightning strike twice?
http://cs.bloodhorse.com/blogs/horse-racing-steve-haskin/archive/2017/10/08/keen-ice-right-where-he-wants-to-be.aspx

[milwmike]

KI is slow.  His top is 0.  Unless you expect every horse that has run negative (many that have run multiple negative figures) to all not run a good race (or be burned up in a suicide pace), I don\'t see it.

[Mc990]

He ran a -3 as a three year old and a -1 last year...sire profile indicates he could have a new top in him at age five. To me he\'s not impossible.

Yes, this is a fast group but there are some question marks. Who\'s likely to run their top among the current top four choices?

[Tavasco]

Haskin writes:
 
\"Why is Keen Ice so dangerous when he couldn\'t even defeat the New York-bred Diversify as the 6-5 favorite.\"

Apparently not a figures guy. That\'s like saying Yosida had no chance because he was a slow Japanese bred slug. Who immigrated before the borders tightened up.

Congratulations to the TG analysis for identifying that exacta. Probably get a square price and again I\'ve bet on worse propositions but Diversify is more appealing to me even if he had been born in the Bronx at a zoo.

[jbelfior]

Good luck playing a 5yo in the Classic. Unless the name is Zenyatta,no thanks. Check the \"Archives.\"


Good Luck,
Joe B

[Tavasco]

Just to be clear - Looking ahead,  I see no reason to play the BC Classic.

[TempletonPeck]

Incoming assertion alert!

I think you have a pretty big selection bias problem when you say \"5 year olds don\'t win the Classic!\" (Reminds me of a recent thread where the idea of coming up with rules vs. pre-requisites vs. guiding principles was discussed.)

Because most really good horses get retired after 3 or 4, you probably won\'t see a lot of 5 year old Classic winners, but, IMO, that just means that you don\'t often see a 5 year old good enough to win who is still in training, not that there\'s some curse on 5 year olds.

[ajkreider]

FWIW, Haskin is absolutely a figures guy.  I\'ll go so far as to say he\'s the biggest promoter of TGs of any prominent blogger.

None of this is to suggest that he based his view on the sheets, of course.

[Bet Twice]

Agreed!  Those are the types of rules that will put you in the poorhouse quickly.

[dsipes]

I\'m my very humble and novice opinion (and assuming no track bias), I\'d say you have to use all horses in your vertical and horizontal wagers as A horses that had a negative TG fig in their last race.  The only winner in the last 7 editions not to do so was crazy \'ole DROSSELMEYER.

[dsipes]

Not real sure about that respectfully.  Handicapper Jim Mazur aka Progressive Handicapping utilizes a profile/rules type model.  He and his Mohegan Sun group hit the Breeders Cup Pick 6 last year for $250k+.

[dsipes]

FWIW, heard Castellano will be riding West Coast for Baffert.  Any opinions on this?

[joemama]

Between 1984 and 2013 there were 8, 5 year olds good enough to win the classic. Seems like a fair amount to me.

[ajkreider]

I hear Castellano is pretty good.  But he almost never rides for Baffert, so that\'s a bit of a surprise if true.  He needs a replacement for Smith, of course, but that\'s not a downgrade.

As to your previous comment, horses don\'t race against prior years - they race against their opponents.  Since just about every horse in the BCC will have multiple negative numbers, and there will be a few that have put several negative numbers together, Keen Ice would be a bit of a shocker. His odds will reflect that, though.

And speaking of vertical bets, there was a horse in last year\'s BCC that finished in the tri that was not coming off a negative number. That horse was . . . .  Keen Ice.

[TempletonPeck]

Now we are looking at hindsight/confirmation bias, IOW, results-oriented thinking - \"If he won a pick 6, his profile/rules model must be good!\"

The opposing position can be boiled down to, \"Even a broken clock is right twice a day.\" The fact that he won a pick 6 that you\'re aware of is not evidence he\'s profitable, let alone that his model works. It\'s only evidence that he won a pick 6 that day. Said another way: he could have fired off a $10 quick-pick ticket and won that pick-6, which wouldn\'t be evidence that quick-picks are +ROI.

When Mazur can show 20 years of positive ROI, his models may mean something. Until then, he\'s just another tout hawking his picks.

Any Deadwood fans in the audience?

\"Soap! Soap with a prize inside!\"
\"Wow I just bought a soap from that man and it had $5 inside!\"