Man Bites Dog

[TGJB]

Holy Crap. Someone on the Rag board is questioning their Oaks figures. Over/under on that post staying up is 3:00 Eastern.

[TGJB]

One of the problems is that the guys over there don\'t know anything about figures, so even when they\'re pointing in the right direction they don\'t know how to ask the right questions. Example-- \"Would you guys please post the sheets for the Fantasy, since the top two finishers came back to run in the Oaks off terrible figures? I would like to see what figures you gave the rest of the fillies in that race\".

[Tavasco]

In a related story. Contrary to Ragozin non denial denial innocent errors do happen in the real world.

Equibase Corrects Derby Chart Article

[Paolo]

JB, instead of checking out the other guys, how about offering up your thoughts on the two E horses that ran the 3rd (tied) and 4th best numbers. Slop and pace have to be contributors to the big unexpected jumps... wondering if anything else occurs to you in hindsight?

[TGJB]

I don’t do hindsight, at least not the way you mean it here.

[Paolo]

So, even though they ran much better than expected, there’s nothing to discuss because you would play it the exact same way in a hypothetically identical seminar in the future? I.e., the slop and hot pace and trainer m.o. explain the jump ups but can never be predicted a priori, so just forget about it and move on to the next race?
Perhaps I am asking the wrong question...

[TempletonPeck]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindsight_bias

[Furious Pete]

C\'mon, at least try to comprehend what the man is saying. It isn\'t the worst idea to do one of these once in a while: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmortem_documentation

[TGJB]

Or, to put it another way, if they let me bet now I’d have the super cold. Yes, I do look at horses who jump up, usually to see if it’s happening repeatedly with certain trainers. No, I don’t try to draw other conclusions, I need way more data points for that. Hitting a race doesn’t mean you were right. The idea is to make the right bet, not pick the winner. If Justify is 3/5 and Audible is 30-1, there’s no doubt which is the right bet, regardless of the result.
  .
Underlays frequently winâ€" the horse doesn’t know what price he is. Always Dreaming won last year, I will book every horse that looks like that as the favorite, forever.

I pointed out in the seminar that Good Magic looked like Practical Joke, and Vino Rosso and Lone Sailor looked like Always Dreaming and Mine That Bird. That means I should have liked the last two, right?

[TempletonPeck]

I absolutely understand what he\'s saying! I even agree that a post mortem is once in awhile a good thing. In fact, I have posted threads like \"P6 post mortem - or, \'Where did I go so wrong?\'\"

If Paolo wanted to dig into some data and say, \"Hey friends, I have noticed that when X trainer has Y type horses on Z type tracks, they tend to ________,\" well goddamn, that would be valuable! When he says \"UGH A BAD HORSE RAN A GOOD RACE WHY DIDN\'T SOMEONE TELL ME IN ADVANCE THAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN?\" Not so great.

[Furious Pete]

You\'re correct about that, but the horses don\'t know how their sheet look like either. The intangibles matter, in particular in a race such as the derby.

That said I\'m still not sure that Always Dreaming was a good bet last year, at least not at the price he went off at. Good Magic would certainly have had that 25 % chance of winning it last year, if not better. Practical Joke almost certainly had not. Even though their sheets looked almost exactly the same.

[Paolo]

The original question reads as follows:
how about offering up your thoughts [regarding the Derby tops by Bravazo and Instilled Regard].
Pretty straightforward, unlike the two non-answers.

[TGJB]

My thoughts about their performances are the numbers I gave them. Literally.

[TGJB]

The intangibles may matter, somewhere else. It’s not what this site is about, or what someone needs me for.

[TGJB]

By the way, I agree with post mortems re the betting (excecution) side, that’s a whole different matter. I look at whether my bets really reflected my opinions, and/or made most efficient use of them. Especially useful with pick sixes.