Jerry, Jerry, Jerry

[dpatent]

Looks like it is time to revisit an interesting discussion Jerry and I had two years ago regarding the \'variant\' question -- Rags vs. TG.

While I will admit that there will never be a true and final answer as to who whether TG or Rag have it right, my preference is to use factual data for my variant as opposed to one\'s personal assumptions so that my numbers make a nice clean line.

Cases in point:  Jerry\'s post today.  Let\'s take each point in order:

1) Magic Weisner.  First, a correction.  Rag does not have his pre-Preakness race as being a 9 point move from his 2 y.o. year.  The move was 6 points, which makes a huge difference in how you would read his line going into the Preakness.  The 3\" off of the 6\" is thus surprising (I thought the horse was a toss at 45:1) but not totally shocking, given the generally explosive line that MW exhibited previously.  

Additionally, to claim that Ragozin\'s Delaware Valley numbers are systematically too slow is absolutely false.  I cannot count the number of times I have bet Laurel and Pimlico runners at NY tracks because they had faster numbers than the NY horses but were underbet b/c they came from MD.

2) The winner in the first race at Pimlico.  She was not much of a stretch at all on the Rag sheets.  She had already run a 9 sprinting and my experience with Rag sheets is that fillies who just badly x\'d off of  a distance that they are not particularly strong at often come back and run around 0 to 2 points off of their top.  I personally thought that the race was unplayable given the odds.

3) The two grass races.  You have got to be kidding!  There is not a single number in race 5 that is at all surprising.  The field was a bunch of first time grassers and horses coming off tops.  The winner ran back to his second best number and the bounce candidates bounced a few points.  Also, wet grass courses always produce a lot of x\'s simply because horses often don\'t like running on the soft turf.  As for the 7th race, same analysis.  The only semi-quizzical numbers were Watch and DeAar.  However, Watch was coming off a layoff and had not run particularly well on a wet turf before.  DeAar had x\'d in her only prior wet turf start and had just run her eyeballs out three races in a row.  Again, upon further review, no surprises.

4) The 11th race.  Now, talk about dogma, Jerry!!  Apparently it is written in THE BOOK that a horse can\'t bounce six points.  First, it was not the whole field.  Most of those horses were slow to begin with.  Second, every single horse going into that race that had run fast in their last or second to last race was a horse with a high probability to run negatively.  Tenpins didn\'t get his \'slow\' numbers at a Delaware Valley track.  He got them in KY.  Given his jumpup I had him pegged to run between a 6 and a 10 (he ran an .  Lightning Paces looked terrible.  Tactical Side was a huge bounce candidate with an ugly line.  Bowman\'s band was a bit of a surprise but a semi-ouchy horse coming off of a 2+ figured to bounce 2-4 points.  Lyracist was slow always.  Ground Storm was still going backward off of his 1 (War Emblem fans, take note), Full Brush was slow, Grundlefoot was a horse running an average of 8s coming off a layoff, and First Amendment figured to bounce off of the 6 in his last.

The bigger point here, Jerry, is where is it written that a bunch of ouchy older horses with bad patterns can\'t all \'x\'?  It happens all the time.  And for you to just assert that it\'s \'ridiculous\' merely unmasks you as the most dogmatic of all but dogmatic in a religious \'I believe it therefore it must be true\' way instead of a \'I have looked at the evidence and this is how it is\' way.  I will take the second kind of Dogma any day.

5) Agree here.  He looked better on your sheet but that\'s true of just about every horse who winse because that is how you have decided to make your numbers.  You have a belief as to what horses can and should do and massage your variants to make the results fit your theory.  No one can ever prove that wrong just like I can\'t prove that God didn\'t put the fossils there to fool me into thinking that the earth is billions of years old.

5)

[HP]

You know Dave, you\'re right, there is not much in the way of ultimate proof here. Your points will stand here for all to see. On the Rag board, everything on these comparative points will be deleted except the Rag party line and your version of Jerry\'s arguments. You clearly approve of this, since I have not seen any post from you criticizing the editorial policy over there.

The merits of this debate aside, you guys cannot tolerate any dissent whatsoever, and you Dave, having posted some hilarious stuff about Jerry\'s methods on the Rag board before, are beneath contempt, since you do this kind of thing knowing your Big Brothers will delete any unflattering responses.

If you want to pat yourself on the back as some kind of expert, be my guest. Your castle is made of sand.

How about a contest on Belmont day? Win bets only. $20 units per race. You can skip a race (or races) to add $20 units to other races. Picks must be posted by a time to be selected on Friday night (so we both have the same disadvantages re: weather and scratches). Since I really don\'t want to see you or meet you, we\'ll make it a gentleman\'s bet. Bragging rights only. I didn\'t hit the Derby or the Preakness, and only Shiny Band\'s win bailed me out 5/18, so I\'m not exactly lighting up the board lately.

I know, one day doesn\'t mean anything, blah, blah, blah. Let me know. I\'ve never been afraid to make a fool of myself, and this would seem to be one of your strong suits as well. HP

[nunzio]

HP,

You\'ve got too much class so you need not
prove anything.  Save your time & energy & focus on the things you enjoy.

Peace.

Nunzio

[HP]

Thank you for your positive comments Nunzio. I\'ll be handicapping the card anyway and I will enjoy exposing David Patent almost as much as winning cash money, so for me it\'s like a two-for-one sale. It will also be amusing to see him make an excuse not to accept, which is what I\'m expecting given the know-it-all tone of his posts. He\'s all talk. I\'m all...something. HP

[dpatent]

HP,

As usual, I will go point by point.

First off, I find it amusing that you attack me for \'hiding\' behind the folks over there when a) I post with my real name and attach my real email address to my posts whereas, who the hell is \'HP\'?  b) I have come over here and taken my shots on a \'free speech\' board from time to time, again using my real name and inviting anyone to respond and engage in a dialogue.  What\'s your problem with that?

Second, as usual from the TG gang, instead of choosing to engage me on the facts or on handicapping theory, you just fire a bunch of personal attacks.  See below for why the Rag. board deletes most of you and your cohorts\' posts.

1) \'You clearly approve of this [editorial policy on the Rag board] since I have not seen any post from you criticizing the editorial policy over there\'.

Right and wrong.  I generally favor an open policy.  However, what I have witnessed time and time again on the Rag. board from TG supporters are unsigned conclusory churlish rants and personal attacks, so I can\'t say that I\'m all that surprised at their policy.  Additionally, the Rag./TG debate is sort of like Evolution vs. Creationism.  Either you believe one or the other and Creationists tend not to be persuaded by facts so what\'s the point of debating the point further?

2) \'You, Dave . . . are beneath contempt, since you do this kind of thing knowing your Big Brothers will delete any unflattering responses\'.  

HP, this is just a dumb statement on your part since I posted my response to Jerry on this board, not the other one.

3) \'If you want to pat yourself on the back as some kind of expert, be my guest.  Your castle is made of sand.\'

To be honest, HP, ever since my son was born last May, I have made it out to the track only about 8 times.  My handicapping has not been all that good and I\'m sure there are tons of people kicking my butt.  Still, I enjoy the challenge and when I do go to bet I want to use numbers where at least I know the general mathematical basis for them as opposed to one man\'s personal beliefs (e.g., that handicap horses can\'t bounce 6 points and that a turf course can dry out enough to be 6 points faster in 2 hours on a cool and cloudy day, or that horses need to run nice clean patterns).

4) I have no problem with a friendly contest, but why win bets only?  Don\'t you like to play exotics?

Why not a side bet on War Emblem?  Seems to me that Rag. and TG patterns point to clearly different outcomes.

That said, I\'d be happy to do a \'gentlemen\'s handicapping contest\', but I\'m sure that if I beat you that you won\'t swear off of TG\'s sheets, nor would I stop using Rag. based on one day\'s performance.  Long term ROI is the goal.

[HP]

Congratulations on using your real name. I can get everything I need from you right here out in the open, so there\'s no need for any email address or any other personal revelations.

You have taken cheap shots at Jerry on the Sheets board before. In fact, in addition to this carefully reasoned post, you made ANOTHER post simultaneously on the Sheets board that was a little less than carefully reasoned, and it was just removed! Somehow you didn\'t see fit to mention this part of your campaign. But your Big Brothers are at work again so now no one can see it.

This is not a \'personal attack\'. My point stands. I\'m not addressing your handicapping points, I\'m addressing how you go about doing things.

You didn\'t JUST post over here, where there can be a response. You posted over there too, where you know there wouldn\'t be any dialog at all. Why did you write that post over there, Dave? You had already made your points here. Maybe you like to blow your own horn, like you\'re doing now on the thread to Tiznow, referring everyone over here to see your genius in print.

They don\'t just delete the \'churlish\' posts David, they delete Jerry\'s too. They leave up the stuff that criticizes and addresses him directly and then they delete his responses. Not a peep out of you. If you don\'t like the facts, you just leave them out, right Dave? And if it looks like you\'re screwing up (like your post that they just deleted), they cover your ass. So much for your \'meaningful exchange on handicapping theory\'. It may be possible over here, but not on your turf.

Don\'t tell me you\'re not aware that they delete Jerry\'s posts. I have to hand it to Robes, at least his position is consistent. You\'re something else entirely. You seek to take advantage of a competitor\'s forum to address differences while endorsing the competitor\'s deletion of any posts on this subject. At the same, you use your protected forum to fire off attacks on Jerry knowing full well that Jerry can\'t respond over there. Perfectly okay with you to confine any real debate to THIS forum, while you are free to post your nonsense over there. The more I think about this, the more you disgust me.

The challenge stands. Exotics are fine. $20 a race. If you beat me I may stop handicapping altogether.

As for your comments on War Emblem, he looks to me like he\'s going to back up on both products, but he might win anyway depending on who else goes. HP

[TGJB]

David Patent wrote:
>
> Looks like it is time to revisit an interesting discussion
> Jerry and I had two years ago regarding the \'variant\'
> question -- Rags vs. TG.
>
> While I will admit that there will never be a true and final
> answer as to who whether TG or Rag have it right, my
> preference is to use factual data for my variant as opposed
> to one\'s personal assumptions so that my numbers make a nice
> clean line.
>
> Cases in point:  Jerry\'s post today.  Let\'s take each point
> in order:
>
> 1) Magic Weisner.  First, a correction.  Rag does not have
> his pre-Preakness race as being a 9 point move from his 2
> y.o. year.  The move was 6 points, which makes a huge
> difference in how you would read his line going into the
> Preakness.  The 3\" off of the 6\" is thus surprising (I
> thought the horse was a toss at 45:1) but not totally
> shocking, given the generally explosive line that MW
> exhibited previously.
>
> Additionally, to claim that Ragozin\'s Delaware Valley numbers
> are systematically too slow is absolutely false.  I cannot
> count the number of times I have bet Laurel and Pimlico
> runners at NY tracks because they had faster numbers than the
> NY horses but were underbet b/c they came from MD.
>
> 2) The winner in the first race at Pimlico.  She was not much
> of a stretch at all on the Rag sheets.  She had already run a
> 9 sprinting and my experience with Rag sheets is that fillies
> who just badly x\'d off of  a distance that they are not
> particularly strong at often come back and run around 0 to 2
> points off of their top.  I personally thought that the race
> was unplayable given the odds.
>
> 3) The two grass races.  You have got to be kidding!  There
> is not a single number in race 5 that is at all surprising.
> The field was a bunch of first time grassers and horses
> coming off tops.  The winner ran back to his second best
> number and the bounce candidates bounced a few points.  Also,
> wet grass courses always produce a lot of x\'s simply because
> horses often don\'t like running on the soft turf.  As for the
> 7th race, same analysis.  The only semi-quizzical numbers
> were Watch and DeAar.  However, Watch was coming off a layoff
> and had not run particularly well on a wet turf before.
> DeAar had x\'d in her only prior wet turf start and had just
> run her eyeballs out three races in a row.  Again, upon
> further review, no surprises.
>
> 4) The 11th race.  Now, talk about dogma, Jerry!!  Apparently
> it is written in THE BOOK that a horse can\'t bounce six
> points.  First, it was not the whole field.  Most of those
> horses were slow to begin with.  Second, every single horse
> going into that race that had run fast in their last or
> second to last race was a horse with a high probability to
> run negatively.  Tenpins didn\'t get his \'slow\' numbers at a
> Delaware Valley track.  He got them in KY.  Given his jumpup
> I had him pegged to run between a 6 and a 10 (he ran an .
> Lightning Paces looked terrible.  Tactical Side was a huge
> bounce candidate with an ugly line.  Bowman\'s band was a bit
> of a surprise but a semi-ouchy horse coming off of a 2+
> figured to bounce 2-4 points.  Lyracist was slow always.
> Ground Storm was still going backward off of his 1 (War
> Emblem fans, take note), Full Brush was slow, Grundlefoot was
> a horse running an average of 8s coming off a layoff, and
> First Amendment figured to bounce off of the 6 in his last.
>
> The bigger point here, Jerry, is where is it written that a
> bunch of ouchy older horses with bad patterns can\'t all \'x\'?
> It happens all the time.  And for you to just assert that
> it\'s \'ridiculous\' merely unmasks you as the most dogmatic of
> all but dogmatic in a religious \'I believe it therefore it
> must be true\' way instead of a \'I have looked at the evidence
> and this is how it is\' way.  I will take the second kind of
> Dogma any day.
>
> 5) Agree here.  He looked better on your sheet but that\'s
> true of just about every horse who winse because that is how
> you have decided to make your numbers.  You have a belief as
> to what horses can and should do and massage your variants to
> make the results fit your theory.  No one can ever prove that
> wrong just like I can\'t prove that God didn\'t put the fossils
> there to fool me into thinking that the earth is billions of
> years old.
>
> 5)

I will give you credit for being one of the few raggies who will discuss these questions on the merits, although I also agree with HP that intellectual honesty should make you call the Ragozin office on their duck and delete chicken droppings.

1. You are correct—he “only” moved 6 points on Ragozin, it was 9 points to the Preakness number. He also “only” jumped 4 points in his last, from an established level. You are claiming he figured to jump (or even had a remote chance to) on Ragozin? That the line, AFTER the jump, was explosive?

Friedman, in his pre-race analysis, where he said he would toss MW and tabbed him as third worst out of 13: “Nice looking developmental line, but coming in off a 3-1/2 new top that if repeated is too slow to contend.” Not even a whisper about a new top, which is correct off their sheets.

My pre-race analysis: “Really good late development as a juvenile set this one up for a strong campaign this year, and he has done nothing wrong—in fact, since he’s only developed 2 points from his 2yo top he probably has another move in him. Problem is, he’ll need a 2 point move just to become relevant with these.” Which, of course, is exactly what happened, and the inside trip got him second. I would also point out that, numbers aside, there is a dramatic difference in the 2yo pattern, which is why we went ahead and bought the horse (he failed the vet exam).

As for the Delaware Valley question: again, everyone should look at the figures for this card on both sets, and going forward, and make their own decisions. MW and Quidnaskra are just two that stand out.  

2. Not the winner, the second filly in the opener. Those races you call X’s were not stopping non-efforts, but OPEN LENGTH WINS. You figure the fillies behind her ALL X’ed even worse? Some coincidence. I’m betting they made miraculous recoveries when returned to sprints.

Again we had her last two 10 (TEN) points faster.

3. Come on, David. The 5th race was a 3 year old stake, and EVERYONE in the field ran at least 2 points off their TOP. Again, in a 3yo stake. Are you kidding me? When you handicapped that race, with 4 horses having tops of 10 or better on Ragozin, you thought a 13 would win it? Please. The first 3 finishers all ran at least 3 points off their tops. How does the race look if you take off 3 points?

In the 7th, another stake, the whole field gets figures averaging about 5 points off their tops. The winner gets only 2 points off her top, BECAUSE RAGOZIN DIDN’T GIVE HER CREDIT FOR HER PREVIOUS DELAWARE VALLEY EFFORTS---HE HAD HER TOO SLOW. I urge you and everyone else to look at this race on TG and Ragozin, and see how the race would look if you took 3 to 5 points away from the numbers Ragozin assigned them on Preakness day.



4. You are leaving yourself wide open here. First of all, IT WAS THE WHOLE FIELD—EVERY HORSE IN A GRADED STAKE RACE, RAN AT LEAST 6 POINTS OFF THEIR TOP. When you handicapped that race, you thought an 8 would win it? Gimme a break. How’s this race look if you take off 4 points?

As for those horses who “were slow to begin with”—they ran even slower. Every horse in the field but one ran AT LEAST 6 POINTS WORSE than his previous race.

I said this to you once before, David—horses do crazy things all the time, but GROUPS of horses don’t. That’s the whole theory behind projection style figures, that previous figures can be used to project today’s variant, the system used by TG, Ragozin, Beyer, Time-Form, and every serious figure maker. Beyond that, in this era of sports medicine horses are even more likely than before to run well, and this was a GRADED STAKE—WITH EVERY HORSE BUT ONE COMING IN ON AT LEAST 4 WEEKS REST.

Ragozin has the track much faster for this race than for the previous route (6th race) to tie it to the Preakness (I have it at the same variant as the 6th, changing afterward). Ask yourself this—if the card had ended after the Schaefer, what figures would Ragozin have assigned it?

By the way—why do you suppose Friedman only posted the first 12 races? Why don’t you ask them to post the 13th, in the name of intellectual honesty?

5. “He looked better on your sheets, but that’s true of just about every horse that wins because that is how you have decided to make your numbers.”

That is one hell of an admission (that the winners look better), so thank you. Now:

A. Are you saying we fudge earlier numbers after subsequent races to make the winners look good? If so, someone would have noticed by now—if not, and the winners look better on TG, that should be really, really important information.

B. When we gave WE that first 1 (Ragozin gave him a 9) it represented a 7 point new top on our figures. Yet I gave it to him—because he earned it. By your reasoning, I never could have given him that number, since it didn’t fit with his previous figures. Horses do crazy things all the time—groups of horses don’t. It’s the underlying premise.

Again, I urge everyone seriously interested in figures or in making a decision as to which to use to carefully examine both the TG and Ragozin sheets for Preakness day. And I really hope they post the 13th race.

[dpatent]

HP,

My post on the Ragozin site was no different in tone or message than what I put on this site (thought it was admittedly shorter).  Why do you think that Rag. deleting my posts helps me?  If I just wanted to post and say stupid things knowing they\'d be deleted, why would I then post over here?

After reading your latest ad hominem rant against me, I rest my case.

However, in the spirit of gamesmanship, I will post my Belmont picks on Thursday, since I will probably be getting on a plane Thurs. night to fly to NYC, where I will be at the Belmont.  Let\'s use a $1,000 bankroll to bet how we want.  It\'ll be fun, win or lose for me.

[HP]

They have now deleted EVERY post related to this.

So David, we will firm up the ground rules Thursday June 6 and post by midnight Friday June 7. This should be a very stimulating handicapping review, without any personal attacks (heaven forfend!) to hurt anyone\'s feelings. I know how delicate you Raggies are.

Of course your smartass posts (today\'s - which was deleted in record time - and previous ones - like the one where you lamely chimed in on Friedman\'s joke) do not constitute personal attacks.

But long-term ROI is all that matters. HP

[HP]

Sorry I was posting and we must have crossed.

Dave, your post over there WAS different in tone. You don\'t see \'a difference in tone\' between a whole long detailed explanation of your points versus a quick few lines knocking Jerry? It was \'just shorter\'? Come on.

The Rag guys delete your posts because they don\'t want to seem to be inviting discussion of this over there. It\'s not that it isn\'t a \'discussion of handicapping\', it\'s a discussion of handicapping that they don\'t want to have. You seem smart enough to know the difference. Again, you endorse their policies, and if you want to \'rest your case\', be my guest. I\'m responding to your disingenuous technique and not your discussion of figure methodology, which I will leave to Jerry because I don\'t know enough about it. But when it comes to the BS in the way you went about things today, I\'m an expert.

When you say $1,000 bet how you want, are you talking about the whole card or just the Belmont Stakes?

I probably won\'t be handicapping till Friday. I\'ll just follow your lead. If you bet it all on the Stakes, that\'s what I\'ll do. If you spread it all over the card, ditto. If you bet exotics, I will too.

After all this, it will be hilarious if we came up with the same plays.

We\'ll see. Have a nice trip and will look forward to your picks and \'analysis\'. HP

[Friendly]

You are funny HP.

I had a friend that used to post on this board and all his posts were deleted - just because he posted a dissenting view or brought up facts that Jerry didn\'t want to discuss.

Most of this quote from you, \"They leave up the stuff that criticizes and addresses him directly and then they delete his responses. Not a peep out of you. If you don\'t like the facts, you just leave them out, right Dave?\" directly applies to you on this board as well. JB even deleted some of your posts here I think (just like Robes does on the other board when it clutters up Sheets discussion).

What about it HP? How come you never defended the \"right\" for everyone to speak their mind here? I guess being open is a matter of convenience.

[HP]

Based on my observations, deletions here have been few and far between, whereas the Rag board is subject to deletions on a much more regular basis. I would say it is much more likely that posts critical of Jerry and TG will remain up here as opposed to posts critical of Robes and the Sheets remaining up on the Rag board.

If your friend is Jim, who I know had posts deleted over here, I suppose Jerry had his reasons for taking the stuff down. I wouldn\'t dream of defending Jerry on this, and he can speak for himself.

None of us really have any \'rights\' here. These guys are allowed to do what they want. I could care less if anyone deletes my stuff. We\'re all subject to the same whims of the same kooks. If you can\'t live with it, either don\'t read it, or don\'t post, or read and post or do whatever the hell you want.

If you are referring to today\'s stuff, David Patent put up, for lack of a better word, a \'blurb\' that was an attack on Jerry, and then he put up the \'full length\' version here (and which remains up, which would NEVER happen on the Rag board).

The \'full length\' version was fine, but the \'blurb\' struck me as dirty pool, since he knew damn well that there was no response possible since they delete every one of Jerry\'s responses. They took down Patent\'s \'blurb\' version, which I suppose reflects well on \'the Sheets\'. They haven\'t always taken down the these inherently one-sided jabs, but in this case they did the right thing. I think Patent knew full well what he was doing, and was either attempting to gain an extra foothold for his argument or working on a very weak sense of self-esteem, since the \'blurb\' was totally unnecessary given his detailed post here.

You are right, being \'open\' is a matter of something, whether you call it convenience or business judgement or anything else. I don\'t make these calls. I\'ve been called far worse things than \'hypocrite\'.

Have a nice weekend. HP

[Friendly]

HP, I think it is admirable that you don\'t dare defend Jerry\'s censorship of posts that offer a dissenting view or facts that he doesn\'t want to discuss.

But it seems like it should be a little deeper for you. After all, you seem to ask everyone how come they put up with Robe\'s policy of keeping the board clutter free. Yet, you refuse to criticize Jerry for his actions. When you start calling a spade a spade I\'ll give you a lot of credit.

Have a happy and healthy weekend!

[dpatent]

Jerry,

O.K., here we go.

1) I didn\'t think that MW looked likely in the Preakness.  Per my post on the Rag. boards, he was a toss unless he was 100:1 or higher.  There were too many other explosive or faster horses in the race.  Guess I was wrong.  But you can\'t hit \'em all.

2) The first race.  Again, that filly\'s numbers were x\'s and it does not matter whether she won or not.  Horses don\'t get bonus points for winning.  She clearly enjoys sprinting more than routing.  I didn\'t bet the race because I didn\'t see any value but I have seen fillies do what she did (run within 2 points of a top off of a declining line where the last race was way off the top) many many times.

3) This is a very important race to discuss, because it\'s on the turf.  Unlike dirt, where you can come up with any number of explanations for the surface getting faster, there are only a few things you can say about a turf course over the span of 2-3 hours:  a) They mowed it; b) They compressed it; c) Evaporation dried it out; d) the action of the horses running over the grass made it faster.

Now, I know they didn\'t mow the grass.  I know that the actions of horses running two races on the turf doesn\'t make the grass 6 points faster (otherwise we would see big jumpups in time every time there were multiple turf races in the same day).  There obviously was some evaporation but on a cloudy day over 2-3 hours, the equation shouldn\'t be too hard to figure out.  With all of the experience you have with grass races over the years, there is a simple math model you should be able to apply to figure out the evaporation effect on the ground.  Given my experience with lawns, however, I would fall out of my chair if 2-3 hours of evaporation on a 60 degree day could possibly increase the speed of the course by 6 points.  Lastly, I don\'t know whether they compressed the grass.  Do you?  If not, then it\'s not a factor.  If they did go over the course with rollers, again, calculating the impact on the course should be easy calculation based on years of experience and lots of data point.

But that\'s not what you did, I\'ll bet.  You figured that the race would be won with a \'6\' and so you gave the winner a \'6\' regardless of the time and then just backed into the variant.  You do that all the time because your method relies on preconceived notions of what the horses will do instead of empirical observation.  Same comment for the 7th race.

4) The field in the Schafer was, for the most part, a bunch of crippled allowance horses.  Who cares if it\'s a graded stake?  The horses don\'t know that.  If you look at the Rag. sheets, almost every single horse in there figured to run worse than in his last race.  The winning number was almost exactly what I figured Tenpins would run (a 6-9).  The only horse who surprised me was the horse that ran second.  I had him running a 4-6.  But I\'m not going to let one horses \'x\' tell me that the whole race is wrong.  There was not \'group\' craziness in that race.  Every horse ran to his predicted number except one.

5) My point on WE, and just about every horse on the TG sheets is this:  When you have most horses with a pretty line, you will almost always be able to say \'He looked good on my sheet\'.  But the losers will also look good on the sheet.  That\'s the problem I had with your product the couple times I bought it -- there is very little mechanism for separating horses that have bad patterns and tossing them.  That to me is the true value of the Sheets -- tossing losers.  It\'s very rare that I cash because I nailed a horse ready to run a big top.  It\'s almost always from eliminating noncontenders.  So, if the product makes most horses look likely to pair up or move forward, as TG does, then I have no use for it.

I have not suggested that you fudge numbers after the fact.  What you do, though, usually, is determine before hand what you think the number is and if the time does not come back what you thought it should be you will often (not always, but often) change the variant to make the number fit your beliefs.  To me, someone better have a darn good reason that has a proven statistical basis before they do that.  And saying that \'they watered the track\' or \'it was two turns\' does not cut it, unless you have done soil tests or multiple races at the same distance to back it up.

It\'s very easy to pull a handful of races from one card and jump all over somebody. I could do the same, leading off with the 6th race -- Sarava was an absolute lock on the Rag. sheets and I put more money to win on that horse than I have in the last 10 years.  On the TG sheets, he was just one of 3 or 4 contenders.

My final comment is this:  The Rag. sheets are more expensive and are used by the majority of the people who earn a living by betting horses.  That says a lot.  If TG were better, I suspect that the top bettors would migrate over here.  But they don\'t.  What does that tell you?

[TGJB]

Jerry Jr. wrote:
>
> You are funny HP.
>
> I had a friend that used to post on this board and all his
> posts were deleted - just because he posted a dissenting view
> or brought up facts that Jerry didn\'t want to discuss.
>
> Most of this quote from you, \"They leave up the stuff that
> criticizes and addresses him directly and then they delete
> his responses. Not a peep out of you. If you don\'t like the
> facts, you just leave them out, right Dave?\" directly applies
> to you on this board as well. JB even deleted some of your
> posts here I think (just like Robes does on the other board
> when it clutters up Sheets discussion).
>
> What about it HP? How come you never defended the \"right\" for
> everyone to speak their mind here? I guess being open is a
> matter of convenience.

Tg--Jim has a friend? He was barred for making only personal attacks after several warnings--I told him (you?) that I would allow any meaningful discussion of of differences to stay up. It\'s too bad--you (he?) were a valuable resource.