Wed Sar 3rd - interesting jockey change

[Alydar in California]

Michael D wrote: \"Please, a Keynesian?\"

It was Richard Nixon who said that we are all Keynesians now.

\"My heroes are F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman.\"

May God forgive you.

[Michael D.]

hahahhah.........next subject..... I think we have beat this one to death. Good luck everybody, I think the Travers day card is nearly impossible. Congrats to anyone who conquers it.

[Alydar in California]

David Patent wrote:

\"I will have to compose some kind of response but it will be over the weekend. No personal attacks or anything. I just think you were a bit too glib in your response to not be called on it. Oh, and on #2 I do mean business -- no bluffs.\"

David: I thought it would be obvious that I adopted that tone in an effort to enliven things. If I was going to use it on Kevin and Bob, I thought it best to use it on you and JB, too. Take your time with your reply. I look forward to it.

[Mall]

Irrespective of when it\'s added in, a lot of what has been said about jockeys seems to me to be based on incomplete information. This started with the assertion that a rider switch to JR was meaningful to a horse\'s chances of winning a particular race. Howvever, JR\'s mounts are booked by hall of famer Angel Cordero, #1 in Mall\'s Jockey Hall of Fame. Angel did a great job of teaching JR to ride, particularly at the Spa. But ask the trainers who used & like Angel a great deal & they will tell you pretty much to a man that he is not a very good agent, & that JR would have a lot more wins if Angel did a better job. The reason, & this is educated speculation based on limited contact, is that Angel exhibits the same lack of concentration & memory problems that are not uncommon among those who suffer a terrible tragedy. It is entirely possible that the switch in question was due to mixup, & that reading too much into it was a mistake.

Edgar is one of the hardest working & most pleasant of the colony, but don\'t believe the drf articles about how his English is improving. I sat next to him on a flight for 2 hrs & it took that long just to find out who his mounts were that afternoon. The largest bet I ever lost, by the shortest of noses, was due, I later learned, to the fact that Edgar did not understand the instructions. After the race, the connections actually showed Edgar videos with a pointer to communicate what they wanted him to do, & the horse won a GR I at Sar in its next start. That option obviously isn\'t available for most races.

The saying for the last few yrs has been that Edgar is looking for a mount in every race, while JD is looking for the best mount in the races he decides to ride in. One of the reasons Edgar is liked so much is that he turned down many offers to come to NY because he didn\'t want to abandon his agent. Contrast that with JD\'s abrupt dismissal of his agent last yr, who is now Prado\'s agent, an irony many were quick to jump on when Edgar recently passed JD in the standings. The word on the backside at Sar was that a no. of trainers are not real happy that JD all but refuses to work any horses in the morning. In contrast, Prado is there pretty much every day. IMHO, again based on limited contact, JD\'s success is due in large part to the fact that he simply seems to be smarter than most of the others.

Leading money winner PDay, sometimes called \"Baby Jesus\", is another who will ride horses for reasons which are not necessarily related to the possibility of winning. If he takes a liking to a young trainer, he will ride the trainer\'s horses even when they have a marginal chance at best. The thing I have heard more than one trainer say about him is that it does not matter if the horse is trained to run a certain way, & that is communicated, PDay is going to ride the horse the way he thinks it should be ridden. Keep that in mind when you watch him try to rate a confirmed front runner for the 1st time.

In short, a lot of what\'s going on with the jocks is like many human activities, in that it cannot be measured entirely by statistics.

[Alydar in California]

David: Let me give you a clear target at which to aim:

     I believe that a good rider makes it a bit more likely that his horse will run its best number or win with an inferior number (save ground).

      How do we determine who is a good rider and who is not? Winning percentage cheats riders who get bad mounts and overrates riders who get good mounts.

    After allowances are made for popularity or lack of same, ROI, because it incorporates the crowd\'s assessment of horses\' chances, gives us a decent idea of who is good and who is not. There are better ways, to be sure, and we can talk about them if you like, but they take a lot more time.

    Please note that I\'m only interested in what ROI tells us about competence. For the purposes of a particular bet, I couldn\'t care less whether a particular rider is overrated or underrated by the public, just as, for the purposes of a particular bet, I couldn\'t care less what the takeout is, and just as, for the purposes of a particular bet, I couldn\'t care less whether speed figures are overbet these days. Later on, there will be time for jeremiads about how there were more overlays before the public had speed figures, etc. For now, all I\'m interested in is how a horse\'s chances of winning compare to his odds.

 The parts (read: the reasons why the public bets as it does) don\'t matter when we have the whole (read: the tote odds, against which we will put our estimate of the horses chances of winning) and confidence that our reasons are superior to the public\'s reasons. This is why I don\'t like analogies between handicapping and the stock market: A horse race gives us a result that has nothing to do with public perceptions. In the stock market, on the other hand, something like \"greater fool effect\" can reward a purchase that was wildly overpriced by any standard that excludes an expectation of irrational exuberance. It is as if bettors both handicapped horses and propelled them. I would have more fondness for an analogy between the stock market and a yearling sale.  

  If Bailey tends to improve his horses one point over a bad rider, that is important information. If the crowd knows this and bets Bailey\'s horses accordingly, I will have fewer overlays to look forward to, but the information retains its value, albeit more as a prerequisite for success than as any sort of guarantee of success. Before I bet a race, I look at figures, pace, riders, trainers, etc., and make an odds line in my head. Later, I will compare this odds line to the tote odds and bet on horses that I think are overlays.

   If Bailey figures to move a horse up by one point, but the crowd bets Bailey as if he will move the horse up by two points, the horse can still be an overlay and a great bet, depending on whether other factors overpower the one-point-versus-two-points discrepancy.

     Any talk that a handicapping factor, whether it\'s riders, TG figures, or anything else, is unimportant because the crowd will take it into consideration and bet accordingly, strikes me as epic, monumental, awe-inspiring sanguinary BS. The percentages that we give to individual horses--reflecting their chances of winning, one hopes--must add up to 100. This is a zero-sum game. To refuse to account for a rider\'s ability to move up his horses because the crowd bets his mounts accordingly is to guarantee an error elsewhere. It is to double count, one count being the expectation that Bailey\'s talent will be negated by lower odds and another count being the actualization of the negation on the tote board. (Sorry about the rhyme; Bulworth mode; great movie; Halle Berry at her most ravishing.) In short, it is to botch the operation all to hell.

[HP]

I would only add that after Aly\'s lengthy and masterful explanantion of this subject he concludes, in part,

\"Any talk that a handicapping factor, whether it\'s riders, TG figures, or anything else, is unimportant because the crowd will take it into consideration and bet accordingly, strikes me as epic, monumental, awe-inspiring sanguinary BS.\"

I hope JB will take the tone of this sanguinary BS thing into account when he considers what a great guy Aly is after he asked him to tone down the personal attacks. I would point out that he pours this on based on his complete exaggeration of my comments.

I never said that riders were unimportant because the crowd will take it into consideration and bet accordingly...  I said certain situations may lead the crowd to back a jockey\'s horses excessively. I said a bunch of other things too, but this is really stretching my point to suit Aly\'s need to let everyone know what a genius he is. Everybody has priorities when they bet. This isn\'t one of mine. That\'s my only, simple, point.

Again, I find it hard to believe that even you Aly, O great handicapping master, give more than say, 15% of your overall handicapping energy to a consideration of this particular subject. You have supplied precisely no examples of using this to such tremendous advantage (and have ducked Patent\'s rather simple question, \"tell us, O master, how you use this to such advantage?\"). You have spent A LOT of time on the theories of how you could do this. I guess there wasn\'t room for an example in this huge post, which we can refer back to as the \"zero sum\" jockey analysis post (Vol. III, No. 63).

Michael D, if I understand correctly, was unable to pick up on the much vaunted current market angle despite paying close attention to this factor every day (and doubtless giving it more than say, 15% of his handicapping energy) and also despite the fact that someone else was/is doing it right next to him.

Mall\'s contribution was nice. I guess that\'s it.

HP

[HP]

Actually I have one more clever last word.

Michael D, who has posted quite wisely on the need for pre-race ideas, and the importance of ideas and men who have ideas versus those who don\'t, has also posted exactly zero examples of the use of this powerful angle pre-race as well. Interesting given his insistence on these high standards for judging...ideas. HP

[Michael D.]

HP
 Remember our last handicapping contest? If I remember correctly, most people involved scored around 100, I was around 140....in % terms, a rather large victory (I think you finished last). Remember the other contest? I think you were once again around the bottom, and I was only defeated by two guys who picked one winner each. HP, you are foolish man, a very foolish man.

[HP]

You must be very insecure to keep bringing up this contest stuff. I joked at the time that Patent and I finished last and next to last. Calling me foolish does not advance your point.

You actually have one example here at the beginning of this thread. You liked a horse that was slower than the other contenders, switching to a great jock at a short price. How did that go? Is that the only example you will provide, idea man? HP

[Michael D.]

The price was 6-1. Again, you are a man who is unable to make any intelligent comment (or prediction) BEFORE A RACE IS RUN. Until you do that (as I have done on several occasions), your posts will only make you look more and more foolish.

[HP]

Up the track. Your choices were 3,4,5 and 7 in the Saratoga Breeders Cup. And Gander would have run well too! Easy on the capital letters. You haven\'t given one example of using this angle to your advantage, but I guess we\'ll have to take your word for it. Best of luck. HP

[Michael D.]

 I just can\'t understand why you would want to compare your angles against mine, given the final results of our contests. For the life of me, I just can\'t understand. You will have to be a bit more clever with your BS my friend, as your handicapping skills leave you with a lot of work to be done.

[HP]

I don\'t know Michael, dazzling rhetoric aside, this still does not seem to be a pre-race example of what you\'re talking about, and you have made a big deal about the importance of this. It seems to be another case of a man not being able to live up to his own impossibly high standards. We\'ll just have to muddle through another day. You did great in those contests. HP

[dpatent1]

Alydar,

I can add nothing to your latest exposition.  I agree.  

Some minor cleanup:

I was not trying to draw a direct analogy between handicapping and the stock market.  I was simply picking up on one common thread between the two \'markets\' -- the digestion and incorporation of readily available information into the price of an asset.

You still have not answered my question (I note HP\'s concurrence), which is fine b/c I don\'t think there is a handicapper alive with a positive ROI where the use of jockey ROI (not jockey skill, but Jockey ROI) is any meaningful part of his/her success.

When we talk about ROI, so-called \"hot streaks\" are relevant (and when I say \'relevant\' I don\'t mean relevant in that I want to incorporate it into my morning line but relevant in that you should not have so easily dismissed my point about \'hot streaks\') for two reasons: 1) a recent hot or bad streak will cause ROI to deviate from the long-term trend based on what you call \'established competence\' and 2) the crowd may overvalue recent success, often in part because of a recent surge in ROI.  My point, and I think we agree, is that once we have an opinion on the jockey, we factor that into the horses morning line.  His ROI, however, is not something to factor in.  I won\'t give horse \'A\' an addiitional 1% chance of winning on Thursday just because JD\'s ROI jumped from $1.60 to $1.85 in the last couple of days and neither would you.  Over time, of course, as jockeys improve or decline, we need to factor that in, but this exercise is at the margins.

[TGJB]

You should do more of this.