Today's NY Post

[PonyBologna]

Randomness certainly does make things more complicated, but there is no amount of effort which can account for random outcomes. Playing poker is complicated, playing roulette is random. Poker allows someone to sharpen their abilities to account for the small amount of randomness involved. Roulette is just pulling numbers out of your arse.

[Rick B.]

plasticman Wrote:
---------------------------------------------
> But doesnt random make it more complicated?

Complicated: tough, but possible.

Random: ?

Do you want to bet on this ---> ? <---

[plasticman]

Rick and pony, i totally get what you guys are saying, i just wonder if one handicappers random isn\'t another handicappers gold mine. Not everyone has the same mindsets and methods, if you know that synthetic horses switching to dirt can produce \'weird\' results, that can be construed as some sort of \'edge\'. If the public is betting the race as if nothing random can happen and you are betting the race as if something random CAN happen, isnt that some sort of edge you have?

[PonyBologna]

The problem with your randomness \"angle\" is that an \"anything can happen\" argument can be made for any horse in any race on any track, any day. Not a very good way to bet.

Also your suggestion that some handicappers see something as random while another might see a pattern is very true. However, if there actually IS a pattern which can be determined then the outcome is no longer random.  I think you\'re just describing differing levels of complicated.

[TGJB]

That\'s related to chaos theory, I believe, and there\'s something to it. But if you have an edge you want randomness kept to a minimum. Predictable volatility (which is what things like Thoro-Pattern are all about) is a different story.

Meanwhile, there are two distinct ways of thinking demonstrated on this board right now. One is sheet theory-- horses perform differently at different times, the idea being to figure out when a good one is coming. The other is, a horse as an entity with attributes and a level of performance that\'s just who he is-- if he gets beat it\'s because he wasn\'t athletic enough (to grossly oversimplify), if he wins it\'s because he was. I\'ve had this discussion with Dana here before-- they\'re not cars. There\'s a reason we put the figures on a graph.

Whether AK wins or gets beat this weekend is extremely unlikely to depend on his athleticism. All that stuff is reflected in how fast he runs on a given day, and measurable (his figure).

[plasticman]

Excellent point about the edge you already have and want randomness kept to a minimum. If you have a tried and true method of winning and its been working for years, you don\'t want a \'monkey wrench\' thrown into your mix. Plastic tracks have done that to a lot of players who were already winners. Those players didnt need change as they were currently winners already. I\'m starting to understand what you mean about random and maybe i\'m confusing that with chaos theory. Thanks for the education.

[MonmouthGuy]

PP Horse (Morning Line Odds)

1. Astrology (15-1)
2. Norman Asbjornson (30-1)
3. King Congie (20-1)
4. Flashpoint (20-1)
5. Shackleford (12-1)
6. Sway Away (15-1)
7. Midnight Interlude (15-1)
8. Dance City (12-1)
9. Mucho Macho Man (6-1)
10. Dialed In (9-2)
11. Animal Kingdom (2-1)
12. Isn't He Perfect (30-1)
13. Concealed Identity (30-1)
14. Mr. Commons (20-1)

[Silver Charm]

When will they draw? Tonite....like right around now?

Just watched the 1997 Preakness since the DRF was kind enough to post some Videos.

I hope we have a race as good as that one. Maybe Barry Irwins silks get up on the outside this time!

[Silver Charm]

Thx! Looks like another good betting racing. Throw in 14 horses coming back on two weeks rest and more randomness.

And another rant......Ha!

[Dana666]

Not to obscure your original point, but Taleb talks a lot about casino games such as roulette, and he says they are not the slightest bit random. The math is very well known to the casinos. The more spins, the more the players lose -- one big score would be negated over time as the player keeps playing over hours, days, months, years, and the casino is very clear on the profits in such games -- does not fit his definition of randomness in any way.

Jerry, you also seem to be agreeing with a point I made a long time ago (and you disagreed with me very strongly then), that synthetic tracks lead to imprecise numbers for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that if horses dislike the surface and do not feel safe, they\'re often holding back, so how can you accurately give such a horse a number, and when such a horse gets on dirt and feels more confident and is able to fully extend himself, the number is obviously going to be much faster. We\'ve seen these so many times, but it never seems to sink into any sheet aficionados\' brains -- they see only the number on the page.

There are about a hundred other reasons why synthetic tracks lead to messed up numbers -- they change dramatically with the weather, much more so than dirt tracks, there simply haven\'t been synthetic tracks as long as dirt tracks, you\'re talking about a few years of data versus decades on a dirt track, and, again, most horses hate synthetic tracks and will not give a top effort over such surfaces, the pace is much slower, and on and on.

The problems with handicapping synthetic tracks are myriad. If one knows a lot about horses and what their movement and body language say, that helps some, but if you\'re using just sheet numbers, you\'ve got some major problems. It seemed not okay for you to admit that, and I don\'t know why. It\'s no knock on your data in any way.

There were some things about Animal Kingdom that stood out when compared with the other horses, most notably he is supremely well-bred on the dam side for distance, and we have a bunch of 3 years-olds this year, even more than in other years, who hinted strongly they were not going to be effective at distances longer than a mile & an 1/8. So he had an edge right away that was certainly worth taking a chance at 20-1 or so. I think his biggest problem is just the short rest going into the Preakness, there is no way to say how much the effort in the Derby took out of him, though he seems to be doing very well on the farm, you never really know, but in my mind he has an excellent chance to win the triple crown if he could walk out of Baltimore with a win, the Belmont distance will play into his hands -- I think you are down-grading him in the NY post article very severely, though again I understand you are advising gamblers on how to bet the Preakness, and I do understand why he\'s not a value play in that race. I do think he is a much better horse than you are giving him credit for though.

[miff]

12 of the last 14 Preakness winners won on 2 weeks rest and all except Rachel/Bernardini ran in the derby. Put a fork in that inane \"only 2 weeks rest theory\", off tops or otherwise.


Mike

[mjellish]

Just want to make a point Jerry.  I think you know that I am a believer in form cycles.  But for me it is only a piece of the puzzle.  There are sometimes when this is the dominant handicapping factor for me and my whole bet will based on it.  And it works because the crowd is usually betting based on how a horse just ran.  Where by looking at form cycles, rest, & developement, we are betting on how we project a horse is going to run today.  But there are other factors for me such as suitability to distance, likely pace or race shape, post position, workouts, etc. that I think can really help in projecting how a horse is likely to run.

So when I look at Animal Kingdom, I see a horse coming into the Preakness off a new lifetime top, 3pt plus move, first time dirt.  Historically, more often than not these horses don\'t usually repeat their effort unless they get a lot of rest.  With two weeks, that is a strike against AK IMO.  Also, I don\'t think he is very athletic, which means if he gets trouble, blocked, or if someone else gets the jump on him he may not be able to get by them (he couldn\'t get by the winner in his last turf race for this same reason).  So that\'s another strike.  I also think the Churchill strip was playing awefully funny on Derby Day, which makes sense given that they had RECORD rainfall leading up to the start of the Churchill meet.  The Pimlico strip is likely to play completely different than the Churchill strip, and AK may not even like it.  At 2-1, 3-1, or even 7/2 I think you have to play devil\'s advocate with AK given all of the above, not simply because I don\'t feel he is athletic.  

He\'s not likely to get any type of work from now till race day unless they blow him out 3F or something silly after a gallop, so it\'s a little tricky to evaluate his condition.  Word I am hearing though is that he looks awesome at Fair Hill and acts as if the Derby took nothing out of him.  He\'s held his weight, great looking coat, is playfull, and hardly took a deep breath the last three days after some pretty energetic gallops with strong finishes on the end of them.  So that would seem to be a positive for him.  


Point I\'m trying to make is that I believe more in looking at the whole picture rather than just the numbers by themselves.  If the sheet says bounce but the horse is training like a monster, I think it\'s tough to take that approach with any degree of confidence.  

But in any case, if AK wins in Maryland, my initial assumption would be he is a huge bet against for me in the Belmont because I just don\'t see him stringing together 3 top efforts on the dirt in 5 weeks.

I think Sway Away is the horse for AK to fear here.  At least that is how I would play it if they were going in the gate right now.  Fresh, fit as a fiddle, bred to love the distance, drew well, has a big number to run back to and has room for development.  He seems to have really matured in his last few works.  His last race he was bounced all over the place early, was rank, never relaxed, went extremely wide on both turns, took the lead and drew away from the field at the top the stretch before fading right in the end after a very tough trip where he wasted a lot of energy.  If Gomez can get him to relax at Pimlico I think he is the most likely winner at a very good price.

[TGJB]

To be clear, I absolutely disagree with you about the accuracy of synthetic track figures. The randomness comes in from not knowing how those horses will handle a completely different surface, and no amount of accuracy in their previous races will help you with that question.

And seriously, you can\'t distinguish between the idea that an individual spin of the wheel is random (as is a coin flip), and that the results over an infinite sampling will even out?

[TGJB]

Really. That seals it then.

Read my comments with the Preakness data.

[TGJB]

MJ-- things like the horse doing great can be part of (or a function of) the whole form cycle thing. And certainly it can be argued that changes in conditions (surface, possibly trip) can affect performance and/or outcomes (two different things). But that\'s different than assigning a horse attributes (scrappy, athletic etc.) and viewing them as independent from his measurable performance.