Blind Luck

[Rich Curtis]

\"Serious,the kool aid has impaired you. I posted that Gomez completely disagrees with me on the 2 pounds.Disappeared? Let\'s cool it,making a fool of yourself\"

  I was talking about Gary Stevens, whom you had credited with having an informed opinion on the subject. Are you willing to accept everything Stevens has to say about weight? And the same goes for the 10+ nameless jockeys you enlisted in your cause the other day. Live by these guys? Actually name these guys? You will die by these guys.

[TGJB]

Mike, I\'ve been trying to stay out of this. But you have absolutely no position. You have sort of quotes from some guys (maybe), a sort of opinion based on selected results (as opposed to a serious study), and considering all that, an awful lot of insults coming out of you. Rich is not the one making a fool out of himself.

Far be it from me to defend Friedman, but you live in a world where the opinion of someone named Raggie Richie as to the handicapping ability of someone else is a response to their argument on weight? Really? While at the same time valuing the handicapping opinion of those famously hopeless handicappers, jockeys?

[miff]

JB,

Rich has no opinion. He is one who picks thru different posts, selects a word or a phrase and goes on a babbling off point tangent. Check the facts on that.

Defending your friend is admirable but he has no opinion based on anything,mine is based on lack of science in determining the ability of each horse to carry weight.Only science can prove my opinion wrong, not your opinion, Friedman\'s or any jockey\'s.

Mike

[sekrah]

miff,

The facts of empirical data collection have proven you wrong.  Characterizing Friedman or Jerry\'s thoughts on the subject as \"opinion\", while at the same time citing jockey opinion, has you making a fool out of yourself.

[HP]

I love how a thread about loving Blind Luck, just a simple fan letter, turns into this.  What a great board.  Absolute pisser.  

If it means anything, from what I\'ve read, Friedman sounds like a combination of Shakespeare and Einstein compared to everything else!  

Funny thing is years ago when I worked at TG I had a similar argument with Jerry.  \"Five pounds is like a horse carrying a can of tuna.  What difference could it make?\"  

But hey, five pounds equals one point.  Either use it or discard.  Live and let live!  Or as this seems to be going, live and let DIE.  LOL.  

HP

[miff]

\"The facts of empirical data collection\"


Another genius.This is gettin good!!

Precisely WHAT \"facts of empirical data collection\" has quantified the individual strength of each horse.

Surely you are not referring to the unscientific data bases all over the place, laden with opinion and preconceived notions, are you??

Mike

[TGJB]

The point people (and certainly Mike) don\'t get is how small a length (let alone less than that) is relative to the distances horses race. Again, 5 pounds is 1/200th (approximately) of the weight of a racehorse. 1/200th of a mile is... MORE than what we\'re using for a point at a mile.

Not that that\'s where the \"formula\" comes from. It\'s an approximation, and different versions have been used for many years by people quantifying performance (hence the term \"pounds the best\', among a million other things). Most ratings in other countries are in fact expressed in pounds.

One of the more ridiculous things Mike says (though not as ridiculous as ground loss doesn\'t matter on the first turn except in certain pace scenarios) is that 2 pounds doesn\'t make a difference, but ten does. Ten makes MORE of a difference. But either weight matters or it doesn\'t, and gravity says it does. It may or may not be the deciding factor in a race, it may not matter to a meaningful degree. But more weight makes the job harder to SOME degree.

Ragozin was using 5 pounds+ 1 point before I was, it\'s slightly different than what they use in Europe. After looking at how the figures mesh in tens of thousands of races it looks about right. The problem is that we don\'t know the weights of the individual horses, as I have said here several times in the past. The good news is that unlike with humans, racehorse size falls in a fairly tight range, like 1,000 pounds plus or minus 20%. So the degree of accuracy is probably about that-- five pounds = somewhere between 1.6 and 2.4 points, depending on the size of the horse.

And by the way, the post about weights not always being accurate raised an important issue. There have been at least two scandals I\'m aware of concerning clerks of scales letting certain riders break rules (in both directions, by the way). But that doesn\'t mean we can disregard the whole question. You work with the data you have. You just don\'t assume your figures are 1/4 point accurate, like that guy across town used to do (read his book).

[miff]

Nice theory,no science.

[TGJB]

Yeah, the theories of Euclid and Newton probably won\'t hold up in the long run.

[miff]

Yeah,Euclid, Newton and Ragosin. Which doesn\'t belong and why?

[HP]

What exactly would qualify as \"science\" here to you Miff?  

The dictionary says science is \"a branch of study concerned with observation and classification of facts and especially with the establishment of verifiable general laws.\"  

Building a database like TG\'s and having Jerry observe the effects of weight...actually sounds like science on some level to me.  What kind of study could YOUu design that could do a better job here?  

Part of science is designing methods to observe and confirm your theories.  Jerry has a database and has been observing EVERY race on EVERY major circuit for...a very long time.  That\'s a pretty comprehensive study.  I can\'t even imagine the cost and labor involved in creating a comparable database.  What would YOU offer in its place?  To get to the bottom of it?  HP

[Rich Curtis]

Miff wrote:

\"Rich has no opinion. He is one who picks thru different posts, selects a word or a phrase and goes on a babbling off point tangent.\"

Damn! Raggie Richie was supposed to keep that between me and him.

[TGJB]

Pretty sure I didn\'t put Len in with Euclid and Newton. That really would be a news story. That was all you. (And probably Len, if you asked him).

[miff]

HP,

A very intelligent question. There may be some brilliant physics professor who can come up with empiracal data(by testing) to confirm that 2 additional lbs slows down EVERY horse. No single horse who ever lived was capable of carrying 2 more pounds and run just as fast as when carrying 2 pounds less.This according to Sheet theory.

What JB and others cannot get their hands around(and avoid it like the plague) is that every horse is NOT of equal weight carrying ability. A formula that adjusts EVERY horse by one length per 5 lbs(distance aside) is assuming that ALL horses are of equal strength and are ALWAYS affected by precisely one length per 5 lbs of spot.

I would love to bet that all horses are not of equal strength and any formula using that assumption is scientifically flawed.

Mike

[sekrah]

Yes, compiling data and looking at the results is not science.  Miff is a genius!!