BRIS Question

[andicap]

Here's the BRIS track bias stats for Turfway last week. OK, this says 41% of the 17 starters at 6f wired the field, but the best "runstyle" was an "S".

41% sounds like a pretty strong early speed bias to me.
But BRIS says the "S" running style dominated.
Any explanations, other than 42% of the races were "S" and the rest were E/P and P horses?

TRACK BIAS WEEK(11/29 - 12/05)
Best Best
Dis Surface # races % Wired Runstyle Posts

6.0f Dirt 17 41% S Rail/Ins

[Tom]

andy,
From my experience, the BRIS running style designations are not very accurate. Many of theire "S" horses are actually earlymand even more of their E horses are really closers. If a horse breaks 4th, runs 5th at the 2nd call, then finishes 8th, BRIS will usually call it an early performance, even though it might show three wins, all as a P or S - it uses the poor race to try to assign it a code. Since the horse lost postion, it must be an S.

Tom

[mhrussell]

All-

I have to agree with the comment that the BRIS running styles are not all that accurate. Now, as part of my handicapping, I always review each horses' assigned running style and compare that with their past performance lines. In about 20% of the cases, I end up changing the running style designation. Usually they involve E's really being E/P's (or vice versa). Sometimes a P is really an S (or vice versa). Never saw a case where an E was really S or S an E. The Qurin early speed points are accurate (at least to my own experience and reading comments from others I respect...).

I have written BRIS about this some time ago requesting an update to their software which assigns the running styles. They are considering this but I have not heard anything on current progress/plans for this...

Matt

[Tom]

I agree that the Quirin Speed Points in BRIS are ok.
Just the RS I don't use.
With so many small fields these days, I have revised the way I do QSP's - no points for running third unless the race has at least 7 horses in it. I don't like to credit a horse with early speed if it was third in a 5-horse field.
I've also been playing around with the DRF Sim Weekly running style designations of P,M, and C for first call postitions. This makes it easy to "keep" a track profile on virtually all tracks at the same time, and the designations seem to be pretty workable. Hardest part is to get the old definitions out of my head.

Tom