Condition claiming races by winners/date, how to view them?

[cutchemist42]

Whenever I see these races, say non-winners of 2 since a certain date, I wonder sometimes how they are devised. Sometimes it seems the date chosen is pretty random, like the middle of a week in August or something. Is there any mindset to consider when looking at these type of conditioned claimers?

In general, how should one view conditioned claimers?

Thanks for the discussion and tips.

[Fingal]

I'd say it's because the Racing Secretary tries to write his condition book tailored to the horses on the grounds or available. By keeping track of who won what & when he can entice runners to enter a race & make it go.

[Tom]

You might find the date is 6 months from today, of 3, or 12.....or might match up with opening day for the track, or closing day for another track on the circuit. Keep an eye out for a date that just allows one horse into the race.

[Overlay]

I remember running across such a race at Arlington Park one time when I was first getting interested in handicapping, where there was one horse in the field that had had its last victory exactly on the cutoff date in the race conditions, and the horse won the race at fairly good odds (around 9-1). (It had jumped out at me because I had just been reading in the handicapping books that I was collecting about the importance of comparing the entrants in each race to the race conditions. I don't know whether that was just a chance occurrence or not, but it was enough to get me to remember to always check the race conditions for such "coincidences".)

[johnhannibalsmith]

Like Tom alluded to, more often than not (in most places), those "random" dates are basically longhand for a specific event or time period.

In other words, it could be read as "non-winners of two since the end of last year's meet" or "non-winners of the meet" or something along those lines and is usually how the condition is referred to colloquially by those on the track.

[CincyHorseplayer]

Usually the dates are 3-6-12 months or within 365 days.If you are looking at say a combined claimer of N3L/N1Y-current year in the spring,the horses that qualify under the time condition can be bigtime multiple winners who can crush the horses with 2 wins.Later in the year if some younger and/or lightly raced horses have improved rapidly and relled off 2 wins and the time constraint horses have kept on losing during the year,the lifetime horses can beat them handily.

Whenever you look at conditions,imagine the best type of horse for each condition.Look through 10-12 cards for such types.I'll do this just as an exercise sometimes.It's fun to me and informative.Sometimes I'll just look at longshot winners and try to figure out if it ended up a winner because of class maneuvers or shipping,distance changes etc.It usually does no matter how subtle.

[Tom]

It can pay to have a list of the specifics for this type of race.
I have caught some nice process at FL on horse dripping from nw1,6mos in to nw1, 24 months, or that type of thing over the years.

[netbet]

1st race at Gulfstream tomorrow (2/6/14)
NW3L or a race since August 5th....

#7 Sherry Angel- winner of 5 lifetime. Last won a race August 1st.

Patrick

[CincyHorseplayer]

It can pay to have a list of the specifics for this type of race.
I have caught some nice process at FL on horse dripping from nw1,6mos in to nw1, 24 months, or that type of thing over the years.

Yeah I had a horse at Beulah under practically the same circumstances that had a competitive fig in today's field but was completely outrun.That race was a N3Y-current year and today was in a N3Y-2 years and torched the field at 6-1 or so.They are listed the same in the PP's.I just knew that race.

[jballscalls]

Whenever I see these races, say non-winners of 2 since a certain date, I wonder sometimes how they are devised. Sometimes it seems the date chosen is pretty random, like the middle of a week in August or something. Is there any mindset to consider when looking at these type of conditioned claimers?

In general, how should one view conditioned claimers?

Thanks for the discussion and tips.

One thing I know we do is we'll write races back to the start of the meet. So in January we might have had "Non winners of 2 since July 26, 2013" as that was the start of the meet.