Why I rarely pay attention to the "experts"

[andicap]

A few years ago Dave Litfin wrote about how horses coming north from Gulfstream just kill the "inferior" competition from NYRA.
Don't ignore this angle, he warned! Horses who seem second best on paper will often win. And he redboarded a few examples.

Last week, GP horses were 4-26 at NYRA, winning at no higher than $6.70 and losing twice at odds-on. Now maybe some of these horses will win next time back but he meant right off the bat and they'll outrun their Beyers.

Last fall at Belmont, I found that for six weeks horses who were freshened, hadn't run for 45-90 days and were 1-1/9-1 were winning at profitable rates -- about 15-25% ROI. I guess I could write a DRF column too.

My opinion is that many trends that writers latch onto are short-term ones that come and go for no reason. In the mid-90s, Mark Hopkins started waxing the praises of Neal Terraciano because he had just won two races off a claim. He's under the radar, Hopkins said. Watch out for him!
I think those were the last two races he ever won.

Someone here posted recently that the real winners at the track would never disclose their secrets in print. While I'm sure there are exceptions (Brohamer, Schmidt come to mind, but Tom wrote his as he was about to retire from full-time betting), this seems like a pretty good rule to me.


Now I'm looking the back pages of the Form and "Harold Robinson" and "Michael DePasquale" are "pros" who are altrusively selling us their secrets for such a low price.

Its enough to make you quit reading.

But then again I'm such an ornery contrarian I still think I can make a profit betting early speed on the turf.
:D

[kenwoodallpromos]

Taking and giving advice myself, I find it best to confirm general rules to see if they bear out (Nunamaker gives a good account of his capping %!) but to understand that finer points of handicapping change often as horse condition and training techniques advance. Whose who claim to know things are not infalable. I myself am wrong occasionally, especially on racing history! / The betting value of individual factors change also; like tth time horses need to come back into top physical condition seems to be stretching out.

[JustRalph]

How many times do you see War Emblem on this list

These are the DRF experts.......one of them got it right...

"The Webmaster"

Worse than that........War Emblem wasn't even mentioned by any of them but the Webmaster..............

http://www.justralph.com/drf_misses_we.jpg

[cj]

In fairness to Dave Litfin, the Gulfstream and Aqueduct racing scenes have changed over the last couple years. Gulfstream is not what it once was, and they even run a sort of second meet after Florida Derby day that never existed before.

As for Aqueduct, the purses for the inner track have skyrocketed. Claimers/ lower allowance runners now stay in New York where the money is, while only the top class horses ship down to be assured a predictable racing / workout regiment.

[Tom]

I agree with CJ...GP is, IMHO minor league racing. Aside form the few stakes, the day in dayout product is dimall and I did not miss playing it all this year. No matter what Magna does, I will never go back to playing GP.
As to the Litfin angle, the part of it that I think was the key to it was that the horse had to be shipping from warm/hot weather into cool/cold/damp weather and this was a kind a freshening to them from the hot FLA sun. Briefly. I don't see that as much anymore, but for several years, I made my share of scores wtih the enhanced angle in the March-Appril time frame.

[TravisVOX]

As an avid follower of Aqueduct and I do examine the charts, you see a lot of GP horses in the charts fairing well. The exact numbers I do not know. I think now the stats don't hold up because the crop up here has grown already. But when you get that first slew of GP horses in, they are a solid betting opportunity a lot, not all, of the time.

[TravisVOX]

Gulfstream shippers went 5-for-10 today with a +$8.70 ROI. Some days it works, others it doesn't.

[melman]

Hey Andi, how ironic today's headline in the NY Post by Ed Fountaine "Beware Florida Shippers" LOL

[SilverSow]

I think the "first meet" is what used to be Hialeah... sigh... Woody Stephens always said the 2 best places to be were Hialeah in January & Saratoga in August... at least one of em's still around!

Dave

[andicap]

Originally posted by TravisVOX
Gulfstream shippers went 5-for-10 today with a +$8.70 ROI. Some days it works, others it doesn't.

That's kind of my point -- not that Fla. horses don't win in NY, but that the minute you think you have a trend -- poof! it disappears.
To Tom and CJ's point, I wonder if the DRF ever did a follow up to that column pointing out the Fla-NY angle not being as potent as it once was (except for yesterday!).
My point again was that these "trends" are elusive and that anyone can with a database can write about a current trend.
Fountaine's article is a case in point. He'll point out the 5-10 yesterday but ignore the 4-26 the week before.

And how many of these "experts" do well in handicapping tournaments?

I also didn't mean to disrespect Mark Hopkins, an excellent handicapper. Just wanted to warn people about "trends" they read about in the papers and books.

[InsideThePylons-MW]

As I have said before, the experts aren't writing articles or books........they are betting their money and don't have time for such nonsense.