Question for Equisim Users

[oller21]

I was wondering if anybody could tell me what percentage of the time Equisim has the winner in the top 4 of its contenders? Any help you could provide would be appreciated.

[headhawg]

oller21,

In my database, the Simulation model gets 71.18% (18,000+ races) and the Profiler module gets 74.37% (16,000+ races).

These stats are combined for routes/sprints on a fast dirt track. A quick look showed no significant difference if broken down by sprints and routes separately.

Other users with other DBs might show different results.

Hope this helps.

HH

[Handle]

It depends on what you use for criteria to select contenders (Profiler values, Simulation winner, etc.) and how you go about setting things up.

"Out of the box", the top four Simulation winner and Profiler winner win 70% of the time out of 60,000 races from every track/every race. The top sim horse won 24.65% and the top Profiler value horse won 29.2% of the time. The average field size is 8.35.

Results vary from track to track. At HOL, for example, the the top 4 Sim horses have won 75% (top winning 28.46%) while the top 4 Profiler value horses have won 77% of the time (top winning 29.24%) out of about 800 starts. Average field size is 7.6.

[Handle]

I'll mention another facet of EquiSim that's outside of "top contenders". With it I can tell, for instance, that the trainer Anthony Ferraro wins 45.74% of the time (96 starts) when he has the horse with the best prime power (BRIS) in the race, whereas the trainer Doug Shanyfelt wins 16.83% of the time (101) starts in the same situation. In this example one could talk about the differences in prime power performance at the different racing circuits (since these two trainer rarely race on the same circuit if at all...), but I think it signifies something about each (accomplished) trainer - about the ways in which they place their horses. Shanyfelt's top, "looks ready", horses are not nearly as well placed as Ferraro's. Given that, one could conclude that when Shanyfelt's horse is the top contender you have a better than normal chance of beating this typically low priced contender (best prime power horse).

I can do the same thing with other factors - such as the trainer with the "best speed" horse. This is a little different because best speed is determined by the selected pace line(s), either programmatically or manually selected. Here Shanyfelt wins 24% of the time (76 starts... for a +77.2% ROI...), whereas Ferraro still clearly holds sway with his "well meant" runners winning 43% with 91 starts.

This also illustrates one reason why these top trainers win so much. You could argue that Prime Power takes a trainer's abilities into account - so the best trainers tend to get top power ratings just because they are the best trainers. Looking at a more objective criteria like best speed, we see that Asmussen simply has a much higher percentage of runners entered into races where they have the raw ability to win the race. He's had 563 starts and wins those at a 37.12% clip (for a loss of -12%). Compare this to Asmussen's 2637 starts (21.3% of the time). Shanyfelt, on the other hand, has had 484 starts here with 76 best speed horses (15.7%). Ferraro has 410 starts, 91 being the best speed horses (22.2%). While the discrepency in the percentage of Best Speed horses for the three trainers does not fully explain the difference in their overall abilities to win, it does shed light on why Asmussen is a 24.5% winner overall, Ferraro a 23.41% winner, and Shanyfelt lags behind at a 12.19% clip.

-Nathan (the creator of EquiSim, fyi)

[Note: first time starters should have been discounted in the above analysis, since they do not have the chance to have a "best speed" rating. This changes things.
*Asmussen has 180 of these (6.8%... winning them at a 22.78% clip for a + 19.56% ROI, FYI...). This reduces the number of starts in the above scenario, upping the percentage of "best speed" horses he runs.

*Shanyfelt has but 1 first time starter.

* Ferraro has 17 first time starters (4.1%).