Dave Schwartz's Par Times: An excellent tool

[DeltaLover]

I have repeatedly stated that there is very little to be found in horse betting related literature and most of the related books contain very little useful information. The exception to this rule, can be found in “books” containing processed data, presented in a detailed manner such that allows easy comparison and visualization of handicapping related quantities.

One of the most useful “book” belonging in this category is Dave Schwartz's: 2014 HorseStreet Par Times which can be purchased either in electronic or hard copy format, which I believe contains high quality par times and has the potential to improve your handicapping significant, if you spend the time to understand how to use it.

Since I am planning to add more tracks in my repertoire this coming winter and my database is not complete, I decided to go ahead and buy some commercial pars and give them a shot.

After searching the market and given that I have spoke in the past with Dave about his par – making methodology, I went ahead and placed an e-order through his side and in a few minutes I had his full set of pars in my computer...

The pars can be downloaded from here:

http://store.thehorsehandicappingauthority.com/2014-horsestreet-par-times-electronic/

The next thing it was to create a simple data retrival and presentation layer, allowing me to quickly access the pars for any possible combination of track – surface – distance, so after a few hours I had a simple browser based application doing exactly this.

The application can be cloned from the following repo:

https://github.com/deltalover/hoplato

it requires the following to be installed:

mysql
python
MySqlDb (which can be installed using pip install MySQL-python)
flask (http://flask.pocoo.org/)

After cloning the app, you should change the config.ini files under imporpars and factoranalysis/server to the mysql user and password and database name you are using.

You also need to change the following in file: importpars / import_pars.py


PARS_FILE_PATH = '/home/john/Dropbox/horse-racing/pars/PubClassPars.Csv'


pointing to the directory where you downloaded the pars.

After this, you are ready to import the pars to the db by issuing the command:


# create the necessary table scheme in the database
mysql -uroot -p1111 < create_db_schema.sql

importpars.py


The next thing is to start the server, by navigating to:

hoplato/factoranalysis/server

and executing:

python factors_server.py

To see the application, navigate to

hoplato/factoranalysis/client

and execute:

firefox pars.html


Here you can see a screen shot of the application:

http://www.themindofagambler.com/show_pars.jpg

[Robert Goren]

The only warning I would make is to make sure the track hasn't redone it surface since last year. Although Dave probably stays up on that and will warn you if they have.

[Dave Schwartz]

If you purchased 2014 pars go to your original order link for updates that cover BTP and LRC.

These were updated yesterday.

If you lost that link, please email me and I will send you the original order.

Thank you, for the kind words, Delta Lover.

They are not perfect. Still tracks with issues, especially with poly), but we do aim to please.


Goren,

Yes, surface replacements and reworks are always an issue. We try to keep up with them.

[classhandicapper]

Dave,

IMO, you should also sell the Class Level information as a separate product. Many people use pace and speed figures from other sources. So they have no interest in the PARs or making figures themselves. But they may be interested in how certain classes from one track generally stack up against horses at other tracks in terms of a rating (100 for 10K claimer at BEL etc..).