Are the New Beyer Speed Figures Useless?

[MPRanger]

Are the new Beyer figures useless unless you take them at face value?

In the old figures you could extract the variant because you could trust the grid and the beaten lengths chart. Now, he's not "giving away all his hole cards". That makes Beyer speed figures a whole lot less useful.

Are there charts I'm not aware of? Or are the built in errors acceptable? Or should I just make my own variant and skip the high price of the DRF?

[Tom]

You can still use the existing charts and tweak to get the variants. Not hard - I use the Winner's Books at DRF to do it.
I can tell you at Aqueduct, 6.5 furlongs needs an adjustment. I'll post it later.

I do not bother trying with turf or synthetics.

[VigorsTheGrey]

I don't understand...what changed...? What is different with the Beyers and when did this happen and why...? I use them all them time.

[MPRanger]

Changes made in 2015:

The changes are referred to as changes for turf but then in both the article and the interview he slips it in that is done for dirt too.


Beyer's article:
http://www.drf.com/news/beyer-change-coming-turf-beyer-figures



Beyer's interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HpBbUe4iHk

[Tom]

Been thinking on this for a while.
His beaten length charts have definitely changed.

Quick check shows this now -

5.5 - 2.5
6.0 - 2.2
6.5 - 2.1
7.0 - 2.0
8.0 - 1.7
8.2 - 1.6
8.3 - 1.5
8.5 - ?? Seeing 1.7 - 20
9.0 - ?? Seeing 2.0
10.0 - seeing 1.7

Need to do some more research. Bought a couple more printed editions to use to look through. Not sure if older races have been updated or not, so I want to get all races in the last year.

I have a procedure I use to verify Beyers (I will post later) that makes the figs usable, or at least lets me know when they are suspect.

A track like OP is very trustworthy - not a lot of variations and not many ??? races.

NYRA, on the other hand, looks like a mess. I think more raced get broken out than not. Don't know why, bad data or what. Maybe the races are the problem and he has to compensate for that, can't prove anything. I do see a lot of figs revised later on - a lot of them.

I trust OP right off the bat,but at NYRA, I keep a list of suspect figs so I am reminded later on to either check for a revision or take the number with a grain of salt. I'm not going to wheel a horse off of a ? figure,or take 8-5 on one. But I'll pay attention to a 10-1 shot who might have earned a bigger number than is showing today.

More later.

[TheOracle]

Are the new Beyer figures useless unless you take them at face value?

In the old figures you could extract the variant because you could trust the grid and the beaten lengths chart. Now, he's not "giving away all his hole cards". That makes Beyer speed figures a whole lot less useful.

Are there charts I'm not aware of? Or are the built in errors acceptable? Or should I just make my own variant and skip the high price of the DRF?

There was someone a while back asking a similar question relating to speed figures

http://www.paceadvantage.com/forum/showthread.php?t=129770&highlight=Useless

I’m not sure what conclusions he made from the responses but it seems many use their own instead of what’s popular

If different people are asking the same question regarding speed figures it makes you wonder about their usefulness I guess

[MPRanger]

Thanks.