The 2010 Derby "Super Dual Qualifiers"

[Thomas Roulston]

Not counting fillies - since after all the Year of the Filly was last year! - there are eight horses who not only were weighted within 10 lbs. of the highweight on the Experimental and have a Dosage Index not exceeding 4.00, but in addition have at least some Solid or Professional chef-de-race influences in their Dosage Profiles.

The "Elite Eight" are:

Aikenite (119/2.60/5-4-8-1-0)
Buddy's Saint (123/1.67/5-1-13-1-0)
Homeboykris (117/3.67/6-3-4-0-1)
Interactif (117/2.83/12-13-15-2-2)
Make Music For Me (118/3.31/12-5-9-2-0)
Noble's Promise (124/3.36/11-4-7-2-0)
Pounced (122/1.07/9-1-11-3-6)
Vale of York (126/2.08/6-3-9-2-0)

And one of them - Buddy's Saint - already has recorded a triple-digit Beyer (101).

[WinterTriangle]

Except that Dr. Roman himself admitted that Dual Qual and Experimental has not been successful in predicting winners anymore.

Looking at this list:
Pounced has no plans on coming according to trainer, Interactif is a turfer, Vale of York will be coming from Dubai off tapeta, Aikenite may not get 1 1/4 (who can tell off that horrible front-running ride that last jock gave to this closer), Nobles Promise couldn't beat Looking at Lucky or Vale of York, Make Music for Me has the "RAN curse", ETC.

I like some of these, too, but just sayin'.

[Thomas Roulston]

And Buddy's Saint might not even get in - which is totally unfair.

Grade 1 winners at a mile or over should have first priority for getting into the Derby; if there be not 20 such horses entered, then it should go to any Grade 1 winners, followed by graded stakes winners, then to Grade 1 placed, using the graded-stakes-earnings criteria only to break ties within the same group.

Should a horse be excluded from the Derby because he ran most of his races in a state that doesn't have casinos?

If you think about it, that's what can happen in many cases.

[rastajenk]

Has it ever happened yet? I mean, has anything that's ever met your ranking of preferences not gotten in to the field? I think the earnings standard works well, and I don't see how Buddy can't make the field.

[BeatTheChalk]

Not counting fillies - since after all the Year of the Filly was last year! - there are eight horses who not only were weighted within 10 lbs. of the highweight on the Experimental and have a Dosage Index not exceeding 4.00, but in addition have at least some Solid or Professional chef-de-race influences in their Dosage Profiles.

The "Elite Eight" are:

Aikenite (119/2.60/5-4-8-1-0)
Buddy's Saint (123/1.67/5-1-13-1-0)
Homeboykris (117/3.67/6-3-4-0-1)
Interactif (117/2.83/12-13-15-2-2)
Make Music For Me (118/3.31/12-5-9-2-0)
Noble's Promise (124/3.36/11-4-7-2-0)
Pounced (122/1.07/9-1-11-3-6)
Vale of York (126/2.08/6-3-9-2-0)

And one of them - Buddy's Saint - already has recorded a triple-digit Beyer (101).

Maybe I am wrong - and I usually am - But I thought Lucky and Saver
were near the top of the list. Perhaps I can find the source and come
back with the info.

[LemonSoupKid]

Lookin at Lucky was on top of the EFH at 126 and Super Saver 122. Our friend didn't include them because although they have classic dosage points, 12 and 14 respectively, they have no solid or professional points in the profile.

As such, they had DIs of 3.33 and 3.00.

LSKid

[WinterTriangle]

And if you can't also use the numbers to compute speed/stamina indexes, then you can't see the whole picture, because having S&P influences that are somewhat overwhelmed by speed influences in the B & I part of the profile won't do well at a Classic distance, either.:)


There are a number of ways to further analyze Dr Roman's numbers, they cannot just be taken at face value like a BSF.

The importance of the actual figure representing Dosage Index also changes with distance, as well as by surface, distance, age, sex and class of the races:
http://www.chef-de-race.com/dosage/stats_2010.htm

[dccprez]

This list looks like an example of why "dual qualifier" and Dosage index carry little weight in modern handicapping the Derby/TC...
...I'm just sayin'.

[Steve R]

This list looks like an example of why "dual qualifier" and Dosage index carry little weight in modern handicapping the Derby/TC...
...I'm just sayin'.
I'm not sure what you mean by "modern handicapping the Derby/TC", but since 1990 (the year before Strike the Gold became the first to win the Derby with a DI over 4.00 since at least 1929), and through this year's Preakness these are the stats for a $2 win bet on every Dual Qualifier in every TC race (with no other handicapping applied):

51 TC races with at least one Dual Qualifier
26 TC race wins by a Dual Qualifier (51%)
45% ROI ($435.50 collected on $300.00 wagered)
Impact Value 2.34 overall, 1.61 in the Derby, 2.72 in the Preakness and 3.06 in the Belmont)

If that's what people mean by carrying little weight, it's pretty obvious they either don't understand the concept, haven't been paying attention or have been reading too many anti-Dosage articles by Andy Beyer and others. OTOH, if you can describe a mechanical betting system with better stats over the timeframe in question, I'd love to hear about it.

[dccprez]

*sigh*...I don't know if I have the strength...

I'll call "Uncle" and admit that I am not an expert or even all that well read on DI - although I know just enough to be dangerous.

That said, it isn't Beyer's columns - or any of the vast majority of turf writers who don't now, nor never have, subscribed to the DI (and there are a lot) - that specifically turned me "off" to DI. It's a compilation of the similarity in their disregard that has me "off the reservation".

Just to cite one example; a local turf writer here in Saratoga responded to an inquiry that I sent to him directly concerning the DI. His response - paraphrasing - was that the DI was at one time considered a useful tool, but that it is no longer considered as such. Or put another way (and again, I am paraphrasing and, to some extent, inferring from his response); the DI is no better (and perhaps no worse) than most of the tried-and-true methods of determining whether a horse will perform well at classic distance. And this is comes from a thoroughbred historian and a supremely well respected turf writer.

So perhaps my previous email was too far reaching; my disdain is for the DI and not so much for the Dual Qualifier theory. Based on your email, it seems to have some merit - although perhaps not as much as it appears on the surface.

Your stats irrefutable. Nice work. But I'd point out that from your original list, not one of those runners did a damn thing (so far) in this year's TC pursuit - with the exceptin of Make Music. But even so, he didn't do much. And catching 1 in 8 runners for a small slice isn't what I'd call a whopping success. Moreover, how many of the horses in those races were Dual Qualifiers/ What percentage of the runners in those fields met the criteria? If you have a 10 horse race and 5 of them are DQual's then your odds are pretty good that your winner will be a DQual. So the 43% hit ratio is great - but the odds of hitting may have been a lot lower than at first glance.

I'd also note that of those 26 winners, in most cases the horses who won were logical selections; you didn't need the DI/DQ to come up with them. In fact I'd say that almost 99% of the people who picked those winners had no eff'ing clue as to the DI or DQ status of the runner; they picked them because they were simply the better horses, the faster horses using other, proven methods that just about any decent handicapper would have utilized.

Wait...This kinda gives creedence to the DI/DQ.

So I'll bite; it works. But I'll add that in all of the TC winners that I've chosen - and I don't think I've hit at a 43% rate over that period, but I'm close - I've never used DI/DQ as a reference. Maybe I'll start paying more attention...

So I'll bite; it "works". But

[Steve R]

*sigh*...I don't know if I have the strength...

I'll call "Uncle" and admit that I am not an expert or even all that well read on DI - although I know just enough to be dangerous.

That said, it isn't Beyer's columns - or any of the vast majority of turf writers who don't now, nor never have, subscribed to the DI (and there are a lot) - that specifically turned me "off" to DI. It's a compilation of the similarity in their disregard that has me "off the reservation".

Just to cite one example; a local turf writer here in Saratoga responded to an inquiry that I sent to him directly concerning the DI. His response - paraphrasing - was that the DI was at one time considered a useful tool, but that it is no longer considered as such. Or put another way (and again, I am paraphrasing and, to some extent, inferring from his response); the DI is no better (and perhaps no worse) than most of the tried-and-true methods of determining whether a horse will perform well at classic distance. And this is comes from a thoroughbred historian and a supremely well respected turf writer.

So perhaps my previous email was too far reaching; my disdain is for the DI and not so much for the Dual Qualifier theory. Based on your email, it seems to have some merit - although perhaps not as much as it appears on the surface.

Your stats irrefutable. Nice work. But I'd point out that from your original list, not one of those runners did a damn thing (so far) in this year's TC pursuit - with the exceptin of Make Music. But even so, he didn't do much. And catching 1 in 8 runners for a small slice isn't what I'd call a whopping success. Moreover, how many of the horses in those races were Dual Qualifiers/ What percentage of the runners in those fields met the criteria? If you have a 10 horse race and 5 of them are DQual's then your odds are pretty good that your winner will be a DQual. So the 43% hit ratio is great - but the odds of hitting may have been a lot lower than at first glance.

I'd also note that of those 26 winners, in most cases the horses who won were logical selections; you didn't need the DI/DQ to come up with them. In fact I'd say that almost 99% of the people who picked those winners had no eff'ing clue as to the DI or DQ status of the runner; they picked them because they were simply the better horses, the faster horses using other, proven methods that just about any decent handicapper would have utilized.

Wait...This kinda gives creedence to the DI/DQ.

So I'll bite; it works. But I'll add that in all of the TC winners that I've chosen - and I don't think I've hit at a 43% rate over that period, but I'm close - I've never used DI/DQ as a reference. Maybe I'll start paying more attention...

So I'll bite; it "works". But
First of all, I didn't start this thread and didn't post any list. Second, I don't understand your "43% rate" over that period. Are you talking about ROI or win%? If the former, then you obviously are a multi-millionaire, so congrats on that. The win% for DQs is 51% and the ROI is 45%.

For reasons I don't understand, Super Saver was left off the original poster's list. Any reasonable handicapping to narrow the choices would have included him and even multiple bets would have yielded a profit. He was my top choice and publicly selected to win at my web site. OTOH, not one of the 22 handicappers whose picks were published by DRF had him as the winner, so I assume he wasn't a logical selection.

I don't know how you define a "logical" selection, but of the 26 winners, eight went off at odds of 8-1 or higher. In 2004, Birdstone was the only DQ in the Belmont and paid $74.00. Nothing logical there, except to me and a few others who actually understand the concept.

Regardless, DI/DQ is not a betting system. It was designed to demonstrate that American classic winners share common traits lacking in the general population and it does that admirably.

[dccprez]

S-
I thought it was your thread. My mistake.
I mis-typed 43%. Meant 45%.
I've done well in TC races - I find them easier to h-cap than $25K claimers, frankly.
I'll grant that "Logical" is open to debate; what I think is a logical horse may not always mean the same thing to all serious bettors - but most of the retionale that I'd use to define "logical" wouldn't be debated. Additionaly, "logical" doesn't necessarily mean the shortest price on the board - especially in TC races where you have an inordinate amount of "casual" wagering.


DRF handicappers didn't have Super Saver? So what. By any measure he was a logical win-candidate; breeding, race record, affinity for CD, good in the wet and, to a lesser extent, Calvin Borel. So SS was a indeed a logical contender; not the only one, but a logical one., no doubt.
Derby winners going off at 8-1 or better just goes to prove that 150,000 drunken, one-day-a-year bettors will put their money on anything.

Congratulatons on the Birdstone pick! I had Birdstone as well! I landed on him for different reasons, obviously. I also had LDK and Vision-Verse exacta (just for example)for similar reasons.

And I agree; DI/DQ does demonstrate that classic winners share common traits. And it does that...about 50% of the time. A lot of classic winners are brown, too. I wonder what the ROI and Win % would be over 20 years if you only bet the "brown" horse? I'd wager it would be about 50%...

Thanks for the insight (seriously) and enjoyable banter. I will in fact pay more attention to DQ from now on.