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Sparky13
04-21-2011, 02:19 PM
I have used MPH-Modern Pace Handicapping by Thomas Brohamer off and on with some success. It requires the impute of one paceline for each horse in a race. I normally go back just three pacelines and have used the highest Beyer, the highest speed rating, best race at the disance, etc. Anyone care to share what pacelines you use with this program? Thanks

HUSKER55
04-21-2011, 03:43 PM
Picking the correct paceline is the trick. If the horse is declining then his best beyer is not indicative of what you will get today. How often does this horse run a good race compared to his best rate at this distance.

If the last three races are 60-70-80 then using 80 is probably the wrong pacline to use. The horse is not running well for some reason.

If the last three are 79-81-80 then the 81 paceline is not an unreasonable expectation.

His methods are fine but picking the correct paceline is the key.

JMHO

Tom
04-21-2011, 10:03 PM
First thing you have to do is decide if the horse is a contender or not. If it is, then you need to find a pace line that "gives it a shot." If there are several good lines, I will enter several for a horse and pick the one that best fits. Or, say I put in 3 or 4 and looks aberrant to the others, I know that one is not the one to use.

If the horse is an early horse,and one of the lines is lacking in early and strong in late, that one is thrown out. I may have single lines for a couple and several for a couple, so I just match them up by my idea of their running styles and delete lines until I have one for each horse. I like to keep lines that have a 3 ranking anywhere for a closer look, and get rid of any that are worse than 3 in all factors.

It really doesn't take that long, most of the time, the line to use if pretty cut and dried, but the time spent on the less obvious ones is worth it.

Very handy program.:ThmbUp:

Jingle
04-22-2011, 06:44 AM
Tom--can you run MPH on Win 7? I just ordered 7 and wondered what I have to do to be able to run it.

Thanks

Elliott Sidewater
04-22-2011, 09:36 AM
There probably isn't just one good way to pick pacelines, but the one that makes the most sense to me is to pick a line that reflects how a horse ran against the projected pace in today's race. This is how the Synergism program works (user has to select "setup times") and I found it to produce very reasonable predicted velocity readouts for the contenders. In contrast to what contributor Tom describes below, in my own play, I project today's pace first, and then I look at each horse's pace characteristics and form cycle to determine whether it should be included as a contender or thrown out. This may not be optimal, but for me this seems logical and leads to fewer gross errors in contender selection. Maybe Tom and I end up with the same result in the end, but I think you would end up with slightly fewer contenders overall with my approach. I believe that this topic is covered in great detail in Pizzola's Handicapping Magic. There is sound advice in that book on what to do when a horse is facing a projected pace it has never encountered before, or has succeeded against only once while failing miserably all other times.

In using MPH or any pace software, this is an incredibly important step. The original poster should give this matter a good deal of thought, because your results are very sensitive to pace line selection. I've given it a lot of thought myself, and for my money rules based approaches to paceline selection are inferior to a context based approach. For a novice handicapper I guess rules might suffice at first, but only until the novice evolves into a handicapper.

Elliott

DJofSD
04-22-2011, 10:05 AM
Using the best of the last three lines is a practice that Doc taught. It's a starting point and others have already given you excellent input where to go next.

After you have some solid insight and understanding, don't be afraid to rework races after the fact -- especially if you've made a wager and lost. First, using pace analysis you can review a decission about who your contenders were, as Tom suggested. Sometimes you've included runners you should not have and sometimes you will have left the winner out. Review your choices and reasons why and learn from them.

And then there is form cycle. Sometimes having the insight to know how your horse will run today will allow you to find the best line.

And then there is the class perspective. IMO, class will trump pace most of the time. The race doesn't always go to the class horse but that's the way to bet.