numbers
 

I have been hitting the Merlot so please excuse my errors in spelling and grammer. Handicapping is an art and not a science. Numbers help but it is how we put them together is important. Race par times is number and a average(or means dependent on how you calucate it ) but it it just a number. It is accurate average. I don't see a need for a range of numbers that make up par for the race. It is what it is. If a horse can run close to that number he is a contender on speed. Same for class and pace. If he can be a condender on pace,class and speed is there something that will cause him to be better or worse in this race? That is question handicapping has to answer. Too me that is the essence of handicapping. I am a numbers man but I don't think that a computer can do right now what the human brain can. Computer and numbers help, but they are not the complete answer and in the near future it don't think they will be.
Jack

I'll bet you were sipping the Merlot while you were handicapping Del Mar.

Summer is strictly white burgundy time for me.
Too damn hot down here to drink red wine

To me, that question can be answered with equal validity either purely through subjective judgment and experience/memory, or through quantitative analysis (numbers), coupled with probabilities associated with those numbers and their patterns, and with a horse's ranking in comparison to its competitors, all of which a computer can calculate and manipulate, without the need for subjective input (other than whatever opinion and judgment may have gone into the formulation of the basic numbers/figures themselves).

Also, in my opinion, a computer has the advantage of being able to perform a comparatively larger volume of calculations at higher speed, and with greater accuracy and consistency from one race to the next.

My Del Mar handicapping from last week looks like I was hitting the Merlot as well....

i look at numbers to give me an idea where to spot horses. the numbers that i deal with make the lower the number the better. so when i see a horse that ran a 35 in a race with a par of 32, i have to figure if there can be enough improvement going forward to warrant the horse being in that race, i am going to probably look at it that the horse is going to need to run a 29 to win the race. the same theory would probably apply to betting the race.

the numbers are just that....numbers. the horses can't read numbers...the jockeys don't see numbers when they look for an opening...in other words you can only do so much with the numbers.............the only number i care about is the one that cashes....that being said....i got crushed the first two days at saratoga.....i need a winning number. forget the merlot......i need to smoke a number....californias finest.....

I think I might need a little Jack maybe then I could win something at Saratoga.

Jack, my friend, for me a good handicap is reading the numbers and reading the past performances. Too many times I get lazy and just read the numbers. The computer does do the calculations faster and more accurate than I can. The computers will suggest most contenders. But in the end, a capper needs to find the story behind each horse. And this can only be found in the past perfomances. It is the story that will put it all together.

And I just look at the numbers. Works for me.

Different strokes for different folks.

Especially when it is supercharged with a little vino.

:bang:

Do you look at the horse itself?
In the flesh, before the race?

Aesop's Fables.
I assume you have talked to everyone who bets races, or did you just make that up?

I made you up. I did say for me.

My apologies for missing that. :blush: