2020 database
 

I'm thinking that with races being run without spectators and other influences of the pandemic that races run in 2020 and 2021 should not be added to my database. I think the unusual conditions will skew the data although I'm uncertain as to how. Any thoughts?

It will save you a lot of work in 2020 and 2021. Keeping up with daily results takes time and effort. I think the most recent information is the most relevant so I would try to make the db complete.

Once you adopt a process where your handicapping work pulls its information from the database to make its selections you cannot leave any days out. If the day comes that I am no longer willing to keep up with the dataflow I will need to find an alternative activity to playing races.

Horses don't give a damn about if there are spectators or not, and I highly doubt they know about the pandemic. Races are won on the racetrack. Enter the data. JMO

I'm still importing all the data, but I agree that this year has an element of flukiness to it because there was no racing for awhile and it changed the way horses were prepared for the year.

I'm not sure this is correct, but when I want to test a potential insight I usually test it against my entire database. I started it in late 2014. Then I'll
test it against the last 2 years, the last year, and the last 6 months.

I'm trying to make sure I have very large samples and also do my best to make sure that things that may have worked in the past are still working and still have some value. But I can envision some scenarios where I might want to leave 2020 out of the testing just to see the results.

For me, it's not just the data. It's watching all the replays and note taking. There's so much work involved in keeping up with the information, by the time I get to the handicapping and gambling I'm not even in the mood to play. That was one reason I cut back on the types of races I play (less work), but even now it's too much.

This is completely anecdotal, but the moment covid hit and tracks began closing, I got slaughtered for 2 or 3 weeks straight. It seemed as if the average price of winners was sky rocketing, which is usually bad for my model.

My 2 second thought is that with only a few tracks open and no other betting outlets, there was significantly more "dumb" money in the pools decreasing the efficiency of the prices. My models use the public's price as an input with a certain weight decided by looking at 1000s of past races. It can't adjust to the efficiency of a few tracks decreasing within such a short amount of time, so it's essentially providing too high of a weight on the public's estimate.

I've done nothing to investigate this, but I plan to in the future. It certainly makes me concerned about how to handle that 3 or 4 month time period going forward....

It's hard to know if it was more dead money or changes in training, but I felt like when they started reopening there was a period of more layoffs and training interruptions that made it tough to evaluate current form.