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Originally Posted by v j stauffer
I've never been a handicapping book guy. Not saying they don't have merit. I expect they do.
I remember reading a stat, heck it's got to be 40 years ago, that said 78% percent of horses that win sprint races in North America are never worse than 3rd at any point in the race.
Simplistic to be sure. However, just having it in the back of my mind assuredly has prevented me from a lot of bad plays and saved me $$millions over the years.
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There is some basis for this and in some ways it's a self fulfilling prophecy. The better horses tend to be put into contention early and better horses tend to win more races. Of course it's more complicated then that and there are too many other variables at play for it to be a long term winning system.
Quirin did an interesting experiment where he found that if you could bet a race at the first call, a bet on the leader would yield a a profitable R.O.I. The trick, of course, is being able to accurately predict the early leader in every race. Of course you can't do that unless your betting in an x-change but I bet the other bettors would get wise to that and your payoffs would be too small to show a profit, Interesting the angles one can find based on different variables if one knows how to identify the winner using the right studies.
In Winning at the Races (best handicapping book ever written) he does a multiple regression computer study where he isolates the winning and most profitable features and calculates how to combine them by weighing them in order of effectiveness and coming up with the most profitable system. He even gives it a trial and it works. Very impressive since he used speed figures as one of his variables and at the time had to use the inaccurate DRF figures and variant. Imagine what he could with today's Beyers or Timeforms. Maybe someone will do it someday.
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