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[johnhannibalsmith]

I generally stick to one track for most of my wagering and my rule of thumb has evolved into: If I am looking for a track bias, I'm probably going to torture myself with a theory one way or the other. If I'm not looking for a bias and one seems to be presenting itself, I'm interested. And I usually stop betting because I'm just not able to convince myself that after watching two or three races that I've stumbled upon something profound and now can simply not only adjust my handicapping, but also (in the case of path bias) make predictions about which horse will be where and when. I tried for years and just can't get to where I can put much faith in the idea of betting into biases as they are happening unless it is something that is ever present like old Keeneland.

So bias for me is strictly a factor in evaluating a performance that has already happened and augmenting my opinion of the performance with that in mind when the horse runs again in what I assume to be a 'fair' track. At the track that I usually play, these biases are almost always detectable after weather (drying out wet track, extreme sun/wind, etc.) or after significant off-day maintenance (adding surface, deeper rip/harrow, etc). In other words, I pretty well limit myself to what I can consider reasonably high probability cases of legitimate bias and not my own bias projecting bias.

In the case of this track, most of my bias interest revolves around path biases as opposed to the more common generalization of the entire surface as being 'fast' or 'dead' or 'speed favoring' or what have you. The track is considered 'fair' when it has its usual 'speed' bias and more often than not if it is playing absurdly far in favor of speed or suddenly seems to be producing an inordinate amount of rally/closers that didn't look utterly likely anyway or given the eventual pace, it isn't merely as simple as favoring speed or favoring rally/closers. Usually it's a little more nuanced than that, with closers that suddenly win in bunches all seemingly out near the crown of a drying track. Try to save ground with that move and run behind the pace and the bias seems to vanish. Sweep out to the middle of the track in the turn and run in the middle of the course and you are on pavement while the pace down in the inside is spinning its wheels. That sort of thing.

I'm not sure where I'm headed with all of this other than just imparting my skeptical interest in bias. I guess trying to play along with DeltaLover's post in some way. I'll add this part for the hell of it: Though I claim that I rarely try to incorporate an active perceived bias into my handicapping, there is one exception to this rule that might be useful to someone, somewhere, sometime. Again, it is most prominent after weather with a drying track and now and then on a sealed track that has had some races run over it. At this particular track, they run a mixed meet with quarter horses. Quarter horses run early in the card - the first couple or few races. If the conditions are such that reason exists to suspect a bias is looming, quarter horse races often give some great insight into what is to come for the remainder of the thoroughbred card. If horses are going to struggle over a particular part and/or breeze through another, there's nothing like observing quarter horses running straight along the strip eight to ten abreast to sniff out who is gliding with ease and who is really fighting to slog through it.

I'm not a bias guy like EMD so I guess this is the best I can offer.