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Originally Posted by thaskalos
Hi Mark,
Chaplin has written 2 books...THE BETTOR'S GUIDE TO HARNESS RACING, and ADVANCED HARNESS RACING, both based on the same "methodology".
Yes...he is primarily interested in the horse's shape...but the manner thru which he determines it, can hardly be called "very simplistic" IMO. In fact...his methods are so well thought out, that they render OTHER methods simplistic - by comparison.
He equates SHAPE with STRETCH SPEED...theorizing that a horse in top shape, should show better stretch indurance than a horse in lesser shape...but he also supplies the reader with a comprehensive way of assessing the energy that the horses have expended PRE-STRETCH, using pace(fractional times), and trips.
Shape is determined, then, by comparing a horse's stretch speed with its pre-stretch energy...judging approximately how much better or worse the stretch speed was, compared to what it should have been, based on the pre-stretch energy expenditure.
Very advanced for his time...IMO.
If there is a glaring weakness in his books, it is in betting advice...but that is hardly surprising, given that the books were published in the 70s, when the betting menu was very limited.
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Now that you bring it up, I remember all of that. The relevence of stretch energy, however, has not passed the test of time in the new age of the game. Early speed is where the game is played these days and the late closers are like thoroughbred plodders who only win when the front speed horses totally collapse. If you want to do a little experiment along those lines, look at any program pps for a harness card. Go through all the horses and first write down one of the following designations for each horse:
"E" which means that the horse nearly always tries for the front in each of his races.
"E/C" which mean that the horse has shown the ability to go to the front early, or can be taken off the gate and raced from behind. And,
"C" which means that the horse is a dead closer, that is, never leaves for the lead.
Once you've done that for all horses, go back to their running-line record for the year where it shows number of starts and number of win, place, and shows. Calculate the win percentage for each horse and then record it next to his running style.
What will you find? That as a group, over a reasonable sample, the E horses will have the highest win percentage, followed by the E/C, and the C horses will always bring up the rear.
This is simply another way of saying that if a horse does not possess early speed, his chances of winning a given event are low.
This is also the reason I've said on the forum that guys who are using final 3/4 times, final 1/2 times, and/or final 1/4 times in their handicapping are wasting their valuable time.
Something I've never said here before is this:
Uncovered forward movement is the only type of speed that is at all significant. What does that mean? It means that any covered-up, chasing speed is totally and completely bogus. It means nothing. So those :25.4 closing quarters that you see at Meadowlands are meaningless, unless the horse was peeled off cover and moving wide. Even then it's pretty meaningless unless the horse shows the concurrent ability to leave when necessary.
One of the reasons that I focus on early speed so much is that generally it falls into the category of
uncovered and forward. Much of the remainder of speed in the race does not fill the bill. When it does, take note. That means that early launching of high speed off of cover is significant.
Also,
horses possessed of high uncovered forward speed are ALWAYS dangerous in virtually any event. This means you leave them out of your play at your own risk, whatever the odds.
Chaplin was writing about New York metro HMT racing back in the day. I agree that his insights were excellent for the time and venue in which he wrote. But if he is still actively playing today, I think he has gotten far past his original directives.
On the other hand, what I was saying is that the idea of being in or out of form is still relevant. In that sense, what I distilled from Chaplin was more his emphasis on form than anything else. For example, here is a great betting strategy: Bet a horse moving up off of winning into a higher class that generally produces faster raw final times, but in which the supposed "higher-class" animals are out of good current form. Often, the stepping-up invader goes off at a high price under the assumption that he is "over his head" in this class. Another way of putting it might be that form trumps class.
My recent "remembering" of Chaplin is something for which none of us should have to be reminded. The public's odds are set based on times, class, form, trip prediction, driver (changes in particular), and to some extent trainer. We can probably show significant deficiencies in using any one of these single criteria, except one-
form. Good form is the one variable that is never wrong or misleading. And so if we concentrate on playing
this factor alone, we should be getting long-term value.
