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I didn't explain myself too well the first time
Trifecta Mike, I should have backed up my assertions better the first time. My impression of your S formula was negative because I thought it would almost always pick short priced horses, and had no way of protecting the player from negative drops, which in the long run will cost the player at least 50 cents on each dollar bet. So I asked myself "under what conditions could this formula give the player an edge, a good bet at good odds?" After some thought, the answer I came up with was chaos races. Not that it will, but it could. Let me try to wrap up with a few points:
1. it appears to me that the S formula is too close in its logic to the way a linemaker thinks - the better the horse ran in bigger fields at shorter odds and higher class levels, the lower (and thus better) the S score. It's an attempt to identify the best horse, but may be a better indicator of who the public thinks is the best horse.
2. you hinted that "it works". But you said nothing about constants A and B other than they were unknown at this time. I could drive my car down the street on three tires blindfolded and tell you it worked........from a hospital bed.
3. you gave no guidance on how it might be used in real life handicapping, or your insights (as developer) into the weak and strong points. An example of this (made up) might be "if the lowest S score in the race is greater than .55, betting the two lowest S scores to win showed a 12% profit when both horses were at least 9-2 or higher in odds".
4. there is no indication or test data for percentage of winners or average odds of selection and average odds of winners, expected longest losing streak, etc.
I apologize for not explaining myself the first time, but I still think it's poor practice to put something out there either not knowing or not disclosing any more than you did. Personally, it would bother me to learn that someone went out and risked real money on an idea (of mine) that really hadn't even progressed into the paper testing stage. If you want people to help you paper test it and report the results back in this thread, I wish you had said so explicitly. But even then more info from you would be needed, like suggested starting settings for A and B, which are both negative numbers (who would know that?). If this seems unfair and negatively biased to you I apologize again, but this is still the way I see it.
I am admittedly a paper and pencil guy in my approach to handicapping, and happen to believe that our time is better spent in building a better game incrementally through knowledge gathering and self awareness than in an eternal search for the Holy Grail. Rome wasn't built in a day. I am truly impressed with what I've read about JCapper, and could be swayed to go in that direction if I had the time, but I don't, at least for now. Everything in it is explained to the best of the inventor's ability, and more importantly, it is tested and benchmarked thoroughly. The USER DEFINED METHOD, whether executed by hand or by computer, seems to me to be a common denominator among the best and brightest contributors to Pace Advantage.
In the moments when we are the most honest with ourselves, most of us will concede that a commitment of time and money are almost always required to advance to the next plateau in life. Seductive shortcuts almost always lead to the inevitable dead end. Carrying through with the commitment is the hard part, and explains why fitness clubs experience a surge in new memberships each January (New Years Resolutions) but the same number of cars in the parking lot as before by March.
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