Quote:
Originally Posted by classhandicapper
I think we all know books aren't the answer to instant success.
I already mentioned this, but even though I think these kinds of studies are hugely important to answering handicapping questions, they get tricky, at least for me.
I've found that even when I answer handicapping questions with large samples, sometimes the game changes. What was true in the past is no longer true. The most obvious example is layoffs and days between races. There are horses I bet horses now I would have been keying against 30 years ago. Training changed.
I've also found things that outperformed the take fairly significantly (both positive and negative) with fairly large samples covering multiple years that didn't stop working in terms of predicting outcomes, but the odds changed and they were no longer of any real betting value. Trainer patterns are the most obvious, but I've had others.
So even when we learn from these studies, we are sometimes on very thin ice because so much is changing.
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What does not change for some of us is that the inner dynamics of a race determine winners and losers. Energy used or saved (pace, etc.) for acceleration roughly on the stretch turn through the finish, and position on the track affecting the use of/ saving of said energy.
Data helps form the intuitive judgement of a horse's performance and the ultimate question, "Is the horse higher or lower odds than he should be"?
I already have the mental database of a lifetime of race outcomes to affirm that this has superlative explanatory power in addition to my manual, painstaking study years ago, through one long season at a minor track comparing final odds to finishing position, of the nature of a racetrack as subtly favoring the outside on straightaways, and mathematically favoring the rail on turns.
What I did learn from literature and forums, and which I first witnessed in databases presented here, was the relative accuracy of public odds, far more than any individual approach. And most importantly, the crucial necessity of value handicapping over selection handicapping.
