Response to do you use energy distribution post?
I don't understand why there's so much confusion about using incremental velocity. You say you can't pick pace lines, then in my opinion your data can't be right. Another says they can't or don't know how to model the information they accumulate, so how in the world does one expect to interpret what they're looking at?
Look, I understand Sartin very well, I've only been using his formulas since the mid eighties. I also understand the thinking and execution of the match-up. But herein lies the dilemma. If the horse Sham could talk he would tell you he could out run or match strides with Secretariat but he could never beat him, yet a non-descript horse named Onion did! Very few horses could beat the great Seattle Slew and only twice by a nose and once by alot in the Swaps Stakes. And no horse could run with American Pharoah and beat him until a horse named Keen Ice did. Throughout history all the great ones got beat and what was the common thread, they all had "off days" or to be more specific they all experienced a decline in "FORM" on those fateful encounters. Go back and study the works of Ray Taulbot, even Sartin learned from him. The aforementioned incorporated "FORM" into his pace handicapping. Sartin incorporated form into his equation by using +'s and 0's on the horses most recent race(s) in trying to find his "true contenders" in the race. Remember the words of Tom Ainslie "accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative horses in a race".
Many handicappers shy away from FORM evaluation in a race because of the complexity of the angle. And you really have to read between the lines because sometimes it's the horse but sometimes it's the trainer trying to mask the horses current form.
The Form angle is not that hard to comprehend. First it should represent the horse's current racing ability. So what does that mean? It means that if the horse shows in the past he ran two 25k claiming races and shows that he was able to handle the pace back then but his more recent 4 or 5 races have been in the 16k and 12.5k, then the horse has to be evaluated based on those pace numbers and not on what he used to be able to do because if he could he wouldn't be running at those lower level races. Trainers are not stupid, they know exactly what the horse can and can not do. Second be aware that as a horse drops in class, said horse tends to run closer to the pace to the point as horse finds his right level he may actually be able to wire the field. And last look for positive and/or negative form angles in last race. A horse that displays some negative angle or form in his last race will not get the benefit of the doubt even if he encountered some trouble in race, whereas a horse displaying some positive form in last would get the benefit of doubt and I might go back 1 or 2 races. The higher the class of the horse, the further I might go back. Graded stakes horses can run back to races as far as a year on the dirt or even longer on the grass. Claimers beware. The cheaper the horse the shorter their form cycles are.
EXAMPLE: 9-5-22 WO R4 See Screenshots Below
I looked at this race, I predominately look at grass races, and when I got to this horse I had no problem looking past his last race. His first 2 starts they tried him on the grass at a route but both times switched to the AW. After breaking his maiden on the grass they again tried him in routes and again both times moved to the AW. His last 3 starts back on the grass, he ran pretty good except for last. I figured he was racing too high, today takes the drop to $15k and the oddsmaker makes him the 5/2 ml favorite over the 3 who by the way won at this distance on the grass. After picking 1 pace line for all the horses I ran them thru my program and see the results. I thought this was one of the easiest 5-1 shots I ever cashed!
PP# Pace line
1 Last
2 Last
3 Last
4 2 back
5 4 back
6 Last
7 2 back
8 2 back
And this was how easy it was getting the lines. If the horse won on the grass I used a grass race if not then it really doesn't matter. It took me less than 2 minutes to handicap this race. I've been picking pace lines like this since the late 80's-"works for me". And I know some of you will say this is red boarding and all I can say to that is "a pox on you and your ancestors".
Omar
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