Handicapping too fast???

[teddy]

I was wondering what would happen if I took 10 minutes per race minimum to handicap it... We all know sometimes we just look at a race in 3 min. I will report results for 20 races and then 20 races where I fast handicap. Anyone ever looked at this factor?

[Longshot6977]

I don't know if I'd call it a factor, but I do know whenever I spend too much time handicapping a race I get closer to landing on the favorite or co-fav. I spend just 3 or 4 minutes on a race since, as my screen name suggests, I like long shots or longer shots instead of the top 1 or 2 favorites.
Maybe your results will show more winners(low priced horses), but lower ROI when spending 10 minutes vs 3 minutes. sometimes I get lucky and pick a nice 10-1 shot or higher when briefly spending 2 or 3 minutes just looking at a couple of factors.
My friend used to spend 15 to 20 minutes or longer the night before on each race and always landed on the favorites. He always asked me how I picked these longer priced horses and I told him to spend less time handicapping.

[teddy]

Very interesting... You should just play supers. I hit huge supers with 10 to one shots on top.

[Longshot6977]

Originally Posted by teddy

Very interesting... You should just play supers. I hit huge supers with 10 to one shots on top.

LOL, I should have noted that I do play mostly vertical exotic bets instead of win bets. I like the ex, tri and supers and have hit some very big ones this year. I like to key just one horse on top of each bet, then a few underneath in the remaining slots.
On a side note, about 10 years ago I hit a $1 super at Northfield Park where the winner was the 4-5 favorite(I think I played it because it was driven by the top driver at the meet) and had some longshots underneath. Someone told me I had the only ticket or 1 of 2 tickets that hit it and it paid about $4500. I was shocked at the price. I also had the $745 tri in the same race with the 4-5 fav on top. It took me about 2 minutes to handicap that race and get to the SAM machine, LOL. Good luck in your experiment.

[Tom]

I know I handicap a whole lot faster than my picks run!

[DanBoals]

Originally Posted by Tom

I know I handicap a whole lot faster than my picks run!

I know I follow horses that tend to follow all the other horses.

[jj.]

I handicap horses almost every day, well quite frankly every day because I run and play in contests. I do tbred and harness. Of course, horseracing is so difficult because you never know how a race is going to unfold. And doing picks way before the actual race and not knowing how the odds are going to come out is tough. How many times have I taken a good value pick that dropped to nothing? If you are betting and the horse drops to nothing you wouldn't bet it but when you have to plan ahead for a contest you are in, you can't.

Anyway you look at it, horse racing is a TOUGH hobby but I love it. I spend a lot of time on my picks because I check out as much as I can on the pp's. I try not to let odds sway me but they do. Also with drivers, I tend to go with my favorites but hey the other ones have to win sometimes too. So maybe my mistake is paying a little too much on the odds, on the drivers, and checking out the class too much. You seem to get a few good value horses per track each day but how you pick those is the question. Out of all the people that play my contests, yes they do hit value quite often. I don't seem to though. I have a guy who plays gray horses all the time and does pretty good...hahaha...Oh well...happy handicapping!

[Aerocraft67]

I figure the margin of error is a lot bigger than any little nuances I can parse out between contenders. This suggests you get diminishing returns after a fairly modest amount of handicapping.

I'm not going to try to outdo the super-informed and quantitative volume of handle making the pools as efficient as they can be. I can't beat the uberbettors at their own game. And even they have a margin of error.

To pick bigger shots, you have to look past their flaws, as well as the strengths of their rivals, and embrace ambiguities. You can approach flaws and strengths quantitatively with exhaustive analysis.

But qualitative judgement holds its own with ambiguity. Not sure pondering ambiguity longer adds much value.

If you're willing to rely on more accommodating, imaginative handicapping to back longer shots, maybe you can do that fairly quickly. You can probably identify prohibitive favorites pretty quickly as well.

I suppose I pore over PPs as much as the next guy, but I do it pretty manually. I use a manageable amount of figures and take them largely at face value. Roughly 45 minutes to do it to my satisfaction at a steady pace. Often compressed to half that playing a day's races, and much longer for the year's biggest races.

Put another way, the time between races is a bit insufficient, which imposes a limit that makes it a good exercise. Maybe you can comprwess that further into making even quicker, looser calls, and maybe you do nearly as well as more exhaustive analysis.

[46zilzal]

with computer analysis, you can easily evaluate a race ervy 5 mins.

[lagavulin62]

I don’t set a time per race but I do try and go through the full card within an hour. As I usually end up betting 6 of 10 races isn’t that interesting the average comes out to 10 mins. The number one distraction to me is the ml odds and I do my best not to cheat and look at those. I really wish they would leave those out but I got a feeling its all for a reason that does NOT benefit me. Lol. Usually its pretty obvious though.

Because I enjoy betting the Tx circuit and Retama is not running this year I watched practically every Saratoga race. What I have always concentrated on was class and fractional/final times. I didn’t do any betting because we can’t do it unless I make the hour drive to SHRP. Doesn’t matter I thoroughly enjoyed the Fox telecasts and hopefully it continues with Aqueduct. So I think I could zip through the PP’s much quicker now that I have a pretty good feel of class structure, more than I’ve ever felt confident about.

[BroadwayJoe]

Jim Bradshaws "The Match Up" takes about 2 minutes to cap a race....

[Longshot6977]

Originally Posted by teddy

I was wondering what would happen if I took 10 minutes per race minimum to handicap it... We all know sometimes we just look at a race in 3 min. I will report results for 20 races and then 20 races where I fast handicap. Anyone ever looked at this factor?

Teddy, how did your 20 race test work out? Did you do better when fast-capping? Or regular handicapping?

[RichieP]

Originally Posted by BroadwayJoe

Jim Bradshaws "The Match Up" takes about 2 minutes to cap a race....

I was Blessed to work MANY live races with Jim one on one and he was special to watch. He focused on FPLR, tandems, power moves and biasing a race based on the Matchup early or "other than early (OTE)". He did all this looking at his Racing Form without ever making even one mark on the paper and picked his horse with amazing speed! I could tell stories about what I saw him do but most wouldn't believe it.

[BroadwayJoe]

Originally Posted by RichieP

I was Blessed to work MANY live races with Jim one on one and he was special to watch. He focused on FPLR, tandems, power moves and biasing a race based on the Matchup early or "other than early (OTE)". He did all this looking at his Racing Form without ever making even one mark on the paper and picked his horse with amazing speed! I could tell stories about what I saw him do but most wouldn't believe it.

Rich ...your thread in Pace and Cap is awesome....I still check it out

Unfortueately I joined after Jims death.....

I still use some of the handicapping pertaining to Jims work......

[ranchwest]

Just as it is best to arrive at your own selections, it is also best to do it in your own timeframe.

For instance, I have made selections by looking at specific competitors in the PPs, but that takes quite a bit of time… but, I have had it pay off.

I’ve also had decent hits with less than two minutes of capping.

It all depends on how quickly you know how to get to the relevant information.