Meadow calls Sartin con man

[ubercapper]

Originally Posted by 46zilzal

BETTiNG is entirely a different discipline mutually exclusive from handicapping...The failure to recognize this is the downfall of the majority of players who think those two are the same thing

This!

[cj]

Originally Posted by ubercapper

Chart callers will independently verify a run up when possible and there are many times when this has been done and no one notices it because there is nothing to notice.



Tom - please send me a pm and let me know the race and date where the 1 mile 70 yd race at FL was incorrect.



If you note any discrepancies in a run up distance in a chart in the future, feel free to send me a PM.

Good, I'd like to think I at least helped get that ball rolling.

[Tom]

Tom - please send me a pm and let me know the race and date where the 1 mile 70 yd race at FL was incorrect.

Ellis, this was years ago,not recently.
I remember it because we picked that bench to be right on the start for the feature race that day.

But appreciate the offer and the efforts to improve!

[JohnGalt1]

Originally Posted by Whosonfirst

Very similar to Wm. Scott's Investing At the Racetrack. Of course he also penalizes if pre-stretch fraction is slow. I may be mistaken but thought Ainsle did something similar in one of his writings.

You are correct. That's where I borrowed it from.

But he limited gains to only 6. I did that for a few years, then I made the change where I adjusted the chart to allow for 10 lengths.

I handicap with paper and pen and found his pace figs worthless, so I switched to Hambleton figs from Sartin's book.

[jasperson]

Originally Posted by highnote

I recall reading an article about Alex Harthill, a famous (infamous?) KY Derby veterinarian. He was quoted as saying something to the effect that the public benefits from horses being on drugs because it evens the playing field by making the horses more consistent. By Harthill's logic horses should be more consistent now than they were in the thirties. So maybe Dowd's angle is profitable than ever?

The trouble with that is do they get the same drugs every time they race?

[mainardi]

So just to be clear, we ALL have good and bad tendencies. To this day, I still say that my Dad was the best handicapper I have ever known AND the worst money manager that I have ever known...

The point being, you can argue on both sides about anybody who has achieved some measure of fame: Sartin (mostly up), Meadow (trending down), Murray Kram (so far down), and even Beyer (at both extremes, up for ideas, down for personality)... and on it goes.

I've learned a lot from all of them -- what to do and what NOT to do -- but my fallback position after all of my handicapping is done: pick like my Dad and bet the opposite of what he would do.

[Tom]

The only thing that matters is YOUR betting records.

[Sea Hero]

Barry Meadows is an opinionated person, and like many of us, his is the correct opinion. I will leave it at that.

I know something about Doc and about Tom Ainslie.

Simply put: Doc wasn't a con man. He was a motivator and organizer who was intelligent enough to grasp advanced concepts of others and craft them into something of value. As I remember, he got his initial ideas about pace from Huey Mahl. His PIRCO/Inland group had many fine brains in it: Tom Brohammer, Tom Hambleton, Dick Schmidt, Bob Purdy, Bert Mayne, Bob Cochran, Michael Pizzolla, Jim Bradshaw, etc. I attended the seminars for several years in the 1980's.


Doc, as far as I know, wasn't a licensed or degreed pshychologist or psychiatrist, but he was an excellent student of human nature, and that's why his group went as far as it did and produced so many fine people (and a few not so fine). I've talked to each of the men I mentioned above, many frequently, and I only have a quibble with one of them, and I won't say who. What I will say is that the gist I get/got from each is that PIRCO broke up because there were TOO many fine brains, and they kept clashing with each other over what was valid or invalid. They had a new program just about once a year, and it wasn't because they were trying to scam people into buying more programs; everybody had their own idea of what worked, and Doc was simply trying to keep them all happy and give them their moment in the sun. It finally got to the point where they couldn't get along, and many went their own ways, while some stayed loyal to Doc. It's not a coincidence that almost every one of the above ended up with their own program or programs (Pizzolla with several, Cochran with Work Horse, Purdy with Synergism, Brohamer with MPH, Hat with AODDS, Hambleton with a program I don't remember the name of, circa 1994, and so on. Pizzolla, Brohamer, Purdy, and (I believe) Mayne are still with us.

Richard Cater was a journalist before he wrote handicapping books. He worked for the New York Compass, wrote murder mysteries, and won various awards for journalism. When he set out to write "The Compleat Horseplayer," he decided that using his own name might lead to problems, since betting horses was considered a dodgy thing (even as popular as it was), so he took the name of a popular Scotch Whiskey blend and became Tom Ainslie. The book was innovative, in that nobody (except perhaps Ray Taulbot, who is kept alive 48 years after he actually died, courtesy of American Turf Monthly) had ever written a scholary treatise on horse race handicapping before. This led to the keystone book "Ainslie's Complete Guide to Thoroughbred Racing," which is still considered a classic, if a bit dated. In the meantime, Ainslie didn't quit his "day job" and continued working as a journalist, author and collaborator; , helped Curt Flood write "The Way It Is" in 1971 (the last he wrote under his real name), and collaborated with virologist Jonas Salk on at least two of his books. Where Ainslie may have strayed was in becoming overly-prolific, ala John Scarne or Fred Reinfeld, cranking out books over the next 15 years that dealt with harness racing, casino gambling, and even "Ainslie's Complete Hoyle." He also collaborated with Bonnie Ledbetter on "The Body Language of Horses." None of his books could be considered "hacks" (at least in my opinion); all dealt with their subjects in a literate fashion. I believe that the Ledbetter book was his last, circa 1980.

Nor were Ainslie's books his only contributions to racing: he also helped start the career of James Quinn, edited at least one of William Scott's books, helped Bill Quirin with his computer project, helped Fred Davis write "Percentages and Probabilities," etc.

I spoke to Ainslie at one of the Handicapping Expos. He must have been in his late 70's then, but his mind was sharp as a tack, and he spoke freely and knowledgeably about racing. One thing that he mentioned was a small booklet that he sold through Daily Racing Form: "My Private Method." The method itself consisted of elimination factors and a series of calculations that usually landed on a short-priced favorite. He charged $25 or $30. (While I didn't see fit to question him about it, one school of thought said that he paid full price for the DRF ad, another stated that DRF gave him a small advertisement space gratis or at a reduced price, and a third believed that DRF got a percentage of each sale). Whichever way it worked, Ainslie said that he sold so many of the booklets that it made him more than the royalties on any individual book that he'd ever written.

[46zilzal]

Sartin's group actually went bankrupt and ODDLY, over night, it went Poof.

A fellow Sartinite from Virginia and I started an on line continuation of the magazine at a Yahoo group called Sartin Alums for many years with the two of us plying as narrators.

At one point we had almost 500 members.....but it eventually petered out over time.

I think a major shift away from the followers was the rigidity of the purists not accepting what many members found to be new and varied ways to use the basic method..Differences of opinion and personality pushing "my way of the highway" played a role. I always took the position that the programs were simply tools and each can, and SHOULD, use it the way they found it to work for them as Dr. Sartin was fond of saying: "THERE ARE NO RULES."

These programs were a major step along the way of becoming a proficient handicapper, but it was later work, from a very different source, that pushed the other side of the coin closer to perfection: WAGER CREATION. Provided a big step along the way in what is really an evolving education.

[Tom]

I was a member in your group, 46. Lots of good material was presented and discussed over the years. I was particularly impressed with your annual discussion of the energy demands for the Ky Derby!

I was sorry to see it go.

[classhandicapper]

I understand how handicappers working independently develop different approaches and different insights. I'm less sure how a group like some of the key Sartin practitioners could break up over different handicapping ideas.

These are typically easy things to resolve.

You test it against data.

I create some automated ratings that use speed figures, finish position, beaten lengths, field size, class adjustments for age/sex/country/surface, adjustments for big wins, etc... They give me a number that's a quick glace starting point before I dig deeper into prior trips and potential race development issues.

From time to time the method produces a rating I subjectively disagree with after digging into the PPs more deeply. If I see a pattern to the my disagreements, I try to improve the ratings to reflect that new insight.

Assuming I was part of group, I wouldn't debate it with the other members. I'd come to the table with data that proves it works better and if it didn't I'd move on to the next idea.

[Tom]

What makes you thing they didn't test ideas?

[classhandicapper]

Originally Posted by Tom

What makes you thing they didn't test ideas?

It was the quote below, but maybe I misunderstood it.

If you test ideas, you know which ones work best. Then there should be no reason to argue or debate what is valid or invalid or what works best.

It's when people work independently that they go down different paths.

If you and I combined forces, used our combined data, and tested a bunch of ideas each one of us came up with together, we should end up at approximately the same place and agree on almost everything.

If we worked independently (as we have), we may agree on a lot of things (as we do), but may also disagree on some things (as we do) because you came up with insights I never thought of, experienced, or tested and vice versa.

What I will say is that the gist I get/got from each is that PIRCO broke up because there were TOO many fine brains, and they kept clashing with each other over what was valid or invalid. They had a new program just about once a year, and it wasn't because they were trying to scam people into buying more programs; everybody had their own idea of what worked, and Doc was simply trying to keep them all happy and give them their moment in the sun. It finally got to the point where they couldn't get along, and many went their own ways, while some stayed loyal to Doc. It's not a coincidence that almost every one of the above ended up with their own program or programs (Pizzolla with several, Cochran with Work Horse, Purdy with Synergism, Brohamer with MPH, Hat with AODDS, Hambleton with a program I don't remember the name of, circa 1994, and so on. Pizzolla, Brohamer, Purdy, and (I believe) Mayne are still with us.

[Tom]

OK, then with today's access to massive databases, what is the best approcu out there?

It must be known, right?

[thaskalos]

Originally Posted by Tom

OK, then with today's access to massive databases, what is the best approcu out there?

It must be known, right?

As the databases have gotten more and more massive...the betting pools have gotten smaller and smaller. It seems to me that the "best approach" has still not been decided upon.