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Old 03-03-2014, 05:27 PM   #31
jerry-g
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Quote:
Originally Posted by raybo
Jerry,

Which column are you using for the contender rankings, "CCR" or "Overall" (they're close to being the same but aren't exactly, due to ties in the "Overall")? I'm assuming the "CCR" as they are unlikely to produce as many ties in the rankings.
I look at both as they are basically the same. Sometimes the diff between
two horses in the CCR is minute as well. I'm thinking of adding another
column. The overall is suppose to be a shortcut.

Sorry so late getting back to you but on my no racing days I get bored and
drift off.

I generally use the template to cut down the field size. I take 50% of the
field. So in a 6 horse race I look at the top 3 and top 5 in a 10 horse race.

I also look at all horses with my other factors, Pace and Pars. I feel it is to
be used only for win bets and I have not ventured out to the exotics yet.
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Old 03-03-2014, 09:25 PM   #32
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jerry-g
I look at both as they are basically the same. Sometimes the diff between
two horses in the CCR is minute as well. I'm thinking of adding another
column. The overall is suppose to be a shortcut.

Sorry so late getting back to you but on my no racing days I get bored and
drift off.

I generally use the template to cut down the field size. I take 50% of the
field. So in a 6 horse race I look at the top 3 and top 5 in a 10 horse race.

I also look at all horses with my other factors, Pace and Pars. I feel it is to
be used only for win bets and I have not ventured out to the exotics yet.
No problem, I was out of pocket much of the day also, all the freezing rain and ice pellets we got yesterday and last night caused some problems.

I'll get the CCR rankings put in my program and run some tests on the top 3 selections at a few tracks, and post the results here. My expectations are, if it is a "decent" contender selection method, using only the top 3 rankings, about 50-65% of the winners. With another factor or 2 added, maybe 55%-70%. The hit rate and ROI, both cumulatively (all 3 picks) and individually(1st, 2nd, and 3rd picks), will be an indicator of what would be acceptable, and that should vary noticeably between tracks, due to average win payouts and field sizes, etc..

Thanks for posting the template! Hopefully others will play around with it and post their thoughts also. Get back to you as soon as I have some results.
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Old 03-03-2014, 09:41 PM   #33
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Quote:
Originally Posted by raybo
No problem, I was out of pocket much of the day also, all the freezing rain and ice pellets we got yesterday and last night caused some problems.

I'll get the CCR rankings put in my program and run some tests on the top 3 selections at a few tracks, and post the results here. My expectations are, if it is a "decent" contender selection method, using only the top 3 rankings, about 50-65% of the winners. With another factor or 2 added, maybe 55%-70%. The hit rate and ROI, both cumulatively (all 3 picks) and individually(1st, 2nd, and 3rd picks), will be an indicator of what would be acceptable, and that should vary noticeably between tracks, due to average win payouts and field sizes, etc..

Thanks for posting the template! Hopefully others will play around with it and post their thoughts also. Get back to you as soon as I have some results.
Thanks Raybo! I appreciate your help with my idea on Mitchells formula.
I always respect you for your expertise with Mr. Excel.
I am in the process of adding a new column to my template which will
require me to add a second sheet to do the complicated computations.
Two things I see wrong with Mitchell is he gives the same number of points
to a horse that won a 10K claiming as one that won a 50K claiming. Not
good. Also, the CR numbers can be so close as to cause a tie of horses and
I think that is not good.
What my new column will entail is a workaround I discovered in another
book that uses the value of the race for W,P,S for a horses last six races.
The race value is equalized against a common race value, ie 25K. This then
will create a new number which I will have referred to in the Mitchell sheet
and added to the CR. I believe this will result in a CR rating that will more
clearly distinguish the horses one from another and eliminate the problem
of possible ties with numbers so close together.
I have completed this work now and will be testing it against some races
I was interested in this past week. Of course, only time will tell if this new
addition will be good, bad, indifferent or no value at all. God bless Mr. Excel.
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Old 03-03-2014, 11:47 PM   #34
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jerry-g
Thanks Raybo! I appreciate your help with my idea on Mitchells formula.
I always respect you for your expertise with Mr. Excel.
I am in the process of adding a new column to my template which will
require me to add a second sheet to do the complicated computations.
Two things I see wrong with Mitchell is he gives the same number of points
to a horse that won a 10K claiming as one that won a 50K claiming. Not
good. Also, the CR numbers can be so close as to cause a tie of horses and
I think that is not good.
What my new column will entail is a workaround I discovered in another
book that uses the value of the race for W,P,S for a horses last six races.
The race value is equalized against a common race value, ie 25K. This then
will create a new number which I will have referred to in the Mitchell sheet
and added to the CR. I believe this will result in a CR rating that will more
clearly distinguish the horses one from another and eliminate the problem
of possible ties with numbers so close together.
I have completed this work now and will be testing it against some races
I was interested in this past week. Of course, only time will tell if this new
addition will be good, bad, indifferent or no value at all. God bless Mr. Excel.
Yeah, ties in the CCR presents a problem, for sure. Let me know what your work-around is and I'll try to incorporate it in my workbook. One thing I have done in the past in such cases is to add .0001 to the first post position horse's rating, .0002 to the second post position horse's rating, etc. (which does not really change their ratings). This keeps the tied horses in order by post position but usually only affects the 3rd ranking position, sometimes it puts one of tied horses 4th so they don't get into the top 3 ranked horses. So, while it still defaults to post position, on the tied horses, most of the time they all still get into the top 3 rankings

On a semi positive note, just checking to make sure everything is working right, the top 3 CCR ranked horses hit the 3 horse box trifecta in the Gotham, ranking them:

2 - In Trouble
1A - Samraat
4 - Uncle Sigh

I'm about ready to start running cards and results, with this setup minus the tie breakers for CCR of course. In the case of ties, this method will default by post position order, for those ties, the inside post will get the nod and the other tied horse(s) will not be in the top 3 rankings. Not good.

Also, this test will pass all races that have 20% or more of the field not having any sprint races if the race is a sprint, or any route races if the race is a route, or any turf races if it's on the turf, or any dirt/synth races if it's on the dirt/synth (I currently don't distinguish between dirt and synth in my program). That "pass" rule is just built into my program, and definitely improves the ROI long term, for all the methods I have tested. So, these test results will not include every race on the cards. To change that "pass" rule would take quite a bit of modification in my program, maybe later if I feel like it - LOL.
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Last edited by raybo; 03-04-2014 at 12:00 AM.
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Old 03-04-2014, 03:40 AM   #35
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jerry-g
Thanks Raybo! I appreciate your help with my idea on Mitchells formula.
I always respect you for your expertise with Mr. Excel.
I am in the process of adding a new column to my template which will
require me to add a second sheet to do the complicated computations.
Two things I see wrong with Mitchell is he gives the same number of points
to a horse that won a 10K claiming as one that won a 50K claiming. Not
good. Also, the CR numbers can be so close as to cause a tie of horses and
I think that is not good.
What my new column will entail is a workaround I discovered in another
book that uses the value of the race for W,P,S for a horses last six races.
The race value is equalized against a common race value, ie 25K. This then
will create a new number which I will have referred to in the Mitchell sheet
and added to the CR. I believe this will result in a CR rating that will more
clearly distinguish the horses one from another and eliminate the problem
of possible ties with numbers so close together.
I have completed this work now and will be testing it against some races
I was interested in this past week. Of course, only time will tell if this new
addition will be good, bad, indifferent or no value at all. God bless Mr. Excel.
Just finished the first test, which was for Aqueduct. The cards tested were from 2/1/2013 though 4/21/2013, and 11/1/2013 through 3/3/2014 (don't have the January 2013 files for Aqu). That resulted in 781 played races with my pass rule of 20% or more of the field having no distance and surface qualified races. I did make the mod for ties that I mentioned earlier, adding .0001 to the CCR ratings for post #1, .0002 to the CCR ratings for post #2, etc.. So, any tied horses were ranked biased towards the inside posts for just those that were tied.

The top 3 combined CCR picks hit 48.78% of the winners (hovered around 50% throughout most of the test, a bit lower than I consider decent with 3 contenders) and produced a 0.77 ROI (hovered around 0.82 most of the test) when flat betting all 3 picks, worse than the 16% takeout so pretty bad).

Top pick hit 21.9% winners at 0.89 ROI (avg $2 payout was $7.01, high payout was $47.60)
2nd pick hit 14.47% winners at 0.78 ROI (avg $2 payout was $9.44, high payout was $67.00)
3rd pick hit 12.42% winners at 0.64 ROI (avg $2 payout was $8.95, high payout was $58.50)
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Old 03-04-2014, 04:35 AM   #36
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Just saw your post Raybo. At my age, when I go to sleep I have to get
up a few hours later and pee then roam about the house or read posts
on PA.
Thanks for checking this out. It certainly confirms what Mitchell his self
said, that the CCR has very little predictive value. As far as isolating the
contenders I think it is not necessary as most of us can do that anyway.
So, over the long term it looks like a looser unless one could come up with
tweaking the formula just a tad. My recent idea was to add another
number to the CCR but as it turns out, it gives a better spread between
numbers but changes the ranking of the contenders very little. So I would
be only making a larger number and getting the same ole results.
That number I was going to get from a formula given by Larry Voegele in
his book, "Professional Method of Winner Selections." I was going to take
his current form figure taken from a horses last six races. That number waa
later tweaked by Bob Pitlak allowing horses that win larger purse races an
edge over winners of lower purse races. However, it comes up with the
almost same rankings as Mitchel's formula.
So for now I feel I have reached that brick wall at the end of a dark alley.
Hopefully, some other members may come up with ideas that can effectively
put a good number on CR.
Thanks again for all your help.
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Old 03-04-2014, 10:00 AM   #37
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jerry-g
Two things I see wrong with Mitchell is he gives the same number of points
to a horse that won a 10K claiming as one that won a 50K claiming. Not
good. What my new column will entail is a workaround I discovered in another
book that uses the value of the race for W,P,S for a horses last six races.
The race value is equalized against a common race value, ie 25K. This then
will create a new number which I will have referred to in the Mitchell sheet
and added to the CR. I believe this will result in a CR rating that will more
clearly distinguish the horses one from another and eliminate the problem
of possible ties with numbers so close together.
I have completed this work now and will be testing it against some races
I was interested in this past week. Of course, only time will tell if this new
addition will be good, bad, indifferent or no value at all. God bless Mr. Excel.
IMO, this is the correct approach.

IMO, you want to weigh the win/place/show record against the quality of horses that record was earned against.

That's sort of what people are trying to get at by using earnings per start. Earning per start will be partly a function of consistency and partly a function of quality (purse sizes). The problem is that it doesn't weigh each well and also breaks down for the reasons I mentioned earlier in the thread.

I have tinkered with using the consistency record as one value and the highest quality race the horse has won and highest quality race the horse has been in the money/finished very close in to create a second value. (If the horse has won twice at that level, it's even better). It's hard to assign values and combine them though. So I wind up intuiting the values. But I'm fairly certain that's the correct direction.

You can then take it further by incorporating distance, surface, trips, etc... into the win/place/show record. In other words, if today is turf route, you don't want to use a dirt sprint in the horse's consistency record.
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Old 03-04-2014, 10:40 AM   #38
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Quote:
Originally Posted by classhandicapper
IMO, this is the correct approach.

IMO, you want to weigh the win/place/show record against the quality of horses that record was earned against.

That's sort of what people are trying to get at by using earnings per start. Earning per start will be partly a function of consistency and partly a function of quality (purse sizes). The problem is that it doesn't weigh each well and also breaks down for the reasons I mentioned earlier in the thread.

I have tinkered with using the consistency record as one value and the highest quality race the horse has won and highest quality race the horse has been in the money/finished very close in to create a second value. (If the horse has won twice at that level, it's even better). It's hard to assign values and combine them though. So I wind up intuiting the values. But I'm fairly certain that's the correct direction.

You can then take it further by incorporating distance, surface, trips, etc... into the win/place/show record. In other words, if today is turf route, you don't want to use a dirt sprint in the horse's consistency record.
Thank-you for your input and you're previous post as well. I think it is very
good advice and I will incorporate it into my new template. I'm going to let
the Mitchell template stand on its own, to be or not to be.

My second template uses a form number derived out of a formula for W,P,S,
and then adds that to the EPS of the horse. Bob Pitlak improved upon the
original done by Larry Voegele in 1972 but I am sure he did not limit his
WPS values to surface and distance. Your idea makes more sense to me as
I have always realized the importance to comparing apples to apples.

I'm going to give my new template a whirl and see how it does. I have it
attached to this post.
Attached Files
File Type: xls CCR.xls (16.5 KB, 49 views)
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Old 03-04-2014, 11:29 AM   #39
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jerry-g
Thank-you for your input and you're previous post as well. I think it is very
good advice and I will incorporate it into my new template. I'm going to let
the Mitchell template stand on its own, to be or not to be.

My second template uses a form number derived out of a formula for W,P,S,
and then adds that to the EPS of the horse. Bob Pitlak improved upon the
original done by Larry Voegele in 1972 but I am sure he did not limit his
WPS values to surface and distance. Your idea makes more sense to me as
I have always realized the importance to comparing apples to apples.

I'm going to give my new template a whirl and see how it does. I have it
attached to this post.
Thanks. I'm enjoying this conversation. Let me know how it does.
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Old 03-04-2014, 01:17 PM   #40
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jerry-g
Just saw your post Raybo. At my age, when I go to sleep I have to get
up a few hours later and pee then roam about the house or read posts
on PA.
Thanks for checking this out. It certainly confirms what Mitchell his self
said, that the CCR has very little predictive value. As far as isolating the
contenders I think it is not necessary as most of us can do that anyway.
So, over the long term it looks like a looser unless one could come up with
tweaking the formula just a tad. My recent idea was to add another
number to the CCR but as it turns out, it gives a better spread between
numbers but changes the ranking of the contenders very little. So I would
be only making a larger number and getting the same ole results.
That number I was going to get from a formula given by Larry Voegele in
his book, "Professional Method of Winner Selections." I was going to take
his current form figure taken from a horses last six races. That number waa
later tweaked by Bob Pitlak allowing horses that win larger purse races an
edge over winners of lower purse races. However, it comes up with the
almost same rankings as Mitchel's formula.
So for now I feel I have reached that brick wall at the end of a dark alley.
Hopefully, some other members may come up with ideas that can effectively
put a good number on CR.
Thanks again for all your help.
Don't give up on CCR yet. I made a rookie mistake and forgot to grab the scratched horses, so some of the picks were actually scratched in the first test. Here's a screenshot of the summaries report after getting rid of the scratched horses. The hit rate was remarkably consistent, card to card, within 2 percentage points throughout, for each of the 3 picks. Although the ROI is still sub-par, the combined hit rate was better, more inline with what I would expect from a decent 3 horse contender method.

Note, the results were a bit better than this before February 2014, which was not as good overall (bad weather I suspect, horses scratching because of it, or not running as well due to track conditions, etc..)

So, if you add another factor or 2 to this, you might have something.

Attached Images
File Type: png CCR - Aqu.png (28.8 KB, 88 views)
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Old 03-05-2014, 07:12 AM   #41
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CCR

What I have done up to this point is to modify my 2nd template to include
an odds table that will automatically configure the odds for me based on
the CCR final rating. I also have a column for Track Odds which can begin
with M/L odds and later changed to near post time odds that will give me
a R.O.I. % on the wager. I did it for race 2 at Gulfstream and it had the
lowest odds on Suns Out Guns Out at 3/1 but because it went off at even
money it shows a neg R.O.I. of 48%. So that would tell me to pass the bet.
I'm glad it picked the winner however. Today, I plan to use it for all the
races at Gulfstream including the Maiden Claimers.
Attached Files
File Type: xls CCR.xls (22.5 KB, 43 views)
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Old 03-05-2014, 07:56 AM   #42
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Just a thought, I was looking at your attachment and I was wondering if you were to divide by the form rating would do better. This horse "makes this much money per point" as opposed to adding them together.

Still on my first cup of coffee....
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Old 03-05-2014, 08:31 AM   #43
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HUSKER55
Just a thought, I was looking at your attachment and I was wondering if you were to divide by the form rating would do better. This horse "makes this much money per point" as opposed to adding them together.

Still on my first cup of coffee....
Are you saying to have a separate column for form and show a separate
column for odds?
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Old 03-05-2014, 09:02 AM   #44
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I'm going to have to go off line now. Doctors operated on my Rt eye last
week and I have a F/U this A:M. After that I will need to handicap
Gulfstream and then I can be back to answer questions.
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Old 03-05-2014, 10:30 AM   #45
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I promise, I will not post till my second cup of coffee.

I think I miss read your chart. is the WPS net points?

Dayjob has 13 starts and 56 wins, 44 places and 44 shows.

I thought "form" was the WPS value
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