Pace is a secondary attribute, but many play it as a primary

[pandy]

Originally Posted by ReplayRandall

If you say so Pandy, I guess it must be true...

I know there are some very good trip handicappers, but most people will not do well watching replays. I used to call charts and I'm a good race watcher but I have a hard time generating a profit off of a "horses to watch" list. Usually I see a horse do something that blows my mind, I bet the horse next time out, it loses, and then two starts later it runs big and wins when I have nothing on it. Pace handicapping is much more powerful.

[Tom]

Why would you need to look at raw times if have good pace figures?
And I never use replays. I'll look at some after the races, but never before. Ever.

[ReplayRandall]

Originally Posted by pandy

I know there are some very good trip handicappers, but most people will not do well watching replays. I used to call charts and I'm a good race watcher but I have a hard time generating a profit off of a "horses to watch" list. Usually I see a horse do something that blows my mind, I bet the horse next time out, it loses, and then two starts later it runs big and wins when I have nothing on it. Pace handicapping is much more powerful.

With the exception of a FTS, how can anyone bet their hard-earned money on a horse they've never seen race? If you truly believe betting "blind" is the way to go, then by all means continue....In the long run, Trip handicappers will outperform you, no doubt.

[pandy]

Originally Posted by Tom

Why would you need to look at raw times if have good pace figures?
And I never use replays. I'll look at some after the races, but never before. Ever.

Replays have actually cost me money quite a few times, in this scenario. I handicapped a NYRA race and I pretty much had settled on a horse. But, I decided to go the extra yard and watch a couple of replays, which made me change me mind. Almost every time my original pick won and my super trip horse ran another big race, made that big middle-move, but lost just as it did last time. I've gotten burned this way many times.


The problem with trip handicapping, you're often betting on a horse that supposedly doesn't look good in the pps. This often means that the horse never challenged for the lead or really wasn't a factor. But the trips that are most reliable are when a horse is actually pushing or prompting the pace. Horses that aren't involved don't actually win that often.

[Tom]

Originally Posted by ReplayRandall

With the exception of a FTS, how can anyone bet their hard-earned money on a horse they've never seen race? If you truly believe betting "blind" is the way to go, then by all means continue....In the long run, Trip handicappers will outperform you, no doubt.

I doubt that.
I have done just great for almost 50 years.
I did watch a few, now that I think about it, on VHS in the 80's.
Stood in line to request them.

Trip handicapping can be very good but it not the only game in town.

[pandy]

Originally Posted by ReplayRandall

With the exception of a FTS, how can anyone bet their hard-earned money on a horse they've never seen race? If you truly believe betting "blind" is the way to go, then by all means continue....In the long run, Trip handicappers will outperform you, no doubt.

I used to work with Brad Thomas. He would come up with horses he liked based on trips and they often won and paid huge prices. However, with most of these horses, no one else would ever had seen it that way. The thing is, he has good instincts. It's intuition. He would see something in the race and get a feeling about the horse. Very few people can do that.

[thaskalos]

The racetrack offers a varied menu...enough to satisfy ANY appetite. As long as we are happy with what we are doing...it doesn't matter what handicapping style we've chosen to embrace. The important thing is for each of us to fully utilize our own particular talents.

[Tom]

.

[pandy]

Originally Posted by thaskalos

The racetrack offers a varied menu...enough to satisfy ANY appetite. As long as we are happy with what we are doing...it doesn't matter what handicapping style we've chosen to embrace. The important thing is for each of us to fully utilize our own particular talents.

I agree.

Brad Thomas used to do thoroughbred picks for my tip sheet years ago, until I felt I was ready to take over myself. I remember one Best Bet he had that paid $48, and the same day his other Best Bet paid over $20. On the $48 horse, the horse had raced three times and showed nothing. Brad told me that the horse had been racing greenly and shied away from other horses. Today they were adding blinkers and the horse drew an outside post.

"Young horses that shy from other horses often improve in blinkers," Brad said.

Well, I watched the horse's replays because I had taped some of the old Harvey Pack shows and I saw nothing but a horse that couldn't keep up. But, Brad was right, and the horse looked like a different horse in blinkers.

[thaskalos]

Some handicappers are highly "technical"...while others are highly "visual". The technical player would lose his mind if you forced him to abandon his figures and study replays...and vice versa.

If you ever got a chance to look at my DRF...you would think that I am a lunatic who spends every waking moment of his life studying the horses. My past performance pages are literally FILLED with hand-written figures...in three different-colored inks. I am very comfortable playing like that, because my figures "speak" to me...but I have come to realize that my style is only one of MANY other effective handicapping styles out there.

There is a horseplayer that I know for over 20 years. We often run into each other at racetracks and OTBs, nod hello to one another...but don't even know each other's names. He buys his racing form at the door, sits all by himself far away from all distraction...and studies the past performances as intently as if the lives of his kids depended on his next bet. He doesn't lift his head until the horses approach the starting gate...at which time he jumps up and dashes to the betting terminal. When he ran off one day...I walked up to his desk and looked at his racing form, out of curiosity. I wanted to see if his handicapping style resembled mine, in any way, shape or form. There wasn't a single mark written anywhere on his racing form. The paper was as clean as if he had just bought it...even though he had it in his possession for hours...and had wagered thousands of dollars while using it. "A lunatic", I thought...except that I later found out that he is perhaps the most successful horseplayer that the Chicagoland-area has ever seen.

Not everything makes sense, folks...

[Stillriledup]

Originally Posted by thaskalos

Some handicappers are highly "technical"...while others are highly "visual". The technical player would lose his mind if you forced him to abandon his figures and study replays...and vice versa.

If you ever got a chance to look at my DRF...you would think that I am a lunatic who spends every waking moment of his life studying the horses. My past performance pages are literally FILLED with hand-written figures...in three different-colored inks. I am very comfortable playing like that, because my figures "speak" to me...but I have come to realize that my style is only one of MANY other effective handicapping styles out there.

There is a horseplayer that I know for over 20 years. We often run into each other at racetracks and OTBs, nod hello to one another...but don't even know each other's names. He buys his racing form at the door, sits all by himself far away from all distraction...and studies the past performances as intently as if the lives of his kids depended on his next bet. He doesn't lift his head until the horses approach the starting gate...at which time he jumps up and dashes to the betting terminal. When he ran off one day...I walked up to his desk and looked at his racing form, out of curiosity. I wanted to see if his handicapping style resembled mine, in any way, shape or form. There wasn't a single mark written anywhere on his racing form. The paper was as clean as if he had just bought it...even though he had it in his possession for hours...and had wagered thousands of dollars while using it. "A lunatic", I thought...except that I later found out that he is perhaps the most successful horseplayer that the Chicagoland-area has ever seen.

Not everything makes sense, folks...

There's very little written on my form, it's all in my memory. Ill watch dozens and dozens of replays, most times more than once, and ill remember exactly what I saw photographically for every horse on every replay I watch. I use the PPs just as a reminder to kick start my visualization. I've seen those players w all the inked up forms, there's no way I could do anything close to that style and make it work. To your not everything makes sense comment I'm more of the mindset that when something DOES make sense (from a handicapping standpoint) I get skeptical.

[jasperson]

Originally Posted by raybo

That's pretty much it, at least from my point of view. Pace handicapping, if done the way I do it, is in effect trip handicapping with numbers. The "trip" tells you the flow of the race, and the numbers quantify that flow, with a solution that can be used to validate or invalidate other factors like class, form, and speed ratings. And, by automating that process to include every race listed for each horse, each of those past races mean something, cyclical, regarding class, form, and speed. Pace analysis helps make sense of every race a horse has listed in the PPs.

Thanks for confirming my assumptions. I like to able to follow what posters are talking about when they talk about pace handicapping. As harness horse owner and the watcher of many races I understand the value of trip and pace.

[Capper Al]

Originally Posted by pandy

True, but no one knows that. All we know is how fast they've run prior to this race, but that's why the odds are so critical and why favorites are usually bad bets. We are betting on a horse hoping that it runs one of its "good" races today. We know that many times horses simply don't run their best. So we have to get fair odds.

I tried pace as a single factor before and did well for 13 weeks straight. I wasn't able to duplicate this again or even come close.

Thanks Pandy for bringing this thread to were it was intended to go. I knew there are pace only players out there and just wanted to hear them talk about overcoming form and class.

[classhandicapper]

Originally Posted by pandy

I used to work with Brad Thomas. He would come up with horses he liked based on trips and they often won and paid huge prices. However, with most of these horses, no one else would ever had seen it that way. The thing is, he has good instincts. It's intuition. He would see something in the race and get a feeling about the horse. Very few people can do that.

I was fortunate enough to spend some time with Brad this year. I wish I could spend a year at the track gambling with him. He's like Yoda. It's not that he knows everything. It's that he sees and knows things that other people do not see or know. Plus he's an all time great guy.

[pandy]

Originally Posted by classhandicapper

I was fortunate enough to spend some time with Brad this year. I wish I could spend a year at the track gambling with him. He's like Yoda. It's not that he knows everything. It's that he sees and knows things that other people do not see or know. Plus he's an all time great guy.

You know, another point about trip handicapping, everyone nowadays talks about watching replays, but you can't see half of what is happening and you miss a lot of the subtle things that guys like Brad catch. Paul Cornman, a professional gambler that I used to work with, is also a very good trip handicapper, and I remember him always having binoculars around his neck. For the first twenty years or so that I followed racing, I never went to the track without wide angle binoculars.