Travers Stakes

[classhandicapper]

Originally Posted by GMB@BP

but the bigger issue is when they are used to make historical comparisons, which to me is not a useful or fair effort or comparison.

To me, that's the biggest problem.

It's an attractive notion, but the idea that figures of today are comparable to the past is mostly a delusion.

Figure makers have changed their methodology and figure charts as they have learned more.

The surfaces are deeper and sandier now than they used to be and we learned how surfaces can impact pace and final time when synthetics came along.

The legal and illegal drug use and testing has changed.

Figure drift is a clear problem if you look at multiple figure makers.

That's kind of why I bug out when "name" horse players make definitive statements about horses from the past relative to now based on their favorite set of figures. It's all nonsense.

[Tom]

Originally Posted by classhandicapper

Tom,

One thing I am fairly certain of is that Beyer tweaked his charts a bit from what he has published in the past. Unless you know what his chart looks like for every distance at every track, you will sometimes think he broke a race out when it's just that he's using a different chart than he used to use.

I test each track before I start a db on it.
I make whatever corrections are needed to get things back into agreement. Dave's pars are a huge help in that.
Even doin that, it is not always easy to do because so many race are broken out or variant split - I'm talking lots.

Best track by far is OP - which why I will be playing that one from now on. Probably they have a reliable timing system.
NYRA is one of the worst. I don't do GP, but I imagine they would be the worst if I did.

I may be wrong on this adjustment, but if I am, I will lose on a price horse and ot a chalky one.