TimeformUS

[cj]

Originally Posted by GMB@BP

The problem with factoring in ground loss is its not nearly as mechanical as speed figures because unlike pace which has a direct correlation to final time, ground loss does not, IMO. I have not seen any statistical study that shows that, its very subjective.

I actually look forward to the day we can include ground loss. I've tinkered with it using Trakus, and the results are promising. One thing I've learned is that all ground loss is not equal. Horses running wide when the race is falling apart is not a big deal, and neither is running wide around the first turn if horses are crawling up front.

It is a big deal if wide around the turn during the hot part of the race. The Derby was a great example this year. Horse's that were near the hot pace and losing ground on the first turn were in big trouble. Those losing ground on the second turn, not so much.

The same can go for a slow paced race. For example, if horses crawl on the front end in a turf route, those horses that move out on the second turn to try to close are usually in big trouble, much more than a horse that was wide around the first turn during slow time.

I always like to use this example. Picture two people of equal ability casually walking around the turn of an oval running track, one in the inside, lane, one in the outside lane. The one on the outside is covering a lot more ground, but they are going slow so he can keep up without much difficulty.

But if they guy on the inside decides to run at a brisk pace, it will be much more taxing for the guy on the outside if he tries to keep up. So for me, ground loss in combination with pace figures paints a much better picture than either one in isolation. For now I keep this type of info in notes, but someday it will be numerical.

[cj]

Originally Posted by GMB@BP

Ok, I have lots of questions, suppose they should go to Mark.

1. If you buy a card and want to enter a race or horse note so that it shows up in future charts (or I am hoping into the actual PP like Formulator/Bris does) how do you go about this? Where do you enter the note for he race that was just run?

2. Is there a way to access charts for race and horse notes in a relative quick order after the race is run, thats the point of taking notes, at least to me?

3. Do you have to watch a race to be able to enter a note on a horse so it appears in the chart? Could I be watching say the second at Belmont and see a horse with an impossible trip and enter that into my data to show up in future charts?

I am not going to get into future adds to the program until they are shown, no point in that.

Hopefully from a pricing standpoint you may offer discounts on blocks of PP purchases say in 100, 200 etc type bundles.

I'm going to do a lot of playing around with the charts this week, I'll see what I can find out.

[classhandicapper]

I was always a fan of having ground loss information as a separate note. I think the impact of ground loss is different at different tracks, on different days, at different paces, with different banking, with different horses, etc.. So while most speed figure purists see it as a geometry problem, I think it's way more complex and a mistake to add it in.

However, since there's no consensus, you could always present the information in multiple ways and make it an option.

3 options like this:

100 2w 3w (2 wide first turn and 3 wide 2nd turn)
100 3 6 (3 points wide first turn and 6 points wide second turn)
109 (ground added in)

[classhandicapper]

Originally Posted by GMB@BP

Ok, I have lots of questions, suppose they should go to Mark.

1. If you buy a card and want to enter a race or horse note so that it shows up in future charts (or I am hoping into the actual PP like Formulator/Bris does) how do you go about this? Where do you enter the note for he race that was just run?

2. Is there a way to access charts for race and horse notes in a relative quick order after the race is run, thats the point of taking notes, at least to me?

3. Do you have to watch a race to be able to enter a note on a horse so it appears in the chart? Could I be watching say the second at Belmont and see a horse with an impossible trip and enter that into my data to show up in future charts?

I am not going to get into future adds to the program until they are shown, no point in that.

Hopefully from a pricing standpoint you may offer discounts on blocks of PP purchases say in 100, 200 etc type bundles.

Right now.

1. You can enter a "horse" note while in the PPs and it will show up in that horse's PPs in the future.

2. You can enter a "race" note in the charts and it will show up in those charts in the future.

You will eventually be able to enter a "horse trip" note in the charts. I believe eventually you'll have the option of displaying the regular chart trip note in the PPs (as it is now) or your own. You'll be able to toggle back and forth.

Eventually there will be a way to access the charts by Date/Track so you can enter horse trip notes on the fly or bring up a full day's charts. Expanded chart capability is on the way.

[cutchemist42]

Does TimeformUS have something to Brisnet's E1/E2/LP figures? I usually take a quick a look at them to help in my opinion of a horse's style or if he had to differ from his norm.

[cj]

Originally Posted by cutchemist42

Does TimeformUS have something to Brisnet's E1/E2/LP figures? I usually take a quick a look at them to help in my opinion of a horse's style or if he had to differ from his norm.

They will be available next week, hopefully by Tuesday.

[cj]

Almost here, in QA right now. Here is a preview:

[RXB]

Back in April I suggested adding a toggle option in the PP's to see the top three finishers' speed figures and first call positions instead of the margins between the top finishers.

That way, you could see the essential nitty-gritty for every race right on the main PP page without having to click for the full charts, which each take several seconds to load.

Any chance that this is (or will be) in the works?

[Maximillion]

Originally Posted by RXB

Back in April I suggested adding a toggle option in the PP's to see the top three finishers' speed figures and first call positions instead of the margins between the top finishers.

That way, you could see the essential nitty-gritty for every race right on the main PP page without having to click for the full charts, which each take several seconds to load.

Any chance that this is (or will be) in the works?

The first call positions would be great....totally agree.

[cj]

Originally Posted by RXB

Back in April I suggested adding a toggle option in the PP's to see the top three finishers' speed figures and first call positions instead of the margins between the top finishers.

That way, you could see the essential nitty-gritty for every race right on the main PP page without having to click for the full charts, which each take several seconds to load.

Any chance that this is (or will be) in the works?

This sounds good to me, but I really don't know the logistics of it. I can ask.

[RXB]

The TSF+FCP info would fit into the same maximal space requirement that has to be allocated for margins in lengths (e.g., 133-20 doesn't take up any more room than 29 3/4). So there should be no hassle with reassigning space or resizing other elements.

Think of the advantages. At a glance:

1. You get to see if the order of finish was different from the assignation of the Timeform speed figures. If the second and/or third finisher got a better figure from CJ than the winner-- which is not an infrequent occurrence, especially in fast-paced races-- that's good to know.

2. You get a decent idea of race quality from the figures of those top three finishers.

3. You might get an idea of whether the race favoured frontrunners or off-pace horses. If the top three finishers were 7-3-6 at the first call or 1-2-4, those are very different circumstances.

4. If the horse whose PP's you're currently viewing was dueling/pressing for the early lead you can see whether the other speed horse(s) won, or finished close, or finished out of the money, and what figure another early horse received if it finished in the top three. Helps to gauge the quality of opposition that was faced in the early scramble.

And you get all of this at a glance for all of the races on the screen, so it's easy to reference and stays in your visual range. As opposed to having to click for a separate chart page, wait for it to open, adjust your attention to that page, extract whatever you want/need from it, then return to the main PP window and try to integrate that chart page info in your mind despite no longer having it visually available to you. Now imagine doing that for several races in the horse's PP's-- or having the easy summary option of the TSF+FCP right there in front of you for all of the recent races.

The charts are there if you want to delve into deeper detail for a specific race or horse, but I think most people tend to want to handicap plenty of races-- so anything that makes the primary info more easily accessible is a step in the right direction. And the TSF+FCP can act as a cue for instances when there might be good reason to check the full chart.

[TheEdge07]

timeformus spot play of the day is on absolute fuego..salvatore breaks it down on Mississippi Duel..
Salvatore has.put on a clinic...and fans still use drf formulator as pps..You get cj and doug with timeformus best entry in the game and it isnt close alot to learn from timefirmus analysis even when horses lose you always learn from the analysis..

[GMB@BP]

Originally Posted by RXB

Back in April I suggested adding a toggle option in the PP's to see the top three finishers' speed figures and first call positions instead of the margins between the top finishers.

That way, you could see the essential nitty-gritty for every race right on the main PP page without having to click for the full charts, which each take several seconds to load.

Any chance that this is (or will be) in the works?

good call, I almost never look at final margins in the comments, waste of information really.

[Cratos]

Originally Posted by GMB@BP

The problem with factoring in ground loss is its not nearly as mechanical as speed figures because unlike pace which has a direct correlation to final time, ground loss does not, IMO. I have not seen any statistical study that shows that, its very subjective.

You raised an interesting topic in the discussion of “ground loss” which typically gets misunderstood by some handicappers.

The initial problem with penalizing the horse for ground loss is that the bettor does not know where the horse runs its best; inside or outside.

Yes, if a horse runs wide on the turn then it has mechanically covered more distance than the horse that ran to the inside, but its performance might be better to the outside because of the aforementioned preferential position of running.

The real problem with turns is the side force it puts on both jockey and horse. That is as a horse is rounding the turn a force is “pushing” the horse from the inside and when it reaches the apex or the top of the turn it will go straight if the counteracting force from the horse doesn’t overcome the impending side force.

This causes a horse to use more energy even though it is saving ground. This force is not the same at all racetracks because it is turn size dependent; the larger the turn, the less the side force because math tell us as a radius increases in size it approaches a straight line.

When comparing Saratoga and Belmont, a horse is impacted by 36% more force at Saratoga than that at Belmont.

However we can calculate ground loss and use it advantageously in our handicapping calculations.

To do that we must first calculate the “rail allowance” (especially for the turn) and then we calculate the width of the path. I use 4 feet because that is close to the gate stall width which is 3.96 feet.

Once we have made those calculations we can take the distance measured away from the “rail allowance” curve and create whatever curve travelled by the horse on the turn and by subtracting the “rail allowance” curve distance you will have an estimate of “ground loss” for the horse in question.

Next take that horse’s incremental time fraction and divide it into the “ground loss” metric and you will have time loss due to the extra distance travelled; this is a normalization process and can be done very easy with Excel.

Trakus use a little different calculation by subtracting the distance travelled by each horse from the leader at the POC. This is an adequate method, but it doesn’t deal specifically with the turns where most of the loss occurs.

[raybo]

Originally Posted by Cratos

You raised an interesting topic in the discussion of “ground loss” which typically gets misunderstood by some handicappers.

The initial problem with penalizing the horse for ground loss is that the bettor does not know where the horse runs its best; inside or outside.

Yes, if a horse runs wide on the turn then it has mechanically covered more distance than the horse that ran to the inside, but its performance might be better to the outside because of the aforementioned preferential position of running.

The real problem with turns is the side force it puts on both jockey and horse. That is as a horse is rounding the turn a force is “pushing” the horse from the inside and when it reaches the apex or the top of the turn it will go straight if the counteracting force from the horse doesn’t overcome the impending side force.

This causes a horse to use more energy even though it is saving ground. This force is not the same at all racetracks because it is turn size dependent; the larger the turn, the less the side force because math tell us as a radius increases in size it approaches a straight line.

When comparing Saratoga and Belmont, a horse is impacted by 36% more force at Saratoga than that at Belmont.

However we can calculate ground loss and use it advantageously in our handicapping calculations.

To do that we must first calculate the “rail allowance” (especially for the turn) and then we calculate the width of the path. I use 4 feet because that is close to the gate stall width which is 3.96 feet.

Once we have made those calculations we can take the distance measured away from the “rail allowance” curve and create whatever curve travelled by the horse on the turn and by subtracting the “rail allowance” curve distance you will have an estimate of “ground loss” for the horse in question.

Next take that horse’s incremental time fraction and divide it into the “ground loss” metric and you will have time loss due to the extra distance travelled; this is a normalization process and can be done very easy with Excel.

Trakus use a little different calculation by subtracting the distance travelled by each horse from the leader at the POC. This is an adequate method, but it doesn’t deal specifically with the turns where most of the loss occurs.

Agree, there is another factor that comes into play and that is that a horse running a wider line can hold a little more speed in the turn, albeit running a longer distance around the turn. Is it enough to negate the added distance by allowing the horse to run slightly faster in the turn and exit the turn at a faster speed? I don't know, but I tend to think that it depends on the track configuration. At tracks like Delta, where the turns are very tight, the added distance is probably negated pretty well by the added speed the wider path allows, especially if the wider horse can "cut the corner" upon exiting the turn. In other words, a wider path allows more speed to be run through the turn, than those on the inside, with the same or maybe even a lesser amount of centrifugal force pushing it to the outside. At wider turn tracks, ground loss is probably a bigger factor, as the inside horses can run faster in the turn than at the tighter turn tracks, and ground loss is not negated as much by increased speed in the wider paths versus the ground lost.

Just hypothesis, I have no hard data to support my theory.