Pace Makes the Race Software

[lsosa54]

I guess the part I don't get Dave is that with concepts like Improve/Decline and New Pace and software like HSH, why would you want to go back to Sartin Phase 1 early/late numbers and Phase 3 velocity numbers? Aren't we going backwards 26 years or so?

[Dave Schwartz]

I guess the part I don't get Dave is that with concepts like Improve/Decline and New Pace and software like HSH, why would you want to go back to Sartin Phase 1 early/late numbers and Phase 3 velocity numbers? Aren't we going backwards 26 years or so?

Because it is how people enjoy playing. Besides, those concepts will also be incorporated, along with many other enhancements.

Wait until you see the adjustments.

[upthecreek]

From an old PA thread:
The fulcrum pace is the fastest second call pace among the last pacelines of all the horses in the race, provided that (1) the horse was competitive at both the second call and the finish......, and (2) the pace is not atypically fast for that horse."

It must be the last paceline, no exceptions.

Competitiveness guideline defined as less than five lengths behind at both calls.

Not atypically fast means that the horse has run equally fast (to the second call) in the past.

At this point, you may or may not have a fulcrum pace. Not all races have one.

Pizzolla then looked at all the horse's good finishes and checked what the second call pace of race was. If it was slower than the fulcrum, then the horse probably was not a contender. He threw out lots of non-competitive horses that way.

Another approach (the way I did it) was to look at all the horses' pace lines where the second call pace of the race is within (+/-) a couple of lengths of the fulcrum pace fig. I think he used the fractional times within +/- one fifth second, but you should be able to use whatever pace figs you use. If fulcrum was 46-3/5 sec, he looked at races where the second call was between 46-2/5 and 46-4/5. You might say that the fulcrum is a 75 EP. You then look at races where the second call pace of race is between 71 and 79.

Wherever the horse ran against that fulcrum pace, check to see if it ran a good race (1st, 2nd or 3rd, or within 2 lengths in a sprint or 3 lengths in a rte.) If it did run good races against the fulcrum pace, it's a contender. Some of this stuff I have probably borrowed from some other stuff Pizzolla wrote in some Follow-Up articles for Sartinista

[mikesal57]

Dave...

Back in May you had us all going with "Designing New, FREE Software" ...

Now this...Pace Makes the Race Software

You had us waiting for the freebie and you pop us with a pay program which someone said is outdated and the concept was pretty much covered by Ted Craven's RDSS for the past 20 years or so.

Also , in the middle of this you wanted to "Learn Fantasy Sports"...

I know that your going to say its an on-going projects that you have but trying to keep track of you is worse than me keeping track of my son

Mike

[Capper Al]

Originally Posted by Dave Schwartz

Because it is how people enjoy playing. Besides, those concepts will also be incorporated, along with many other enhancements.

Wait until you see the adjustments.

Give the people what they want.

[Houndog]

I know you mentioned Windows 7 as a minimal requirement but would this software be able to run on Windows XP Professional. I know Windows XP is no longer being supported by Microsoft but was just curious.

Other than that this software you are developing sounds promising.

[Dave Schwartz]

Back in May you had us all going with "Designing New, FREE Software" ...

Now this...Pace Makes the Race Software

You had us waiting for the freebie and you pop us with a pay program which someone said is outdated and the concept was pretty much covered by Ted Craven's RDSS for the past 20 years or so.

Also , in the middle of this you wanted to "Learn Fantasy Sports"...

I know that your going to say its an on-going projects that you have but trying to keep track of you is worse than me keeping track of my son

Mike,

My friends, this is going to be long, so get a coffee.

I have told this story many times but I had a user about 2 decades ago who had been losing $30k per year at the window. After about 3 or 4 months with the original Thorobrain, he became a winning player. Odd thing was he discovered that, while he used to wager as much as $500 on a single horse, he now choked to bet more than $20.

He realized that while he was a known loser it was alright to bet big because, after all, he was going to lose anyway. But, as a winner, he felt obligated to bet more carefully.

Eventually he overcame this personal deficit, and began making significant deposits into his bank account as the result of horse racing.

It was at that point that he lost interest in horse racing!


What does this have to do with your post? Well, first your criticism is deserved.


I consider the people here on PA my friends. (LOL - Maybe not EVERYONE, but most of you.) Many of us literally go back 15 years or more and a few over 2 decades to the days on Prodigy. That's why I don't mind bearing my soul a little here.

I will tell you the absolute truth. For the last 2+ years I have been very burned out on horse racing. Some of it is because I finally developed a method that beats the game the way I always wanted to.

I did not make a lot of money from it. I began with $1,000 in my betting account and played $300 sessions. During this time I was playing Friday through Sunday and eventually added Thursdays as well.

After about 9 weeks, I was $3,800 ahead. (BTW, you can read about my early progress in a blog post I made here. )

That was when I discovered that I really did not want to spend 4 days per week, playing 5 or 6 hours at my new J-O-B.

Since then, I must admit that horse racing was a complete drudge. (Okay, except for maybe American Pharoah. I completely enjoyed that.)

As I said, I have been completely burned out.

I have not had the spirit to build a new product in over 2 years. I have tried to latch on to a few projects to get me excited but nothing seemed to really do it.

Fortunately, for us, we have a couple of clients that we "took on a percentage basis" a few years ago which produces a very good core income. During the last year I have done a lot of custom programming within our software which allows us our lifestyle to continue.


I have been so burned out that I have even searched for another venue. It got really bad this summer. Imagine waking up every day and hating your job. (Those of you on my email list may have noticed that I have not sent a single email since June.)



I have a business coach. In fact, I actually have two of them. One I pay a lot for, the other not so much (any more) as he has become a close friend. When I went to the pay-for coach and told him my plight early this year, he said, "The industry is dead. You'll never develop an exit strategy with this business because there is just too much of you in this business."

He is right, of course. Our industry is in trouble. We all know this and feel helpless to fix it.

The second one, my coach-friend, said that he agreed with the assessment of the other guy, but suggested that I get a little more personal about this. He said that it seemed like I really wasn't having any fun.

LOL - Fun? I wanted to scream at him: "I ****ing HATE THIS!" I actually did say that. (Buy a vowel, phone a friend, count the letters; you can figure out what I said.)

Like a good therapist, which is what a friend can be, he sticks with it and says, "Don't quit what is working. Just figure out how to make it fun again."

He actually walked me through a question-and-answer session like a therapist (Which might have been my next stop - LOL).

"What makes you hate this so much?"
"When, in time, were you the happiest?"
"What were you doing?"
"What do you like about horse racing?"
"What would you miss if he quit?"

The questions were endless. At the end of it all, he said that he had been taking notes and had some suggestions to make.

Through this I was able to come to some conclusions.

First, my handicapping process was all wrong. Sure, I was winning, but it was not FUN! It was just not gratifying.

Eventually I discovered that I missed pace handicapping. REAL pace handicapping. The picking of contenders, selecting pacelines, analyzing data in my head as opposed to just slamming through races with the computer making ALL of the decisions for me.

I actually played a few days using HSH as a semi-manual handicapping program. I was building models manually, picking pacelines, selecting contenders. The result was not excellent. - LOL - I have all but forgotten how to handicap with my head. Sure, the high points are still there, but bringing it all together is very difficult. (Especially when you haven't done it in 20 years.)

I may have... dare I say it? LOST a few dollars? But I had a great time. I had forgotten that was even possible.

One other thing that came out of this was that I really miss programming. Sure, I am still programming, but writing code in the same program for 16 years is just too long. No wonder I am burned out!

Conclusion:

That was when it hit me... WHY I went into business in the first place. You see, back then I had two loves: horse handicapping and programming. That was why I started in this industry: It was what I knew and enjoyed.

So, that's really the answer:

I am going back to doing what I enjoy, pace handicapping and programming.

Over the years I have had perhaps a hundred requests to rebuild Thorobrain. It was probably the most efficient tool ever built for the handicapper - once you got the data in.


Thanks for listening.


Regards,
Dave Schwartz

[Dave Schwartz]

From an old PA thread:
The fulcrum pace is the fastest second call pace among the last pacelines of all the horses in the race, provided that (1) the horse was competitive at both the second call and the finish......, and (2) the pace is not atypically fast for that horse."

Thank you. I have captured your post and will make sure it gets added.

I know you mentioned Windows 7 as a minimal requirement but would this software be able to run on Windows XP Professional.

Regarding XP: Sure. I just forgot about it. In fact, it would actually run on Windows 98, I'd expect.

[Houndog]

Dave I know you remember Bill Burns from the days you were developing HNB.
Since you were mentioning modeling way back in 2007 myself and Andicap were discussing a readout called DA. The discussion follows:


My take on who liked it and who didn't had to do with people's expectations for software. Those that wanted a "black box" to pick their horses probably didn't like it but those who see software as a tool to crunch numbers and help organize and simplify the process loved the program because that's what Thorovision did.

They had one factor that I've tried to recreate and can't, relating to energy. I believe it was called DV or DI in the energy screen. Used properly it was one of the most amazing tools I've ever used. Bill Burns had an idea of what went into it but since Michael programmed it couldn't explain exactly how to compute it. Had to do with converting median %E to beaten lengths and putting them on a 0.0-8.0 scale.

It was a relative energy figure that measured each horse's median energy against the rest of the fields. If you eliminated abnormally slow-paced races in the PPs you could model that DI/DV? figure and eliminate short-priced favorites who didn't fit the model. It was incredible for pinpointing how a track was playing. I would pay good money to anyone who could re-create that figure. Seriously.

First I want to thank Andy and Ron for their help with my questions. Andy in the manual for Thorovision I think you are referring to Da (Distribution of Ability) which is accessed by the <ALT M> key which gets you to the Reserve Ability screen.

According to the manual the definition of DA is how does the horse prefers to distribute its ability. The earlier the horse likes to run, the lower its number. A 1.0 is the border between an early presser (EP) and presser. At 4.0 a horse is moving from presser to sustained presser (SP) and at 6.0 it's moving into sustained category- the one-run horses that aren't within striking distance at the second call.

Andy, I would agree this would be an important number to model. The DA seems similiar to the MUV (match-up variegate) which was used in Doc Sartin's Energy program. Doc suggested in the Follow-Up that this is one number you should model by track and distance. As you stated you are working with a range where high or low is not necessarily bad, but you can eliminate horses in some cases that were out of this range.

Handi,
I should have the original email I got from Bill summarizing vaguely how they computed the DA (thanks, Hounddog -- you know I don't even own a copy of the original manual. I got one copy and lost it -- d'oh!) . If its on my other PC I'll PM it to you. They absolutely did use median energy (%M) as the basis for computing the DA and backing out the lengths that were converted into the DA. Sounds like they compared %M figures -- say 68.32% and 67.70% -- and somehow converted the differences to lengths.

[Mr.XXX]

Not to beat a dead horse, but at least having running comment / chart line + race date & class conditions helps to quickly determine current form cycle & a personally adjusted potential fig(in the case of lower fig / significant trouble) "alongside the numbers" really helps-- Timeform web pp's are kinda helpful in this direction, even though missing a few other necessary numbers.

Or in other words, how do you handicap(or hope software users do)?
Purchase pp's separately and toggle back and forth?

Maybe if you give us users some option to grab certain portions of the pp's and add them to our own customizable screen.

Please also keep in mind that some of us project our phones and tablets to computers and TV's at times, especially with wireless casting, so having the option to customize and add more things is wonderful.

At any rate, your program sounds very interesting and I keenly await it.

[Dave Schwartz]

Not to beat a dead horse, but at least having running comment / chart line + race date & class conditions helps to quickly determine current form cycle & a personally adjusted potential fig(in the case of lower fig / significant trouble) "alongside the numbers" really helps-- Timeform web pp's are kinda helpful in this direction, even though missing a few other necessary numbers.

Of course.

Or in other words, how do you handicap(or hope software users do)?
Purchase pp's separately and toggle back and forth?

PPs will be there. Our current PPs allow for all of that and more, including expressing numbers as Sheet-style ratings, form cycle, etc. It will be at least as good.

It also allows for pulling up past charts. However, that pre-supposes that you imported that day as well.

Maybe if you give us users some option to grab certain portions of the pp's and add them to our own customizable screen.

That is not likely to happen. The programming overhead on that is just not where I choose to put my time. I'd rather put that time towards allowing you to customize your own reports. Think of it as, "I could design my own BRIS-style reports."

Please also keep in mind that some of us project our phones and tablets to computers and TV's at times, especially with wireless casting, so having the option to customize and add more things is wonderful.

Because horizontal real estate is so important in a horse handicapping program, I must design this program for desktop computers and hope it will look good IF you can get it to run on a tablet. If I do it the other way around, the program will be limited.


I just realized that when the original Thorbrain Neural Network program was around (circa 1990-94) we were running on 25MHz machines. LOL - Imagine how much faster this will be at several GHz!

[Mr.XXX]

Really liking ALL your answers!

I can't wait for Thorobrain VII-- err your new program!

[mikesal57]

Dave ...

Thank you for your honest and sincere answer.
I have never felt like you did about this sport because I never let it
disrupt the other aspects of my life. In this for 40 years , I can count on one hand how many times it was a profitable year. What people spend on other things in their life , I chose to bet the horses. It was my hobby and no one could say that it cause me to neglect my responsibilities and I was happy.
Good luck in getting back to what you like doing.

Mike

P.S.- A while ago Handiman said that you were giving some advise on the Handifast program. I hope that you and him can finish up this nice little program.

[Dave Schwartz]

Handiman is coming to visit tomorrow. We have set aside time to work on his design. To be clear, it is completely his program. I am just helping him with the design a little.



Dave

[mikesal57]

Appreciate it , Dave...
After that , why dont you take a nice vacation and soak up the sun while downing some beers...
Things will get better...

For some reason , horse racing has a stamp embedded on us for life..


Mike