2015 Saratoga Daily Variants

[highnote]

[QUOTE=Lemon Drop Husker]

Originally Posted by highnote

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the Daily Variants I made at Saratoga today -- July 30.

Hate to ask, but did the daily variant win you anything today?

No is the short answer because I just finished making them for today's races.

The long answer is that my plan is to finish writing my speed figure software and then make variants for the past Belmont meet and hopefully by the mid August or September I will have enough daily variants to make good bets. But the daily variants that produce speed figures are only one small piece of a big handicapping pie. So ask me again in two or three weeks and you might get a different answer. Or you might get the same. I don't know.

[steveb]

may i ask why the variant(s) appear to be so important to you?
i have never placed any importance on them, other than to tell me how fast a track is racing compared to the neutral.
am i missing something?

[DeltaLover]

Originally Posted by steveb

may i ask why the variant(s) appear to be so important to you?
i have never placed any importance on them, other than to tell me how fast a track is racing compared to the neutral.
am i missing something?

Speed handicapping is still (and will forever remain), the most predictive approach.

Since speed figures depend on track variants, it is easy to realize why they are so important.

[cj]

[QUOTE=Lemon Drop Husker]

Originally Posted by highnote

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the Daily Variants I made at Saratoga today -- July 30.

Hate to ask, but did the daily variant win you anything today?

Do you even know what the purpose of a track variant is? How can something calculated after the day is over win you anything that day? What it can help do is win money in the future.

[highnote]

Originally Posted by steveb

may i ask why the variant(s) appear to be so important to you?
i have never placed any importance on them, other than to tell me how fast a track is racing compared to the neutral.
am i missing something?

DeltaLover answered your question more eloquently in #18 than I could have.

Let me ask you a question...

Do you use speed figures?

[peteman]

We can also see it as moving away from pars,speed and pace figures,and
the variants that everyone else has,and using your own information.

A big tell here is that,based on your free variant server idea.and lack of
response,that there are only a few that have the time or inclination to
use such a service,regardless of your honorable intentions.

[pandy]

Originally Posted by DeltaLover

Speed handicapping is still (and will forever remain), the most predictive approach.

Since speed figures depend on track variants, it is easy to realize why they are so important.

I agree with you but there are several on this board who believe that there are other more predictive win factors. If we're talking about win percentage, I've never seen proof that anything can beat speed figures for win predictability.

[classhandicapper]

Originally Posted by pandy

I agree with you but there are several on this board who believe that there are other more predictive win factors. If we're talking about win percentage, I've never seen proof that anything can beat speed figures for win predictability.

I'm one of those guys. My data suggests a high quality class figure will outperform speed figures in both win% and ROI.

There are several major problems though.

1. There are many hundreds of different class conditions, seasonal issues, age development issues, statebred issues etc... you have to cope with. So assigning high quality values to every class at every track would be a monumental task and the file would constantly be growing.

2. The short cut class abbreviations in the PPs often don't provide an adequate description of the class. You have to manually read the details and then assign the value.

3. With so many horses shipping, if even you lock down a single circuit (which is not that tough), there are numerous races from out of town that you have to evaluate.

4. Class is dynamic. Changes in purse structure and other factors could change the quality of a circuit. So you have to stay on top of that.

Those are the problems with just creating the structure.

Then you still have to develop a methodology that can differentiate between strong and weak fields at a specific level.

Then you have to have a structure that allows you to compare horses that ran at different class levels. For example, horse A won by 4 lengths at level X and horse B ran 3rd by 3 lengths at level Y. How do they compare?

No one person can do all that nationally and it doesn't lend itself to easy automation. It's way easier for most people to just look at the speed figure. But since everyone is looking at the speed figure, it's going to be hard to find value.

[steveb]

Originally Posted by DeltaLover

Speed handicapping is still (and will forever remain), the most predictive approach.

Since speed figures depend on track variants, it is easy to realize why they are so important.

yes but your variant is a product of your race speeds, it's not a separate process.
one defines the other.
doesn't it?

[Lemon Drop Husker]

[QUOTE=cj]

Originally Posted by Lemon Drop Husker

Do you even know what the purpose of a track variant is? How can something calculated after the day is over win you anything that day? What it can help do is win money in the future.

I was more alluding to the track variant from the day before helping someone on the next day of racing on the same track.

I certainly appreciate the information, but from a handicapping perspective, track variants are included in any speed number or handicapping exercise anybody of any credibility puts forth.

Outside of real times, any handicapping number and venture is a logical guess. And as for real times, we all know those are many times useless due to track variants, track conditions, and the incredible differences from track to track across the country.

I poorly worded a short question. I was more asking as to how one uses previous day variants to help in handicapping future days at the same track.

[DeltaLover]

Originally Posted by steveb

yes but your variant is a product of your race speeds, it's not a separate process.
one defines the other.
doesn't it?

I am not sure I understand what you are saying here..

The TV is a derivative of the final time (or race speeds as you put it) but is also affected by other factors, mainly those who try to cluster and classify each race in a meaningful way to produce an optimized curve of variants, that when applied to the whole universe of past performances are satisfying a specific set of restrictions (for example to minimize the discrepancies for certain subsets of performers)...

The whole process of track variant estimation, is part science and part experience. It is impossible to tackle all the related challenges using a purely algorithmic approach... Besides this, it is also correct that all track variants are not created equally and definitely there exist good and bad methodologies and developing a superior one, is one of the main challenges of a handicapper.

[highnote]

The worksheet to make Saratoga variants for July 31 races appears below.

The simple average of all the variants seems to fit the best and this makes the daily track variant about 1/5 of a second slow at each call.

The hottest race of the day was the 5th -- a 9 furlong MSW race for 3 and up. I had it running almost a second and a half faster than par. There are always good maidens at Saratoga. So it's not surprising to see some fast ones. The winner of this race ran faster than the 3 year olds in the 4th race -- a stakes race.

The 7th race was a MSW and was about a half second faster than par. So not too bad, either.

The 80k allowance optional claimers in the 9th ran the fastest of the three 9 furlong races on the card, but still much slower than par. So my pars could be wrong for this class. I haven't figured out yet which class those Allowance Optional Claimers belong in. My studies showed that the average times for those races are about the same as the claiming class listed in the conditions. But the quality of the horses in the race can vary since not all of them are entered with claiming tags.

7/31/2015		ACTUAL					PARS					DIFFERENCES			
race#	2f	4f	6f	ff	|	2f	4f	6f	ff	|	2f	4f	6f	ff	class
3	22.57	46.01		77.19	|	22.55	45.97		76.48	|	-0.02	-0.04		-0.71	6.5f c25 vF 3+ SB
4		47.7	72.14	110.4	|		48.01	72.33	109.74	|		0.31	0.19	-0.66	9f STK 3yo
5		48.79	73.12	109.71	|		48.31	72.93	111.14	|		-0.48	-0.19	1.43	9f MSW 3+
7	23.05	45.75		83.02	|	22.62	45.41		83.49	|	-0.43	-0.34		0.47	7f MSW 3+
9		47.67	71.35	109.36	|		47.35	71.66	107.97	|		-0.32	0.31	-1.39	9f AOC 80 3+
RTE DV		-0.17	0.10	-0.17											
AVG DV	-0.23	-0.17		-0.17											
MED DV	-0.23	-0.32		-0.66

[cj]

[QUOTE=Lemon Drop Husker]

Originally Posted by cj

I poorly worded a short question. I was more asking as to how one uses previous day variants to help in handicapping future days at the same track.

That makes sense, thanks for explaining. I don't use a variant that way other than noting when there is an extreme change from day to day that isn't weather related, i.e. mud, slop, extreme wind, etc. I don't think there is much to gain other than in helping make pace and speed figures.

[steveb]

Originally Posted by highnote

DeltaLover answered your question more eloquently in #18 than I could have.

Let me ask you a question...

Do you use speed figures?

you already know that i do.
i also know that i do it better than most.
so let me repeat the question, why are variants so important to you?

[ronsmac]

Originally Posted by DeltaLover

I am not sure I understand what you are saying here..

The TV is a derivative of the final time (or race speeds as you put it) but is also affected by other factors, mainly those who try to cluster and classify each race in a meaningful way to produce an optimized curve of variants, that when applied to the whole universe of past performances are satisfying a specific set of restrictions (for example to minimize the discrepancies for certain subsets of performers)...

The whole process of track variant estimation, is part science and part experience. It is impossible to tackle all the related challenges using a purely algorithmic approach... Besides this, it is also correct that all track variants are not created equally and definitely there exist good and bad methodologies and developing a superior one, is one of the main challenges of a handicapper.

I agree with you, I think the experience is actually more important than the science. Plain logic says a track at 5pm can't be the same speed at 1pm over a 1 mile distance, even if the difference is minimal.