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Originally Posted by hcap
I am not suggesting that a pure black box approach is better than a race by race analysis, but using a database does give an idea of what is working-or what HAS been working-at a particular track. My experience has been getting something working as widely as possible has a better chance of working going forward than being too specific.
When I started I fooled around with many combination of factors in an "and" type of query. A glorified spot play. After getting something to work over 300 or 400 races at a number of tracks, I tried it at a track not tested in the sample and had some success. Generally a good sign.
So I am not adjusting weights, but filtering on ranks of specific factors individually and combined. I am doing this all in Excel including scratches by automatically calling up the matching XRD results files. Not manually scratching in HandiFast. Saves time and avoids errors. I will try to make my programs available to whoever wants them after some more debugging. Looks like one set for Excel 2007 and one set for earlier versions. I have added some stuff like a rating for how much of an overlay a horse might be on the morning line and closing tote odds. At some point I will try to incorporate the ability to check upcoming races real time and see if any horses meet any decent saved query's criteria. Then you must do real time scratches in HandiFast.
headhawg has volunteered to test what I have now, (soon?  ) Also anyone with database skills in Access could do what I am doing using 'hawgs' CSV output and the XRD files. The output is database ready. |
Hcap, please don't think that I was in any way, trying to deminish the work you did on the study. You did a great job. What you are saying is fine for the way I, and many others, handicap. But I have a friend who ONLY plays Kentucky tracks, so he is playing 1 track at a time. I think, for him, and others like him, being able to adjust for the track he is playing at the time, would be benificial.
Trying to adjust for every track that I handicap, would be too time consuming.
Peace
