Beyer Speed Figure Math -- Can someone check this?

[Saratoga_Mike]

Originally Posted by HalvOnHorseracing

Take these two running times from two consecutive races at the same distance and class level.

:22 :45 1:10.1

:22.2 :45.4 1:09.4

Which horse is better? It may just be that the horse with the 1:10.1 finish time but a faster pace is just as good as the horse with the 1:09.4 finish time with a slower pace. Obviously there are other things to look at, but the point I'm making is that just looking at finish time leaves may cause you to miss a better bet.

Not surprisingly, Beyer agrees with you on the pace factor. There's a page in "Beyer on Speed" with your above example (very, very similar).

[thaskalos]

Originally Posted by HalvOnHorseracing

Take these two running times from two consecutive races at the same distance and class level.

:22 :45 1:10.1

:22.2 :45.4 1:09.4

Which horse is better? It may just be that the horse with the 1:10.1 finish time but a faster pace is just as good as the horse with the 1:09.4 finish time with a slower pace. Obviously there are other things to look at, but the point I'm making is that just looking at finish time leaves may cause you to miss a better bet.

IMO...this is the most critical question facing the "figure handicapper"...especially when these two horses have displayed dissimilar running styles. It's this very question that I endeavored to answer in 1982...and it has kept me busy for the last 37 years.

[classhandicapper]

Originally Posted by HalvOnHorseracing

Take these two running times from two consecutive races at the same distance and class level.

:22 :45 1:10.1

:22.2 :45.4 1:09.4

Which horse is better?

I'll give you the simple answer.

In general, the faster you run early the faster your final time will be until you reach a "breaking point" where it reverses. Then the faster you run early the slower your final time will be. Most dirt races develop with fractions that are fairly close to the breaking point. Turf races less so. It's not a linear relationship. At a certain point if you go too fast early you'll just totally collapse.

To answer the question though, imo it depends on the individual horse and how the track is playing that day.

Horses can have significantly different amounts of natural speed and stamina even when their overall ability at a certain distance is similar. How they get impacted by that pace will depend on their own qualities and how tiring the track is playing on that day. I don't think there's a magic formula that applies to all horses on all days.

In fact, I think that's part of what "class" is. As horses move up in class they get tested with tougher and tougher pace/trip scenarios. The horses with good speed and contending figures that have less in the tank get weeded out and sometimes the very very best run even faster until they eventually reach their breaking point.

[classhandicapper]

Beyer made some changes to his beaten length charts and turf figures a few years back. As far as I know, he never got into the details. You can back into some of them by comparing the winning figures to the figures of the other horses in the race and looking at beaten lengths.

[HalvOnHorseracing]

Originally Posted by Saratoga_Mike

Not surprisingly, Beyer agrees with you on the pace factor. There's a page in "Beyer on Speed" with your above example (very, very similar).

It was probably unconsciously in the back of my brain. It's been a long time since I looked at anything Beyer

[HalvOnHorseracing]

Originally Posted by classhandicapper

I'll give you the simple answer.

In general, the faster you run early the faster your final time will be until you reach a "breaking point" where it reverses. Then the faster you run early the slower your final time will be. Most dirt races develop with fractions that are fairly close to the breaking point. Turf races less so. It's not a linear relationship. At a certain point if you go too fast early you'll just totally collapse.

To answer the question though, imo it depends on the individual horse and how the track is playing that day.

Horses can have significantly different amounts of natural speed and stamina even when their overall ability at a certain distance is similar. How they get impacted by that pace will depend on their own qualities and how tiring the track is playing on that day. I don't think there's a magic formula that applies to all horses on all days.

In fact, I think that's part of what "class" is. As horses move up in class they get tested with tougher and tougher pace/trip scenarios. The horses with good speed and contending figures that have less in the tank get weeded out and sometimes the very very best run even faster until they eventually reach their breaking point.

There's a lot more I could have added, but I was making the point that a number representing the final time isn't enough to justify a normal bet.

I've always agreed with Ray Talbout that class is defined as the ability to maintain speed at longer and longer distances. Go fast early and go fast late is a great racehorse.

[Saratoga_Mike]

Originally Posted by HalvOnHorseracing

There's a lot more I could have added, but I was making the point that a number representing the final time isn't enough to justify a normal bet.

Which probably explains the growing popularity of CJ's TimeformUS numbers

[The Artful Dodger]

Don't forget also that Beyer adjusts his figs for trip.


In any case, as the old trainers say, "It isn't how fast a horse runs that counts, it's how he runs fast".


Speed = Form + Class + Trip.


More accurate figs are not where it's at. A hundred years ago what were they using to handicap the races? Raw time. Today? We have speed and pace figs computed to the hundredths precision along with jockey, trainer and jockey/trainer stats, post position stats, breeding info, etc, etc, etc.


The win % of favorites a hundred years ago was 33%. Today it's about 34%.


More accurate figs are not where it's at.

[Tom]

Beyer doesn't adjust for trips.
And the win% of favs is much higher than 34% at most tracks.

[ReplayRandall]

Originally Posted by Tom

Beyer doesn't adjust for trips.
And the win% of favs is much higher than 34% at most tracks.

It's a little higher than 37%....That's through 2018 to present.

[GMB@BP]

Originally Posted by ReplayRandall

It's a little higher than 37%....That's through 2018 to present.

I think its close to 39% the first two months of 2019.

With high take outs and winning favorites like that it seems impossible to make money.

[HalvOnHorseracing]

Originally Posted by Saratoga_Mike

Which probably explains the growing popularity of CJ's TimeformUS numbers

I was one of the early adopters of PaceFigures. It was going to be 100 people so you would be stepping on everybody else and you could still get good odds.

Even in the first half of the 20th century there were books that set up charts that correlated times to numbers. So maybe a :44 half equaled 100, or a 1:10 finish might equal 85. Anyway, for every time, sprinting or routing, there was a number. So you'd characterize a horselike

100-85

and so on to evaluate both speed and pace. It was pretty easy to do once you had a good table. You could also use the numbers to evaluate class, which was speed carried longer distances. So a horse that ran 90-90 was probably a good horse. A horse that went 90-70 was a higher priced claimer and so on.

The thing that took time was coming up with time adjustments. A horse that never went faster than :45.4 and then runs a :44.3 needs a adjustment. Either the timer malfunctioned, the horse was juiced or the track had a magic lane.

So I would take the raw time, develop adjustments, look down a column and I could get a good sense of the speed, pace and classs of a horse. Of course, if you look at a DRF from the 70's, the adjustment information was limited to how far away a horse was from the track record for a respective distance. But the PPs didn't have the information I developed so i had a good advantage.

We would be racing forms with multiple tracks during the summer, and in the winter with no racing locally and no ADW's we cut out hundreds, maybe thousands, of charts and made piles with the same conditions. Then we basically came up with the average time for the half and the finish. Those became pars. The number of horses going off at good odds that were on top with the figures was mind boggling. We knew which days had fast tracks, average tracks and slow tracks. We knew which horses would be speed, press or close. It was hundreds of hours of work by in only cost the price of a DRF and our time. We killed where we had the data, but...eventually we all had computers and Pace Figures, and that was great because readjusting times to reflect a new surface or new conditions was getting as old as we were. Eventually I wrote a book about one major elements, horses coming into condition going off at high odds. I beat the races 8 straight years in the prehistoric days of the DRF.

The early days of PaceFigures was the same thing. As my neighbor from Oklahoma used to say, we were in the high cotton. I even got Christmas cardsfrom the IRS (that was a joke). Anyway we're all on an even keel now so the only people with secrets are the people on the backstretch.

So yeah, CJ gets all the credit in the world for making data available to everybody in a timely way. Still, it's a different world. I've had a lot of adapting to do.

[dansan]

Better be hitting the rare longshot to carry you through ,the last 2 weeks have been horrible!

[Tom]

Originally Posted by HalvOnHorseracing

I was one of the early adopters of PaceFigures. It was going to be 100 people so you would be stepping on everybody else and you could still get good odds.

I still say there was nothing as good as the old program with the graph.
The good old days!

[cj]

Originally Posted by Tom

I still say there was nothing as good as the old program with the graph.
The good old days!

I'm thinking of reviving it!