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Old 06-17-2013, 01:57 AM   #31
thaskalos
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Originally Posted by traynor
I have watched a lot of trainers use similar maneuvers, with varying degrees of success. Trainers often throw in a cooler race between serious races, using it as an extended workout. For claimers, it is normal to enter the horse at a higher claiming price to reap a bonus if claimed, or to avoid claims and obscure the form of a horse in good condition.

I agree that trainer intent is a major factor to consider. I have mentioned previously that (to me) one of the most useful techniques for understanding the realities of racing was one advocated by Bob Purdy, of the Sartin PIRCO group. That is to start with the oldest race in the PPs, and work up to the last race, with the sole thought in mind of trying to understand why the trainer entered the horse in each and every one of the races shown. Time consuming initially, but a good exercise to develop understanding.

In the scenario you describe, an even more interesting situation might develop if the entry wins when dropped back to $7500--and then is entered again at $10000--when everyone believes it has no chance to win.
I have been doing this for at least 15 years...ever since Henry Kuck recommended it in his book WINNER'S FILE.

I don't remember anything else from that book...but that's a piece of advice that I have never forgotten.
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Old 06-17-2013, 07:12 AM   #32
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Originally Posted by Tom
I think class is something you cannot put a number on for a horse. The pace and speed figures give you clues, and they can tell you what the operational class of the horse might be now, but class itself is more than that. You want to see class in action, watch Zenyatta in the last strides, refusing to lose. Put a number on that. Class was Affirmed not giving in to Alydara in the Belmont. It was Forego beating Honest Pleasure at the wire.

But I agree that what the trainer thinks class is is very playable every day.
If a horse is actually quickening we could put a number on it provided that we had data coming from a realtime source. The trouble is what we have is (at best) a 6+ second internal split running into a headwind or tailwind which itself would also require real time data to put it into context. Yeah I believe some horses are smart and win close ones, Forty Niner, Favorite Trick etc, but there are also others without a whole lot of intangibles who would wipe the floor with the former e.g. Skip Away.
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Old 06-17-2013, 09:05 AM   #33
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Two different horses can be entered in the same race, and within that same race, their class can be tested by far different levels of adversity. This can be estimated before the race and calculated after the race.
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Old 06-17-2013, 10:10 AM   #34
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Originally Posted by traynor
I don't know about the average bettor, or about trying to market class ratings for a couple of dollars to anyone willing to buy them. I do think there is a definite market for such ratings for professional bettors, if the ratings are superior to (and more predictive than) currenlty available alternatives.
I have thought about selling class figures like CJ sells speed figurers here. I'm happy with what I have and they actually outperform my speed figs, but my speed figs are under revision. Mine are based on BRIS' RR and CR ratings. The RR is used for rating class in the traditional sense as most cappers would think of it. The CR is used for that mixed relationship with form. As to what to do with the class/speed relationship, I believe those authors (like Ainslie and Quirin) give good examples of how to do this.

There are two main beliefs about class and, therefore, two fundamental methods of measuring class. The oldest approach, my choice, is based on race performance within race type. And yes, earnings is at the heart of this measure. The other, the modern, is speed which is measured via par times for race type. I prefer the race performance method because it gets around speed figs which won't explain how the speed was made.
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Old 06-17-2013, 11:39 AM   #35
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Capper Al
I have thought about selling class figures like CJ sells speed figurers here. I'm happy with what I have and they actually outperform my speed figs, but my speed figs are under revision. Mine are based on BRIS' RR and CR ratings. The RR is used for rating class in the traditional sense as most cappers would think of it. The CR is used for that mixed relationship with form. As to what to do with the class/speed relationship, I believe those authors (like Ainslie and Quirin) give good examples of how to do this.

There are two main beliefs about class and, therefore, two fundamental methods of measuring class. The oldest approach, my choice, is based on race performance within race type. And yes, earnings is at the heart of this measure. The other, the modern, is speed which is measured via par times for race type. I prefer the race performance method because it gets around speed figs which won't explain how the speed was made.
From your description it sounds like you are pretty much following the same pathway that others have taken in attempting to quantify class. I think that the most useful (and most profitable) would be to come up with a different paradigm for quantifying class that does not rely on earnings or "class/speed pars." Both those approaches have been hammered into oblivion by anyone with access to a computer.

Basically, because it is easy to affix what seem to be "meaningful numbers" to a horse and declare it a measure of class, a LOT of computer handicappers dabble around with various combinations and approaches. I don't think it is that simple (or that easy). That is not a spurious statement--I have done a number of years of very serious study of the topic, and--as a consequence--tossed most conventional approaches to quantifying class as "interesting, but not especially useful."

The reason is much like speed and pace figures--readily available to anyone with a computer. It is not rocket science to program a few simple algorithms to massage earnings, performance, and pars and call the result a measurer of "class." Again, I don't think it is that simple (or that easy).

The old saying that, "To a carpenter with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail" is equally applicable to computer users. There is a tacit belief that the best solution to every problem in horse racing is in massaging the same set of numbers downloaded every day by every other computer handicapper out there. That is rarely the case.

I think Robert Fischer is on the right track. He alludes to insights that are being used actively (and currently) by some very serious bettors. Whether those insights are of the same phenomena or not, I have no way of knowing. It may well be that the best quantification of class will be a combination of competitiveness and in-depth study of race conditions and real world class levels with earnings, performance, and pars.
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Old 06-17-2013, 11:44 AM   #36
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Robert Fischer
Two different horses can be entered in the same race, and within that same race, their class can be tested by far different levels of adversity. This can be estimated before the race and calculated after the race.
Yes. In a dozen or more different ways.
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Old 06-17-2013, 11:50 AM   #37
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Class is like pornography - hard to specifically define, but you know it when you see it.
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Old 06-17-2013, 12:01 PM   #38
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Quote:
Originally Posted by thaskalos
I have been doing this for at least 15 years...ever since Henry Kuck recommended it in his book WINNER'S FILE.

I don't remember anything else from that book...but that's a piece of advice that I have never forgotten.
I think too many confuse "staring at past performances" with "studying past performances." Such exercises go a long way in focusing attention on the critical factors displayed in past performances. I was fortunate to have attended numerous Sartin seminars in the 1980s at which Bob Purdy was a major contributor. The process was even more useful for those who took the time to run pace of race/pace of horse figures for each race studied. Entering the data for each race into a handheld Sharp 1350 was tedious, but created a whole new way of looking at past performances.

(For those who may not be familiar with the POR/POH calculations, it essentially generates a value (percentile) indicating how close a horse was to the leader at each positional call in the race. Increasing values indicate--explicitly--a horse "running closer to the pace" in subsequent race. Just one of the many patterns studied by the Sartin users who were actually betting on that stuff. Mike Fiore, in Miami, was advocating a similar approach about the same time, using lengths behind and "speed carried farther.")
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Old 06-17-2013, 12:08 PM   #39
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Originally Posted by PhantomOnTour
Class is like pornography - hard to specifically define, but you know it when you see it.
I agree. That is the problem. Again, like Janus' definition of groupthink, it can only be categorized as being such after the fact. That tends to diminish the value when it is necessary to bet on it before you see it.

It is easy to declare that class enabled thus and so to happen in a given race. It is more difficult to declare before the race that thus and so is going to happen in that race because of class. Add to that the human tendency to selectively remember events that validate preconceived notions while conveniently forgetting events that provide overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and it becomes clear how useful it is to study a concept as nebulous as class.
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Old 06-17-2013, 12:19 PM   #40
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Originally Posted by traynor
From your description it sounds like you are pretty much following the same pathway that others have taken in attempting to quantify class. I think that the most useful (and most profitable) would be to come up with a different paradigm for quantifying class that does not rely on earnings or "class/speed pars." Both those approaches have been hammered into oblivion by anyone with access to a computer.

Basically, because it is easy to affix what seem to be "meaningful numbers" to a horse and declare it a measure of class, a LOT of computer handicappers dabble around with various combinations and approaches. I don't think it is that simple (or that easy). That is not a spurious statement--I have done a number of years of very serious study of the topic, and--as a consequence--tossed most conventional approaches to quantifying class as "interesting, but not especially useful."

The reason is much like speed and pace figures--readily available to anyone with a computer. It is not rocket science to program a few simple algorithms to massage earnings, performance, and pars and call the result a measurer of "class." Again, I don't think it is that simple (or that easy).

The old saying that, "To a carpenter with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail" is equally applicable to computer users. There is a tacit belief that the best solution to every problem in horse racing is in massaging the same set of numbers downloaded every day by every other computer handicapper out there. That is rarely the case.

I think Robert Fischer is on the right track. He alludes to insights that are being used actively (and currently) by some very serious bettors. Whether those insights are of the same phenomena or not, I have no way of knowing. It may well be that the best quantification of class will be a combination of competitiveness and in-depth study of race conditions and real world class levels with earnings, performance, and pars.
Sounds like to me that you think you already know the answer. Might be some superiority complex on your part. What didn't you understand about me being happy with my class figs?
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Old 06-17-2013, 12:35 PM   #41
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Class is with no doubt one of the most mysterious handicapping attributes.

As a novice is learning the game, very soon he discovers the concept of class.

In contrary to things like speed figures, track variants or impact values nobody seems to be in position to provide a clear and comprehensive explanation of how to measure it!

Based in this it becomes easy for the novice, to go ahead and ignore class as a factor all together. This approach will soon create quite a few incomprehensible results crying for a systematic error. Bayer talks about such a case in one of his books, where his speed figure based cinch, was crashed by the odds on favorite of the race who although much inferior speed wise, verified his class superiority in the race.

We all have similar experiences, the most common of them, is about a horse dropping from MSW to MCL and although been no factor any time before, now he romps to an easy win, some times at hefty odds!

So, there must be something called 'class', but what exactly it is?

How can we quantify it?

Or we just cannot?

The three main components of what we call class are the following:

(1) What the connections of the horse think about its ability as a runner and what are their intentions for entering him in a specific event

(2) What the crowd thinks about the ability of the runner

(3) The measurable ability of the runner

Of course there is a very high degree of correlation among (3) and the other two and as bettors what is the most important is the discrepancies between (2) and (3).

To understand 'class' we need to realize that the less accurate we can be about (3) the more profitable situations can be presented.

A 5 years old horse who's career consists of 20 starts and 3 wins has very little probability to confuse either his connections of the crowd as far his 'class'.

In contrary a first time out of a very lightly raced horse is quite the opposite and is where the larger errors in class estimate occur (both from the connections and the crowd).

When a runner starts his career we have very few data to classify him. Both (1) and (2) have a great margin to get confused. What is important to realize here is that any race starts as the reflection of the opinions and intentions of the connections. Some times they will be proven correct in their estimates but quite often the opposite will be true.

Of course they will be correct more often than not and this is why race classification is a valid metric for the quality of the race.

Based on this a MSW usually will be tougher than a MCL so when a horse who failed in it goes to a MCL even most likely will have an easier task facing inferior opponents. The crowd seems to be well aware about these obvious class moves and usually incorporates them accordingly to the betting lines.

Besides that, there are always exceptions to the rule, cases where the crowd is confused either due to a mistake of the trainer or because the trainer managed to deceive it creating wrong impressions about the capacity of his runner. These are the best opportunities for the astute handicapper to find a good bet.

As far as 'class figures', I do not think they will add any value to a handicapper's arsenal, since as speed figures, measurable class is reflected to the pools to a very high degree. I think that the final judgment of the 'class' of horse in comparison to his rivals represents the most obscure characteristic of handicapping and can only be attacked by intuition and judgment calls.

Class is one of the two deepest topics (form been the other) and we can talk about it for very long time without reaching a unanimous verdict since they both are more tangible to the artistic rather than the scientific part of handicapping...
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Old 06-17-2013, 12:59 PM   #42
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How Do You Determine Class?

Quote:
Originally Posted by PhantomOnTour

Class is like pornography - hard to specifically define, but you know it when you see it.
This is so true. Actually, the horses probably have a better take on how to define class than we do. All you have to do is watch a group of mares out in the field or a group of babies playing around and you will see that they quickly sort themselves out.
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Old 06-17-2013, 01:08 PM   #43
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As has been stated over and over and over, class is multifaceted. And, means something different to different players. There is what I call "true" class, and there is "calculated" class, or "performance" class.

"True" class is inherent to the animal, it's psychological makeup towards competitiveness, or in the wild, the "leader of the pack" level in which the horse belongs (herd stuff).

"Calculated" or "Performance" class is an attempt to quantify class by man-made class heirarchy and/or race conditions, and/or pace versus speed calculations, etc..

"True" class must be visually observed, for the most part, an observation of a horse that refuses to give up, for example, regardless of his/her available/remaining energy levels. Or, the ability to intimidate weaker or more "cowardly" horses (again, all herd stuff)

"Calculated" class, is just that, calculated from past race data and does not necessarily require visual observation.

By combining the 2 types of class one attains a "composite" class, which is probably the most valuable way of determining a class rating. But, it is also the most difficult to attain as most players do not visually observe and record "true" class, and also don't put enough thought into their "calculated" class ratings.

Personally, I prefer to use "calculated" class, and combine that with my velocities/energy/total velocity ratings and running styles. I feel that the "visual" part of the equation is far too subjective in nature, and therefore will not stand the test of time.
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Old 06-17-2013, 01:31 PM   #44
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As has been stated over and over and over, class is multifaceted. And, means something different to different players. There is what I call "true" class, and there is "calculated" class, or "performance" class.

"True" class is inherent to the animal, it's psychological makeup towards competitiveness, or in the wild, the "leader of the pack" level in which the horse belongs (herd stuff).

"Calculated" or "Performance" class is an attempt to quantify class by man-made class heirarchy and/or race conditions, and/or pace versus speed calculations, etc..

"True" class must be visually observed, for the most part, an observation of a horse that refuses to give up, for example, regardless of his/her available/remaining energy levels. Or, the ability to intimidate weaker or more "cowardly" horses (again, all herd stuff)

"Calculated" class, is just that, calculated from past race data and does not necessarily require visual observation.

By combining the 2 types of class one attains a "composite" class, which is probably the most valuable way of determining a class rating. But, it is also the most difficult to attain as most players do not visually observe and record "true" class, and also don't put enough thought into their "calculated" class ratings.

Personally, I prefer to use "calculated" class, and combine that with my velocities/energy/total velocity ratings and running styles. I feel that the "visual" part of the equation is far too subjective in nature, and therefore will not stand the test of time.
Would you agree that a succinct definition of class would be “the intangible and nonrandom component that remains after a horse’s performance is decomposed into speed, pace, form, jockey, trainer, and other quantifiable factors?”
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Old 06-17-2013, 01:34 PM   #45
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Would you agree that a succinct definition of class would be “the intangible and nonrandom component that remains after a horse’s performance is decomposed into speed, pace, form, jockey, trainer, and other quantifiable factors?”
Yes I agree, that would be "true" class, or "inherent" class. However, I think it too is "quantifiable", or put into a number/letter etc., format.
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