Speeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed!

[twindouble]

Originally Posted by Valuist

Twindouble-

I'm not sure where or when Beyer made those comments. In "The Winning Horseplayer" (IMO his best book) he details how the trip relates to the figure; and the figure in and of itself is only part of the equation. And he definitely mentions pace, bias, and ground loss as trip variables that can effect the figure.

Valuist; Thanks for the responce; The comments I refered to came from the DRF forum, that's why I left it open to be corrected. I said pretty much same there as I said here and I don't recall it being refuted at all. Beyer always came up in convesation and there was a few there that gave me the impression they were hot wired for informantion on the net. ESP when it came to people like Beyer and historical facts. Egos do run high when for some reason they want to compete with each other when it comes to racing knowledge and station on the forums. I can only put forth what I've experienced, even then things get cloudy, just think of the many races I've watched and wagered on over the year. So, I only know what I know and I won't be adding to that by tapping into the vast amount of information that's on the internet. Besides, tomorrow's another day and new races in hand. That's just me.

I know one thing, when it came to information on the DRF forum and it had the smallest flaw there was many there to jump on it and it would be argued to the 100th degree to save face.

[Brian Flewwelling]

even tho that horse may not have been the fastest on any other day.

Speed Figs record how fast that horse was on that day.

[mcikey01]

Originally Posted by nobeyerspls

Hi Twin
The oldtimers used to say that time was for guys in jail. Two races at my local track yesterday come to mind. Bottom priced maidens was handicapped by finding the least slow of a bunch of slow horses. If anyone was near the half mile call in 46 seconds, it was a contender. The winner cam from one of my angles, a filly with a little time off. Two races later, a nice horse coming out of a race that went in 1:09 flat (he finished 4th) wired a bunch of talented sprinters. So speed is truly relative.
As to the beyer figures, one measure of their value might be found in the percentage of winning favorites. That number hasn't changed much since the figures were added to the Form and it should have declined because of shorter fields. Beyer speed figures lead bettors to the false favorite and they then overbet it.

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Re: Speed is relative.....And how!!! Check this out.... Too bad I can no longer find the Web Site where this was posted

THE TRUTH ABOUT SPEED FIGURES

by Mark Cramer

Cultures pass down myths from one generation to another. In our horse racing subculture, today’s greatest myth has developed into an icon: the speed figure. We horseplayers have been conditioned to assume that the horse that has run the fastest recently is most likely to run the fastest today. When a horse with a lower speed figure than our most-likely winner comes home first, we are educated to look at the event as an anomaly. The exceptions accumulate in our psychic landscape like chain stores and yet we fail to admit that a pattern, one that contradicts our cherished myth, has developed. My own impressionistic evidence has told me time after time that the fastest horse from the last race of the past performances does not usually win today, and when it does, the payoff is scanty. But when we accumulate anecdotal evidence, we risk deluding ourselves hazy impressionism? When the lines of logic seem blurry, it’s time to make objective measurements.

I decided to do some rigorous research, constructing the parameters in a way that gives the Devil’s Advocate every chance to prove I’m dead wrong.

The theory

Horses that can win races are the ones that can significantly IMPROVE their previous race speed figure. Today’s winner is not the horse with the highest figure from its last race but the horse that is most likely to REACH its highest figure today. Bold-face Beyer figures function essentially as mirages, optical illusions that distort racing reality. Yes, they are more than reasonably accurate most of the time. But they are not worth their face value, for an accurate rendering of the past is not the same thing as an objective prediction of the future. Better stated, the past performances are something that should be seen dynamically, as if they were part of a moving process

Methodology

We’re using the Beyer figures as a research tool, but if the theory is true and winners are horses that run significantly faster today than they did in their previous race, then any other good speed figures would give us the same research outcome. So what we’re really saying is not that Beyer figs are misleading but that accurately adjusted final times from the horses’ most recent race are not good indicators of today’s winners.

(1) I decided to study a group of 150 winners, randomly collected. I would write down the winning Beyer figure and then compare it to the horse’s previous race fig. A plus 18 would mean the horse’s winning race was 18 points faster in its Beyer rating. A minus 7 would mean the horse’s winning race was 7 points slower in its Beyer figure.

When I added all the plus numbers and then the minus numbers, I would be able to come up with a magic number: THE AVERAGE NUMBER OF BEYER POINTS THAT WINNING HORSES INCREASE OR DECREASE FROM THEIR MOST RECENT RACE TO TODAY’S RACE.

My hypothesis expected a significant average increase in Beyer fig because winning horses are the ones that get better and not the ones that were the best. The lower the average increase in Beyer figure for winning horses, the less validity my theory would have.

(2) Beyer advocates still argue that these figures are transferable from different surfaces and distances. But hey, a horse that loves to route and hates to sprint is going to improve its figure when going from sprint to route. Likewise, a horse that loves a fast track and hates the slop, is going to improve from the latter to the former and regress when returning to the slop. In order to eliminate every possible distorting factor in this research, I decided to ONLY CONSIDER LIKE DISTANCES AND SURFACES. This meant:

(a) excluding all dirt-to-turf or turf-to-dirt races, all sprint-to-routes or route-to-sprints, and all fast-to-wet or wet-to-fast changes from my research sample; and

(b) excluding all changes from or to unusual distances, such as 7 1/2 furlongs, 1 3 1/16 or 1 3/8, for which not enough races are run for accurate processing of speed figures; and

(c) allowing for no more than a one-furlong distance change in sprint races and no more than a one-and-a-half furlong change in route races. This would mean that a race involving a switch from 5 1/2 furlongs to 7 furlongs, or one from 1 1/8 to a mile would not be part of the research sample.

This represents a can’t-go-wrong research methodology, since I was precisely eliminating the types of changes that could have made my theory come out better than it deserved to. I would still accumulate the 150-race sample I expected to need.

(3) If after a 150-race sample, the outcome was at all inconclusive, I would do follow-up 150-race samples until a meaningful and conclusive pattern developed.

(4) I would also calculate a ratio between number of winning horses with improved Beyer figures in their winning race compared to the number with 0 improvement or a decrease in Beyer fig.

The research: Sample I

What turned out to be the first sample of 150 races had the following outcomes:

Improvement ratio. For every winning horse whose Beyer fig decreased or stayed the same from its previous race to its winning race, there were four horses whose Beyer figure got better with their winning race. This was a 4:1 ratio in favor of my improvement theory.

Raw average improvement (including winners with higher Beyers and those with lower Beyers): 9.7

In other words, the average thoroughbred winner improves it’s Beyer fig by 9.7!

That seem far too high to me, so I decided to do another sample.

Sample II

With totally different races, the results were as follows:

Improvement ratio. Once again it was 4:1. Four winning horses improved their Beyer figure for every one winning horse that didn’t. It looked as if I’d stumbled on some sort of statistical constant, for the 4:1 ratio now extended over a sample of 300 races.

Raw average improvement. Instead of the 9.7 Beyer points from the previous sample, I now had a 7.93 average improvement. The two averages were close enough to each other to make sense.

Combined 300-race average improvement

The 300-race sample produced an unadjusted average improvement in Beyer figure from most recent race to winning race of 8.8 Beyer points, rounded off.

What does this mean?

With winners’ average Beyer fig jumping an average of 8.8, the horse with the highest Beyer in its previous race has virtually no advantage and can not be called a most-likely winner, unless it figures to improve. In fact, on figures alone, more than half of a typical field has a chance to win. The handicapping question becomes not “Who’s the fastest horse?” but “Which horse will improve the most today?”

Given these research results, for most winners it’s no longer possible to declare that “a horse didn’t figure!”, based on speed figs. In fact, any horse in the field within 8 points of the highest figure has more than a theoretical chance to win, and according to my research results, if that horse is within 15 points of the highest Beyer in the race, it had a reasonable chance to win on speed alone, if we exclude other factors.

Needless to say, other factors like class, form cycle, pace, and excuses in previous races must be considered.

First conclusion

We already knew that the “best-Beyer-previous-race” factor was overbet by the crowd. Now we know that best Beyer last race is not even an adequate predictor of winning horses. In other words, when any horse wins a race, most probably there was one or more other horses in the same field that had higher last-race Beyer figures.

None of this says that speed figures are inaccurate. It only suggests that handicappers must be able to project improvement in order to pick out contenders and winners.

What factors will most likely point to a speed improvement?

Categories that emerged as significant are outlined here.

(1) Three-year-old coming back to races after having been lightly raced as a two year old.

You don’t find a lot of these, but this may be the most consistently accurate projection for a radical increase in Beyer figure. The logic behind the improvement is impeccable. Two-year olds simply run more slowly than three-year olds. But in particular, horses that were lightly-raced as twos, are more likely to quickly reach a projected three-year-old speed rating.

(2) Class droppers. Numerically, the greatest number of winners that showed meaningful improvements in Beyer numbers from their previous race were class droppers.

(This researcher has done extensive research on class drops which has let to a very reasonable theory based on the herding instinct principle. Horses dropping to their proper level can be expected to run faster, for when they are part of a herd of their equals or inferiors, they are more naturally inclined to run in a competitive way. Horses that are outclassed, on the other hand, can be projected to earn a lower Beyer figure than their potential, for once they feel intimidated by more dominant members of the herd, they surrender their fighting spirit.)

In my unpleasant observations of fighting cocks in Panama, I learned this lesson in a visceral way. A rooster entering the ring that “felt” outclassed, began to run away from his rival. Did this mean he couldn’t fight? Not at all. It meant he felt outclassed. The same rooster, when pitted against a member of its own class was capable of fighting to the death.

Horses that suddenly find themselves racing at their proper level, can be projected to “wake up”. Of course, racing is replete with contradictions, and a class dropper that is “damaged goods” may fail to achieve this projection.

(3) Another subset of improvers were the younger class risers, especially those lightly-raced young horses moving up through allowance conditions. These were far fewer in numbers than the class droppers, but at least could be identified, not only by this researcher but by the betting public. Tough to find an overlay in this category.

(4) Horses with no reason to improve. We’d be remiss if we left out this category. Especially in low- and middle-level claiming races, in-and-outers seem to populate most fields. The apparent sudden improvement in these horses may merely be a return to a previous peak that was reached three, four or five races ago. At these class levels, horses are quite susceptible to “the shape of the race”. Their finding a “spot” in which they can race with less stress may suddenly allow them to improve their Beyer figure in a signficant way.

(5) Horses returning after a layoff are prime candidates for radical improvement over their pre-layoff race, provided they have trainers whose horses fire fresh. The final race prior to a layoff is probably an unhappy occasion in which something happens to the horse, thus giving him an excuse for a vacation from the races. Having spent so much time living amongst trainers and talking with them about their horses, I can assure you that two opposite philosophies co-exist on the backside. The type-A trainer is looking for an immediate result and prepares his layoff horse for a peak comeback effort. Type-B trainers prefer to race their horses back up to a peak.

(6) Maiden droppers.

The maiden drop is one of the most potent improvement factors in racing. I clipped 15 maiden dropper winners and searched for something they had in common.

The surprise of this group of 15 was that, with the drop, 14 of them earned a career-high Beyer rating. Another common denominator of these maiden dropper winners is that they’d all shown some competitive running lines in at least some of their previous races. (The type of maiden that follows a field without making a move, as if he were on a merry-go-round, is not likely to satisfy the investor in maiden droppers.)

Final conclusion

Handicappers whose fundamental activity is comparing speed figures and betting the horse with the highest figure will be facing underlay odds and confronting a powerful probability that last race’s speed figures will be altered in today’s race. Handicapping involves the skill of making projections for the future, not calculating an unbending past. There are non-linear curves and bends in the progression of time that make handicapping a geometric rather than arithmetic activity.

If you have no handicapping reason to project an improvement in your horse’s Beyer figure for today’s race, you’re probably looking at a loser.

[Zaf]

Nice Post Mcikey01.

Impoving pace figures often tip off the impending improvement !

ZAFONIC

[kev]

Why does people say, people bets the highest last race beyer and I hear from here and see with my own eyes when I do go the track or a OTB I don't see alot of people reading the racing form, most people have the in house program. Maybe people are betting the last race period and just so happen it might have a high fig. People always wants to knock the beyers and that's fine, but it's not like it's a new tool and people around the country and jumping all on them. If there were stats like this I would love to see what % of people's money is being bet that has hardly any clue how to read a program, cause those people are not using a racing form. Next time you guys/gals are out at the OTB or track look around and see what people are using, I think most will see a program or a tip sheet.

[Zaf]

Kev,

I noticed this also. Most places I go, OTB's , Race Books , Track, etc. Seems like most people have the in house program. One day I was in the Borgata Race Book and not a single sole in the place had the DRF !

ZAFONIC

[twindouble]

Final conclusion

"Handicappers whose fundamental activity is comparing speed figures and betting the horse with the highest figure will be facing underlay odds and confronting a powerful probability that last race’s speed figures will be altered in today’s race. Handicapping involves the skill of making projections for the future, not calculating an unbending past. There are non-linear curves and bends in the progression of time that make handicapping a geometric rather than arithmetic activity.

If you have no handicapping reason to project an improvement in your horse’s Beyer figure for today’s race, you’re probably looking at a loser. "

Mcikey; Thanks for posting that, the above has been my contention sense the Beyer figures came out but like allways it fell on death ears. I have a new supply of black markers to get rid of those bold figures before I handicap a race. I even take my glasses off to mark them out, that way I can't see them at all. What would be a great idea is to be able to order your PP's without them.

NOBEYERSPLEASE. :=

[kev]

When I was using the DRF I would go into these places and felt out of place I would be the only one or a few who would have a drf, now if I do go to the track I take my Ragozin sheets and feel really out of place. I had some Ragozin sheets at work the other day and some lady saw me reading them and said oh what are those DNA profiles, lol. For those of you that has never seen the Rag's sheets they do remind ya of DNA sheets a little bit.

[nobeyerspls]

Thanks Mickey
My sample was not as extensive as Cramer's and I used lifetime high beyer as well as last race high to find horses that speed figure types would bet. Captured nine winners form forty one races. Most paid $6 or less to win.
I bet freshened fillies and note that Cramer found good returns from horses that had time off. Also, the class drops overcame their lousy figs. That article is the best I've seen on the subject.

[kev]

Like I siad I don't know who is betting last race high beyer's, but they hit around the same % of fav's right and on turf they hit a little better. People should do a study and see if the highest last race number was a win or not, say if a horse ran 3rd but had the higest would his odds still be low. Like I said people are betting mostly on the last race period or class droppers.

[RXB]

Originally Posted by kev

Like I siad I don't know who is betting last race high beyer's, but they hit around the same % of fav's right

Actually, they hit about 26%, which is well below the % for favourites. Mean win payout of just over $6, net loss of about 19%-- which is almost exactly the same as the net loss for betting the favourite in every race.

[RonTiller]

Well, I have a slightly different take on Mark Cramer's article (I also cannot recall where I read it before).

The premiss of the article, that he is engaged in an act of heroic myth busting, seems to me to be utterly ridiculous:

We horseplayers have been conditioned to assume that the horse that has run the fastest recently is most likely to run the fastest today. When a horse with a lower speed figure than our most-likely winner comes home first, we are educated to look at the event as an anomaly. The exceptions accumulate in our psychic landscape like chain stores and yet we fail to admit that a pattern, one that contradicts our cherished myth, has developed.

Firsly, in my 13 years in this business, having met and talked to hundreds of handicappers, from complete novices to 60 year veterans to high tech cybercappers to professional wannabes, I have yet to meet a single person who believes that the horse with the fastest recent (or last race, if you want) speed rating is the most likely winner (51%+ winners). Not one. Likewise with the idea that we are conditioned to treat lower speed figures that win as anomalies. Poppycock. The idea that the horse racing subculture has self generated these myths just seems utterly absurd to me. If these are real myths of our subculture, it shouldn't be so hard to find people that actually believe them (or EVER believed them). This is as true now as it was 13 years ago.

Secondly, Mark Cramer's revelation that the "myth" is a myth, from his own "impressionistic evidence" and "rigorous research" strikes me as utterly hollow, since it is a myth that there is a myth in the first place. Of course most of these horses who ran the fastest in their last race lose - anybody who has followed and handicapped more than a few races knows this. And the makers of the speed figures will all tell you the same thing - Beyer, Ragozin, Brown, Cramer (Jim), BRIS, ITS, Trackmaster, etc. It's just not a secret, dirty little or otherwise. Nor does any speed rating maker promulgate or encourage the "myth" that the fastest horse last race will win 51%+ of the time.

Thirdly, no single factor, whether last race speed rating, average earnings, last race pace ratings, trainer statistics, jocky statistics, running style, horse win %, post position batting averages, sire statistics, etc. (ad nauseum) - none of these - predicts the winner of the 55,000 or so races each year with 51%+ accuracy. So if you are betting the horse with the trainer who has the highest win % each race, you will be wrong most of the time. Come to think of it, I recall a longstanding myth in the horse racing subculture that trainers with the highest win % are most likely to win today and when they lose, it is an anomaly. Maybe I should do some myth busting myself. Ok, here it is: it's not how a trainer has done in the past that is important; it's how he will do today. More generally (and this can make for dozens of "myth" busting articles):

1. [Fill in your favorite factor] does not win most of the time - so [Fill in your favorite factor] "...is not even an adequate predictor of winning horses."
2. Its not about how [Fill in your favorite factor] has performed in the PAST; it's about how [Fill in your favorite factor] will perform TODAY, "...for an accurate rendering of the past is not the same thing as an objective prediction of the future."

There you have it in a nutshell. Run these two sentences through a FOR NEXT Loop for every logically possible handicapping factor, pat yourself on the back, and get down to the business of handicapping, however it is you conceive it. Unless you are a single-factors-can-predict-a-majority-of-races kind of person, your world will remain untouched.

I guess all this seems a tad bit curmudgeonly on my part, but after all, I am a curmudgeon. For my next trick, I'll take on Mother Teresa, H. H. The Dalai Lama and (God forbid) Oprah!

Ron Tiller
HDW

[RXB]

Like most other people-- including Mark Cramer, apparently-- I don't consider the phrase "most likely" to mean "51% or greater." I consider it to mean "more likely to occur than any single alternative."

"None of this says that speed figures are inaccurate. It only suggests that handicappers must be able to project improvement in order to pick out contenders and winners." Seems reasonable to me.

[andicap]

Originally Posted by twindouble

[font=Times New Roman][b][u]
Mcikey; Thanks for posting that, the above has been my contention sense the Beyer figures came out but like allways it fell on death ears. I have a new supply of black markers to get rid of those bold figures before I handicap a race. I even take my glasses off to mark them out, that way I can't see them at all. What would be a great idea is to be able to order your PP's without them.

NOBEYERSPLEASE. :=

T.D.,
I think you're missing the point. Cramer is not saying Beyers are irrelevant (and I totally agree with Ron's excellent post), he is saying betting the last race Beyer blindly is silly because horses are living creatures with FORM CYCLES.
If you use ANY figure -- be it the Sheets, Xtras, etc. -- you are SUPPOSED TO take cycles into consideration. That's why Ragozin doesn't advocate betting the best last race high figure. He urges people to look for form cycles and study patterns.

Cramer is not sayinig to ignore the Beyers or any figures -- he's saying handicappers need to look at them more creativiely. For example I have noticed a pattern in the final velocity type figures I use to help determine my contenders -- often times a horse will have an off race in his last and rebound in his next race.

Look at Flawless Treasure in Sunday's 8th race at Saratoga. I'm using Cramer speed figures now. His 83 was 4th best in the field overall. But if you look at his 2nd race book, that was 2nd best and only 1 pt behind the top horse. He had run an 87 two races back, come back only 18 days later, regressed to an 83. Got 39 days rest and rebounded to finish 2nd at 10-1 to a 4-5 shot with the top figure.
Expanding your definition a bit of "top figure" gave you a $25 cold exacta. (I don't bet this way, it's just an example of how a little creativity should be used in analyzing figures of ANY kind.)

Beyer should be given more credit than the Raggies because at least he does not advocate ignoring pace as the Sheets people do. In the early years the Sheets people were able to overcome that because their final figs were so much more accurate than anyone elses they got a lot of overlays. Those overlays are much tougher to come by these days because of the omnipresence of the Sheets.

I wonder if any Sheets users couple their cycling analysis with a good pace analysis and if they do, are their ROIs the better for it?

[JackS]

I've always had the feeling that the Beyer's aren't always correct. Anyone making speed and pace adjustments will have to also wonder at times how this single number was produced .There is another number that is created by the track (track speed/variant) that should be compared ,particulary if your own opinion wants to question the Beyer.
My feeling is that Beyer routinely misses the mark in the cheaper claimers and also with younger horses racing at less than 6f.
Anyone who is prone to place all of his faith in this one number should consider improving his method to include two numbers (Beyer and TR/Var) . Both these numbers should be somewhat in agreement. If not, either Beyer or the track is wrong. In this situation, if I were were using the "two number method", I would probably bet on the side of the TR/Var since the Beyer will almost always be over bet.