How would you quantify being held up for clear running for inclusion in model?

[Robert Fischer]

Originally Posted by headhawg

I think that you are overestimating someone's willingness to take trip notes at what you are willing to pay. Why wouldn't someone just provide that service to everyone? Trip Note Pros charges $9 per track per day. OptixNotes is $150/month. I'm sure there are other services out there but you get the idea.

Yea. This isn't some 'fantasy'.
You either pay a service, or compensate a 'pro' if for some reason you value 'trip handicapping' relatively high.

Originally Posted by classhandicapper

This is all troubling for "trip" handicappers.

Then more people there are packaging quality trip information and selling it and the more people that are using computers to automate and test it, the less valuable it will all become, especially because it's typically people that bet larger amounts that buy these services or develop computer models.

Insights and opinions have no value if they are 'priced in'. You need to have the margin of safety with the odds. It's easy to see something interesting, and commit to playing that insight, regardless of whether the odds have priced it in. Over time, that is a losing strategy.

[dnlgfnk]

Maybe it's not relevant, as a manual handicapper, for me to be commenting. I've long known that as an experienced handicapper with the ability to discount or downgrade at least one well bet and one 5-1 or 6-1, ideally lower horse in a race, Bill Benter could have equaled or surpassed his self-described .24 ROI, as he mostly benefited from unsophisticated opponents and massive pools.

I received help in this area, though not for a model, but for quantifying a horse's trip concisely from a few generous posters...

http://www.paceadvantage.com/forum/s...ighlight=fuzzy

I've since greatly refined my approach, ending up with a 7 point Likert scale based on confidence and factor significance. One factor is a dead giveaway- being contrarian about public odds. If the favorite loses in today's race, say 67 % of the time, that's a lot of area for relevant information that will defeat him. But trips are far more subtle and significant than being blocked or checked.

[MJC922]

Big performance variability will come from fast pace races that are strung out and where traffic is rarely an issue, the pace will cause the 'off race'. Slower paced races are generally more logjam and the traffic costs horse's position and sometimes the win entirely but actual loss in distance of a length or two is probably not significant enough to make a huge impact in a model. The class horse often has the 'gears' to make up for being held up. See Bricks and Mortar in the BC held up for all but the last furlong. Just IMO. It does happen where it's severe traffic being taken up etc but models that use thousands of races for a dataset I mean it's going to be a minimal impact for a model IMO even if you pay for a trained eye. Don't get me wrong paying for a trained eye is probably well worth it for a lot of other (trip) reasons but the held up part of it (if that were the only reason behind your intent) is probably not going to make a huge impact.