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Old 01-04-2022, 06:59 PM   #31
Tom
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Figure horses are under bet every day. Horses win by large margins everyday.
I don't care why, I only care when.
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Old 01-04-2022, 07:07 PM   #32
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Figure horses are under bet every day. Horses win by large margins everyday.
I don't care why, I only care when.
But if we don't know "why"...how will we know "when"?
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Old 01-04-2022, 07:27 PM   #33
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They say that there would be no horse races without differences of opinion...and my opinion differs from yours on this. As far as I am concerned...there can be no true knowledge of the "quality of the horses" without taking pace into consideration in their corresponding races. I have seen impressive-looking winners whose performances were attributed entirely to the pace of the race...and I've seen fit horses finish dead last also entirely due to the pace of the race. Pace is a vital component of the handicapping puzzle...and I see no reason to ignore such an important handicapping factor. Of what possible use would my knowledge of "who-beat-whom, and by how much" be...if pace, and its affect on the individual horses, was not a prime handicapping consideration?

Yes...the "figure horses" might be overbet at times, and the figure-making process is fraught with "uncertainty"...but the class-handicapper and the replay-watcher must deal with uncertainty as well. As I said before...nothing is "iron-clad" in this game. But I can't totally disregard the horse's speed in a racing game...even if making accurate figures is an "idealistic fantasy".

I think it's getting a bit into the weeds. Numbers are one tool in the handicappers toolbox. These (on-target) do have very good accuracy but with that being said the number as it currently stands is not a 100% comprehensive measure of a horse's effort. I myself am a trip handicapper first and foremost and do plenty of race watching. A significant amount of pace analysis is part of my race watching routine and a fair amount of my handicapping considers early pace and position. You're going to have to be a good comprehensive well-rounded handicapper and damn good disciplined money manager to profit in this game. Better inputs can only help. I can see where these numbers may not 'fit' into someone's routine, the scale is different etc. Like I said, I built the product for me to use and at a time when I was really a full-time daily horseplayer who had all the rest of it in my head because I was there everyday, handicapped every race at my track and was a close observer. In that type of scenario the product can be very potent in the right hands.
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Old 01-04-2022, 08:16 PM   #34
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But if we don't know "why"...how will we know "when"?

Underbet when my line tells.
Big romps, pace analysis and paying attention to track bias.
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Old 01-05-2022, 11:22 AM   #35
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They say that there would be no horse races without differences of opinion...and my opinion differs from yours on this. As far as I am concerned...there can be no true knowledge of the "quality of the horses" without taking pace into consideration in their corresponding races. racing game...even if making accurate figures is an "idealistic fantasy".
Who said qualitative handicappers don't or can't take pace into consideration?

It's critical. It's just done a different way.

Rather than worry about the accuracy of the fractions, track variant, wind, run up, pace formulas etc.. and their "theoretical" impact on the outcome, a qualitative handicapper would look at the running styles of the horses in the race, how often they go for and make the lead, and the quality of horses they've been showing speed against.

If you do that, you start with a decent view on the likely pace going into the race.

Then you watch the race and analyze the result.

Who got out of the gate well and who didn't?

Who was pushed and who was restrained?

Who made the lead, who tried, but got outrun by even faster horses etc...

Was the leader loose or battling with 1 or more other horses?

Did the horses up front open up on the rest of the field?

Was the field bunched up?

Then you watch the impact that development had on the outcome.

Were the leaders high quality horses that tired worse than expected?

Were the leaders lower quality horses than finished better than expected?

Did the race seem to flow neutrally?

How did those speed horses finish relative to each other?

At the end of the day, you are going to have a lot of information needed to assess the pace and its likely impact on the race and horses. In most situations the figures and qualitative assessment will agree. In other situations you will come to a different conclusion. That takes us back to square 1. Sometimes it's hard to know which view is correct in a specific situation.

Nothing is stopping you from looking at both.

There is no one true path to heaven.

You can use time, you can use quality, or you can use both.
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Old 01-05-2022, 11:37 AM   #36
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I think it's getting a bit into the weeds. Numbers are one tool in the handicappers toolbox. These (on-target) do have very good accuracy but with that being said the number as it currently stands is not a 100% comprehensive measure of a horse's effort.
You've been talking about this approach for quite awhile. I know how much thinking and effort must have gone into it because of my own difficult finding solutions to some of the problems. Congratulations on finally getting it to the point you were hoping.
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Old 01-05-2022, 06:21 PM   #37
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Thank you sir, I appreciated the encouragement when I implemented that last enhancement for firsters. It needed to be done (for years at that point) and I wasn't sure about diving into the code again after so much time away from it. Hated the thought of it because I'm in front of a screen all day for work besides. Anyway it's good stuff, not perfect, but it's good stuff. All the best to you in this new year.
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Old 01-07-2022, 11:47 AM   #38
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Thank you sir, I appreciated the encouragement when I implemented that last enhancement for firsters. It needed to be done (for years at that point) and I wasn't sure about diving into the code again after so much time away from it. Hated the thought of it because I'm in front of a screen all day for work besides. Anyway it's good stuff, not perfect, but it's good stuff. All the best to you in this new year.
I have one question.

Let's assume you rate a winner 15 off his last race.

He comes back 2 weeks later and disappoints relative to that figure. Over the next couple of weeks 3 more horses come out of the same race and disappoint relative to their figures.

Do you go back and adjust that race weaker?

If yes, the next time that original winner comes back will he show a different figure than a 15 for that race?

That's the one thing I don't have in my automated system that I may like to add.

My reports show me the Par for the class and a Class Rating for the race based on who was actually in it so I can identify strong and weak fields for a class.

I've tested the strong/weak process. It has a couple of quirks, but it's pretty good.

What I don't have is an automated follow up process to see how horses are coming back so I can refine the ratings further as I have more information. I do that manually when I'm handicapping. I'd like to automate something there eventually and see how it impacts the results of my tests.

Do you do that?
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Old 01-07-2022, 02:15 PM   #39
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I have one question.

Let's assume you rate a winner 15 off his last race.

He comes back 2 weeks later and disappoints relative to that figure. Over the next couple of weeks 3 more horses come out of the same race and disappoint relative to their figures.

Do you go back and adjust that race weaker?

If yes, the next time that original winner comes back will he show a different figure than a 15 for that race?

That's the one thing I don't have in my automated system that I may like to add.

My reports show me the Par for the class and a Class Rating for the race based on who was actually in it so I can identify strong and weak fields for a class.

I've tested the strong/weak process. It has a couple of quirks, but it's pretty good.

What I don't have is an automated follow up process to see how horses are coming back so I can refine the ratings further as I have more information. I do that manually when I'm handicapping. I'd like to automate something there eventually and see how it impacts the results of my tests.

Do you do that?
Yes I do that, well not me but the computer does that several hundred times per night actually. It's what I mean about iteration hundreds of times, the figure may have started out as a 15 but by the time the dust settles it may be more or less than that based upon the latest results. It may not even be results from the winner either, it could be let's say an also ran that came back and ran well or ran poorly. For a period of time everyone gets a 'say' in what the past race should be. Maybe the also ran came back and ran well to win and the horse he beat in that race then came out of the subsequent race to run even better, now we're two races away and were actually getting 'opinions' from horses who were not even in the original race as to how it currently rates. It's a lot of data processing. To do it manually you'd be limited to thinking in basic terms of maybe one full iteration and then the follow-up would be pretty much confined to just the horses exiting the race, it would quickly become impossible to tie it all in manually so hundreds of horses are giving input. I mean you can still get good numbers from one or two 'limited' iterations I guess you could call them, that's kind of what most speed handicappers are doing.

The other thing is I don't use class pars aside from that one recent change I mentioned for firsters where I 'seeded' a par number for the firster because there is no previous information available. A field of 100% firsters then is a crude classification for the computer to make. That's definitely still the weakest scenario for accuracy, but the way that works now is about as good as I could get it without bringing times into mix and there aren't enough of those races for me to even put that on the to-do list tbh, it's a limited accuracy problem that takes care of itself pretty quickly. I can live with the three times per year people want to point out how far off the computer was.

I think that's where people generally start their assumption for how a class rating would be calculated though, it sounds like that's kind of what you're doing currently, start with a class par. The process I'm following though does not take that path, the differences between the horses are all coming from their races as they run against one another globally in a sense. You could extract a class par out of that when it all finishes iterating but it doesn't begin with a class par.
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Old 01-07-2022, 02:23 PM   #40
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Yes I do that, well not me but the computer does that several hundred times per night actually. It's what I mean about iteration hundreds of times, the figure may have started out as a 15 but by the time the dust settles it may be more or less than that based upon the latest results. It may not even be results from the winner either, it could be let's say an also ran that came back and ran well or ran poorly. For a period of time everyone gets a 'say' in what the past race should be. Maybe the also ran came back and ran well to win and the horse he beat in that race then came out of the subsequent race to run even better, now we're two races away and were actually getting 'opinions' from horses who were not even in the original race as to how it currently rates. It's a lot of data processing. To do it manually you'd be limited to thinking in basic terms of maybe one full iteration and then the follow-up would be pretty much confined to just the horses exiting the race, it would quickly become impossible to tie it all in manually so hundreds of horses are giving input. I mean you can still get good numbers from one or two 'limited' iterations I guess you could call them, that's kind of what most speed handicappers are doing.

The other thing is I don't use class pars aside from that one recent change I mentioned for firsters where I 'seeded' a par number for the firster because there was is no previous information available. A field of 100% firsters then is a crude classification for the computer to make. That's definitely still the weakest scenario for accuracy, but the way that works now is about as good as I could get it without bringing times into mix and there aren't enough of those races for me to even put that on the to-do list tbh, it's a limited accuracy problem that takes care of itself pretty quickly. I can live with the three times per year people want to point out how far off the computer was.

I think that's where people generally start their assumption for how a class rating would be calculated though, it sounds like that's kind of what you're doing currently, start with a class par. The process I'm following though does not take that path, the differences between the horses are all coming from their races as they run against one another globally in a sense. You could extract a class par out of that when it all finishes iterating but it doesn't begin with a class par.
Well done....Ahead of the curve...
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Old 01-07-2022, 02:32 PM   #41
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Thanks RR, best to you sir in the new year as well.
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Old 01-07-2022, 03:51 PM   #42
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Thanks.

I once used a basketball spreadsheet that would look at the 30 NBA teams, look at who faced who each game, what the score was, who was home and away, and how many days off they had between games. Then Excel would look at all that info and calculate a power rating based on all the results. I could tweak it to weight recent games more, look at key injuries and incorporate other things. It was given to me by an advanced stats guy at Basketball Reference. It sounds like a very similar process to what you are doing, but instead of 30 teams, you are are looking at thousands of horses. It sounds awesome.

By the way, you are correct. Any adjustments I make to my thinking based on subsequent performances are limited to performances in the next race or maybe two. Even that’s limited. There’s no way I can match what a computer can do. All I can hope to do is use my subjective judgement well.
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Old 01-07-2022, 07:47 PM   #43
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Thanks.

I once used a basketball spreadsheet that would look at the 30 NBA teams, look at who faced who each game, what the score was, who was home and away, and how many days off they had between games. Then Excel would look at all that info and calculate a power rating based on all the results. I could tweak it to weight recent games more, look at key injuries and incorporate other things. It was given to me by an advanced stats guy at Basketball Reference. It sounds like a very similar process to what you are doing, but instead of 30 teams, you are are looking at thousands of horses. It sounds awesome.

By the way, you are correct. Any adjustments I make to my thinking based on subsequent performances are limited to performances in the next race or maybe two. Even that’s limited. There’s no way I can match what a computer can do. All I can hope to do is use my subjective judgement well.
Correct, similar principles are at work.
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Old 01-11-2022, 10:09 PM   #44
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As an editorial note, these threads are why I love PA. Despite the early negative connotations in this thread, mutual intellectual respect rules the day and IMO an incredibly informative and enriching discussion emerged.

Thanks to all of you who take the time to elucidate on this topic and others on this board.
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Old 04-09-2022, 12:44 PM   #45
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Correct, similar principles are at work.
I have another question for you.

In the speed figure world, figure drift is an issue. Depending on how you make your track variants there can be a tendency for the figures to slowly get slower (more common) or get faster over time.

I currently use class PARs as part of my automated process for generating class ratings. That prevents drift, but also causes an occasional inaccuracy I'd like to fix. I'm thinking about making a change that could open the door to that risk.

Do you have anything in your process to prevent figure drift over time?
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