HANDICAPPING IS RANDOM

[pandy]

Originally Posted by PIC6SIX

I have come to the conclusion that picking winners is random. There are too many NW-2/3 LT, ST BREDS, MCs, MSW, Cheap Claimers and racing variables that work against the handicapper. You can read all the books on handicapping and know trainer angles, body language, pace and speed figures but all is just theory. If picking winners is an art and science that can be mastered then why did BEL have a pick-6 carryover of $321,000 C/O today, why don't the same cappers always win the daily online contests and why do they falter even when they play multiple entries, and why don't hcp software developers win consistently and YADDAYADDAYADDA???? Any takers for this thread and I don/t need to hear "You have to pick your spots".

Years ago there was a tip sheet in New York called Only Turf's Best, the blue sheet. The guy who owned the sheet was a perfectionist and a very good handicapper. His goal, however, was not to pick value but to pick the winner in every race.

He was one of the first guys to make his own speed figures, Ragozin style on a graph. He kept track of bias and wind. He kept lifetime past performances on every horse, on paper, not a computer, he paid a clocker for information, he paid a handicapper for trip notes (because he rarely went to the track himself). At the end of the day, NO ONE could consistently pick more winners than he did. To this day, I've yet to find any other handicapper that can pick winners like he did.

When the form was holding he would have 7 or 8 winners on top in 9 races where the newspaper guys and the other sheet handicappers would have 5 or 6. On days with a few prices, he'd have 4 or 5 winners, the others would have 2 or 3. But on the chaos days when the bombs came in he would be just like everyone else, tearing his hair out.

He proved it wasn't random because he weighed various handicapping factors and was able to pick the winner much more often than anyone else. But, when the bombs came in, he was nowhere.

The bottom line, however, is that in the long run, you really couldn't win using his picks. Sure his customers had a lot of fun and a lot of winning days, hitting exactas, doubles and win bets. But they didn't get the bombs and if you haven't figured out how to pick longshots winners it's very tough to come out ahead in the long run. So the moral of the story is, you have to be good at picking on those random chaos days, not when the horses that figure to win are winning.

You have to master Fuzzy Logic handicapping, not logical handicapping. He was a master of Logical Handicapping only.

Fuzzy logic is a form of many-valued logic that deals with approximate, rather than fixed and exact reasoning. Compared to traditional binary logic (where variables may take on true or false values), fuzzy logic variables may have a truth value that ranges in degree between 0 and 1.

[DeltaLover]

Originally Posted by PIC6SIX

I have come to the conclusion that picking winners is random. There are too many NW-2/3 LT, ST BREDS, MCs, MSW, Cheap Claimers and racing variables that work against the handicapper. You can read all the books on handicapping and know trainer angles, body language, pace and speed figures but all is just theory. If picking winners is an art and science that can be mastered then why did BEL have a pick-6 carryover of $321,000 C/O today, why don't the same cappers always win the daily online contests and why do they falter even when they play multiple entries, and why don't hcp software developers win consistently and YADDAYADDAYADDA???? Any takers for this thread and I don/t need to hear "You have to pick your spots".

I am sure that you do not mean that the winner of a race is a completely random event since it is less than trivial to prove the opposite.

I believe that what you want to say, is that ending up a winner after a sequence of bets is random and yes, I believe to a large extend this is very close to the reality,

Although each horse has a different probability to win the race, the betting public is very good in its estimates, converting the game in the most cases to a random event... Still, there might exist some (very few cases) where you might be able to find an edge, if you become a specialist on a specific subdomain of the game

[1st time lasix]

funny thing...after handicapping and playing the pick six sequence in NY the past three days.....i too came to the conclusion that I was just not good enough to play NY. Favorites I thought were vulnerable ran well....Long shots I thought had no chance ran well. I was humbled. The dreaded walk to the ATM shaking my head.....

[therussmeister]

If it was random, everyone would get the same ROI.
If it was random, the favorites would win about 11.5% rather than 35%.
If it was random, all jockeys would have the same win percentage.
If it was random, all trainers would have the same win percentage.
If it was random, I would have quit about 29 1/2 years ago, as I have no interest in handicapping random events.

[Capper Al]

How about part logic and part unknown? This mix makes for patterns over the long run, and randomness in the short run.

[raybo]

Since every horse in a race has some chance of winning, and the fact that none of us knows with 100% accuracy which horse will win a race, individual race results can swing from feast to famine, that's a fact that many players just can't swallow.

As Thaskalos stated, the focus must be on the long term. If you have good skills, are patient enough, disciplined enough, and consistent enough, you can still make long term profit.

[Laminarman]

Originally Posted by therussmeister

If it was random, everyone would get the same ROI.
If it was random, the favorites would win about 11.5% rather than 35%.
If it was random, all jockeys would have the same win percentage.
If it was random, all trainers would have the same win percentage.
If it was random, I would have quit about 29 1/2 years ago, as I have no interest in handicapping random events.

I'd add that given a field of horses, and enough races run, the horses would win roughly equal percentages, right? Laws of randomness would see to it. Because random means truly random. I don't buy that it's random or else we'd all have the same win percentage if we placed enough bets.

[raybo]

Originally Posted by Laminarman

I'd add that given a field of horses, and enough races run, the horses would win roughly equal percentages, right? Laws of randomness would see to it. Because random means truly random. I don't buy that it's random or else we'd all have the same win percentage if we placed enough bets.

Random "things" happen in individual races. Racing, as a whole, is NOT random, the better horses will win more often than the lesser horses, in enough individual races, to be fairly predictable, long term.

Unfortunately, for most, the designation of "better" and "lesser" varies widely. And thus, the reason only a small percentage of players are long term profitable, and all the others are not.

[Laminarman]

Originally Posted by raybo

Random "things" happen in individual races. Racing, as a whole, is NOT random, the better horses will win more often than the lesser horses, in enough individual races, to be fairly predictable, long term.

Unfortunately, for most, the designation of "better" and "lesser" varies widely. And thus, the reason only a small percentage of players are long term profitable, and all the others are not.

True, I wouldn't argue with you about the random things occurring. I read the post to mean races have random outcomes and handicapping is basically useless. In other words, just throw a dart with a blindfold on and who knows how it will turn out.

[raybo]

Originally Posted by Laminarman

True, I wouldn't argue with you about the random things occurring. I read the post to mean races have random outcomes and handicapping is basically useless. In other words, just throw a dart with a blindfold on and who knows how it will turn out.

LOL - well it might be ok to throw darts, if you are an expert dart thrower and knew which horses to target. Long term you would hit enough of those targets to maybe make yourself profitable.

[AndyC]

Originally Posted by ultracapper

You have to pick your spots, whether you want to hear it or not.

Don't most players "pick their spots"? How does picking your spot differ from regular play?

[thaskalos]

Originally Posted by AndyC

Don't most players "pick their spots"? How does picking your spot differ from regular play?

Ok...you have to pick BETTER spots.

[green80]

Originally Posted by PIC6SIX

I have come to the conclusion that picking winners is random. There are too many NW-2/3 LT, ST BREDS, MCs, MSW, Cheap Claimers and racing variables that work against the handicapper. You can read all the books on handicapping and know trainer angles, body language, pace and speed figures but all is just theory. If picking winners is an art and science that can be mastered then why did BEL have a pick-6 carryover of $321,000 C/O today, why don't the same cappers always win the daily online contests and why do they falter even when they play multiple entries, and why don't hcp software developers win consistently and YADDAYADDAYADDA???? Any takers for this thread and I don/t need to hear "You have to pick your spots".

While not entirely random, I will say somewhat random as horses do not run their same race every time. If I bet, a good horse will throw a bad race or a bad horse will run a good race. That is what makes some horses your bottom level claimers, they just run their best race every now and then. Combine that with poor rides by the jockeys, traffic and just bad racing luck, and the results will appear somewhat random.

I just ran one of my horses earlier this month, didn't bet it, figured it had little chance of winning. Won by 12 lengths. You never know.

[EMD4ME]

Agree, stuff happens.

Just a random question...Was your horse a "6" horse who won at Louisiana who paid $36 bucks or so against a former David Jacobsen NYRA shipper in a Maiden Claimer in the last race of the day?

[Overlay]

Originally Posted by raybo

Random "things" happen in individual races. Racing, as a whole, is NOT random, the better horses will win more often than the lesser horses, in enough individual races, to be fairly predictable, long term.

Unfortunately, for most, the designation of "better" and "lesser" varies widely. And thus, the reason only a small percentage of players are long term profitable, and all the others are not.

It's not just defining better or lesser horses that complicates the task, but successfully exploiting varying degrees of error in the public's perception of those designations, while also overcoming the unpredictable random events that don't go your way (although that randomness should theoretically "even out" over time).