Do you ever play Golden Gate: y/n

[Inner Dirt]

Originally Posted by Dave Schwartz

Ralph,

I typically play any track that has a high Speed Reliability Index (SRI).

BTW, tracks that have typically had the poorest SRI indicators include KEE, HAW, and almost every turf course. (Turf just doesn't handicap well with speed ratings.)

So, the truth is that I rarely play GG, but I do if I get the chance.

Keenland and Hawthorne have been on my do not play list for ages. How do all the artificial tracks compare in your SRI to dirt tracks?


I make my own pace figures and and did dabble at concocting what I called the Turfalator
to assign figures for turf races using formulas in Excel, that was fun with numbers and a miserable failure. I probably should have tracked it's ROI on a $2 win bet for a good laugh. The system mostly weighed the last quarter horses ran compared to the early pace. It did spit out the occasional long shot but more often produced horses at 9-5 or less that ran 2nd or 3rd.


My pace figures are basically assigning Beyer like figures to the splits taking into account track configuration and run up. I was even adjusting quarter times for each track. It was good at predicting early speed
most of the time and was good at predicting lone F's at a price. There were tracks where it was often clueless. At Mountaineer and Charles Town it had a lot of clueless days.


What I did notice is early pace numbers on artificial tracks were dawdling and made no sense, early speed in 6f races on artificial looked like the numbers on dirt 1-1/8 races.


I have taken a couple years away from playing horses and probably will start putting my toe in the water again soon.

[Inner Dirt]

Originally Posted by PaceAdvantage

So I reset the poll...

PLEASE VOTE AGAIN

I haven't really paid attention here, but on other websites I went to in days gone by I noticed a very small percentage of people vote in polls. I always wondered why.

[Dave Schwartz]

Keenland and Hawthorne have been on my do not play list for ages. How do all the artificial tracks compare in your SRI to dirt tracks?

Typically, they're competitive - but not above the "normal range," (i.e. 1 standard deviation) which is 91 to 109.

These are measured in magnitudes,:

Thus, the breakpoints look like:

• Above 129
• 120 to 129
• 110 to 119
• 91 to 109
• 81 to 90
• 71 to 80
• Below 71

I admit to a little fudging back in the beginning to make the table have some symmetry.

These are rigid and do not change from year-to-year.

The goal is to know which tracks that MY speed numbers don't work well at and those that don't.

A word on that - The SRI can be low because the pars or class levels need work at that track.

But it can also be that the horses don't run back to their numbers because of a myriad of reasons. Or even a combination of the two.

In making the decision about what is causing the poor performance, I do a similar study of the THREE high-level numbers I have access to:

• PSR - Jim Cramer's Projected Speed Rating
• cPWR - Older version of PSR
• cRTG - My own proprietary number.

All three of these produce approximately 31% winners on the top-ranked horse.

cRTG, (my number) is very speed & pace oriented. As such, as the pars have improved over the last decade or so, cRTG performance has improved.

In 2009, cRTG rank of 1st was hitting just under 25% winners.

FWIW, the 3 ratings shown above are listed in order of their direct correlation with the tote board. It's very logical, of course.

• PSR is a well-known rating that was added in the early 2000s as I recall, so it gets hammered.
• cPWR (which is my name for that rating) is older and many players do not use it.
• cRTG is not very widely used, so has far less impact on the tote.

But don't go thinking that you just need to figure a way to make money with these ratings directly.

Their only real value is to determine how the public should be betting in this race.

[Dave Schwartz]

Forgot something...

There are some tracks where the SRI is above 120. Most of these have one thing in common: They have a couple of trainers who dominate. IOW, they pretty much control the best horses day-to-day.

It's why pedigree is most powerful at small tracks in 4 year olds and older claiming races: the top trainers at those small tracks have a connection to some top trainers at some BIG tracks.

Think: "Hey, Bob. Just calling to let you know I've got a 4yr old, $8k claimer who isn't good enough to win here at GG. But he'd fit right in out there at WYO with you."

Seriously, if you have the ability, look at pedigree in races where it shouldn't matter.
_________
There are also tracks where the horses simply run back to their numbers consistently.

At those tracks, par building is relatively easy. The numbers just fall together. One such track (from memory) is Canterbury.

The WHY on that is an interesting answer.

[Maximillion]

Originally Posted by Dave Schwartz

Ralph,

I typically play any track that has a high Speed Reliability Index (SRI).

That is a metric which I created that measures the performance of the top 3 speed rating horses in a key category. Normal has been 62% for the 4 decades I've been tracking it.

There is very little change in large fields. (I'd never bet a field smaller than 5 horses.)

No turf races and no races that contain any FTS.

The only challenge for GG is that most of the days that I play, I begin with the 1st eastern post and quit after about 4-5 hours. I will play some California tracks if I have the energy, but it would be a very rare occurrence for me to still be betting when the feature race comes around.

BTW, tracks that have typically had the poorest SRI indicators include KEE, HAW, and almost every turf course. (Turf just doesn't handicap well with speed ratings.)

So, the truth is that I rarely play GG, but I do if I get the chance.

Other than the long stretch, I don't see Hawthorne as being that different from other tracks.Could the speed rating data be skewed due to the many former AP horses running there in the past?

[Dave Schwartz]

Originally Posted by Maximillion

Other than the long stretch, I don't see Hawthorne as being that different from other tracks.Could the speed rating data be skewed due to the many former AP horses running there in the past?

When the planets don't line up for a particular track, there are many potential reasons.

Shippers can be one of them.

In fact, my theory about CBY is the other end of your suggestion:

Look at CBY on a map.

Get a feel for how far away CBY is from other tracks. Pretty much nobody is shipping a claiming horse to CBY if they don't have a reason.

There's not likely to be a lot of horses "running over to CBY for a workout race."

Another one is multiple meets.
Like KEE.

I tried to build dual pars for KEE about 15 years ago and found that there was almost no correlation between the two meets in terms of class level performance.

Personally, I think that dual meets are the problem.

Another reason can be the local rules.
Tracks that pay purse money to every entrant have larger fields. They also have fewer workouts per day because the trainers can enter the horse and generate purse money for what is essentially a workout.

Example would be MTH.


Another reason is having too many races that run late.
When the winner of a race runs late, the final times will just logically be slower. This will reflect itself in less reliable par times.

If you need help with this one, just ask yourself how many lengths back that $80 horse was at the first call. He, essentially, won because nobody else did.


Consider the jockey colony's talent level.
Logically, the better jockeys ride at the bigger tracks (where they can get better mounts resulting in bigger purses).

No surprise there.

However, a common believe is that weaker jockeys do not get as much from their horses in the stretch. That's why there is such a cavalry charge to the 1st call at small tracks.

That's also why so many front runners fail at the smaller tracks: the horses don't have as much left in the tank because they were over-ridden early.

[horses4courses]

GGF is the closest (non-fair) track to me.
I've only visited a handful of times, and enjoyed every minute.

99% of my horse wagering these days is via ADWs.
I used to wager with cash via NV race books, but
hardly at all these days. So much easier to play from home.

During my online playing days, GGF has probably gotten less
than 2% of my meager handle. I'm a small player by choice.

That being said, racing at Golden Gate will be missed.
It closes another chapter in the history of this sport.

Be nice to think that glory days are not gone forever.
Reality paints a different picture.

[Inner Dirt]

Originally Posted by Dave Schwartz

Yes, and for a while they had TWO 40% jockeys (Hansen was the other) as well as a 40% trainer (Hollendorfer).

Hollendorfer was the reason I went to circuit-based trainer stats. He always looked so good - even when he shipped to SoCal. But down there he was only a 13% trainer.

Ron Hansen, that goes back 30 years! I always like Dennis Carr, I felt he was just as good as Baze and wasn't an odds killer especially if he was going up against Baze.

[trifecta]

Remember this ride by Nate Hubbard?

YouTube

[JustRalph]

Thanks for playing

I was surprised to find more people here than I thought played GGF

[airford1]

Yes. Wet track, speed will stick. Dry track you better have some finish. Made money for me.

[proximity]

a (former 49er) ricky wattersesque "for who? for what?" woulda been my vote.

didn't mr qvale bury silky sullivan there?

hopefully they put up a monument (like the facade of baltimore's old memorial stadium) and build around that.

[Robert Fischer]

i watch the races and do the charts and track the models w/ watch-lists, but there's a bunch of short fields.

Occasional spot plays, and sometimes the GG/SA Golden Hour DD/P4 are worth playing.

[cnollfan]

I missed the poll. I like Golden Gate. Generally I don't play because of the short fields but I usually scan the card to see if they have any big fields and if they do I enjoy handicapping those races. It's also a "get-out" track, I have to admit.

I like the GG turf course, and the GG synthetic is one of the fairest IMHO.