The Mystery of Pace Figures

[whodoyoulike]

Originally Posted by cj

Yes but you were sharp enough to know what I meant

Btw, I use it for both prediction and to understand the past. I'm still trying to figure out the current state of the horses from just the pp's. I think you have to incorporate physicality as shown in the paddock and post parade for that but it's difficult using just what you can see from the ADW tv monitoring.

[Capper Al]

I have that book and will look his pace theory again. The thing about pace seems to be that it can explain most winners after the race.

[EMD4ME]

Originally Posted by Capper Al

I have that book and will look his pace theory again. The thing about pace seems to be that it can explain most winners after the race.

And this is WHY, I have a major eruption when the lone speed of the race at 5 1/2 F is choked to death for 7/16 and then after the horse has no energy left (from being stiffed) the jock goes into their "all out look at me, I'm trying drive" as closers sprint away from the lone speed.

[classhandicapper]

I agree with what everyone is saying, but sometimes it can be very difficult to make accurate assessments of each component of a horse's trip and weigh them against each other in order to reach a conclusion (especially when it comes to speed/rail biases that can be anywhere from subtle to dictating and not always clear). With many horses there are positives and negatives that still confuse me after 40 years.

Sometimes it makes sense to simply be familiar with the general quality and styles of the horses that were in the race, watch the way the race developed, and assess the performances of each horse relative to others with similar trips. That kind of thing sometimes screams A ran better than B without trying to quantify conflicting impacts of pace, bias, ground loss, wind, pressure etc.. individually.

If there was a duel in fast fractions, did the duelers actually back up the way you would expect or not?

Were the duelers consistent high quality speed horses or horses that show occasional speed?

Who won the duel and how badly did the losers back up relative to expectations?

Have any of the duelers or chasers that tired come back out of the race to run better under more honest circumstances or did they run poorly again?

Was that closer in a slow paced race the only horse to make up a lot of ground in a spectacular closing time or did several horses do the same thing?

Was that horses that looped 4w the only horse that ran well outside or did several horses in the race run huge with wide trips?

[EMD4ME]

Originally Posted by classhandicapper

I agree with what everyone is saying, but sometimes it can be very difficult to make accurate assessments of each component of a horse's trip and weigh them against each other in order to reach a conclusion (especially when it comes to speed/rail biases that can be anywhere from subtle to dictating and not always clear). With many horses there are positives and negatives that still confuse me after 40 years.

Sometimes it makes sense to simply be familiar with the general quality and styles of the horses that were in the race, watch the way the race developed, and assess the performances of each horse relative to others with similar trips. That kind of thing sometimes screams A ran better than B without trying to quantify conflicting impacts of pace, bias, ground loss, wind, pressure etc.. individually.

If there was a duel in fast fractions, did the duelers actually back up the way you would expect or not?

Were the duelers consistent high quality speed horses or horses that show occasional speed?

Who won the duel and how badly did the losers back up relative to expectations?

Have any of the duelers or chasers come back out of the race to run better under more honest circumstances or are they running poorly again?

Was that closer in a slow paced race the only horse to make up a lot of ground in a spectacular closing time or did several horses do the same thing?

Was that horses looped 4w the only horse that ran well outside or did several horses in the race run huge with wide trips?

Love all these questions. You and I could go on and on forever about trips! Love it.

[classhandicapper]

Originally Posted by EMD4ME

[/B]

Love all these questions. You and I could go on and on forever about trips! Love it.

I'm not some kind of trip expert. I've had good results with bias for a long time and have a lot of experience with pace, but I'm constantly confused about conflicting trip information. I find that questions and comparative handicapping like that helps me a lot.

[Capper Al]

Originally Posted by classhandicapper

I agree with what everyone is saying, but sometimes it can be very difficult to make accurate assessments of each component of a horse's trip and weigh them against each other in order to reach a conclusion (especially when it comes to speed/rail biases that can be anywhere from subtle to dictating and not always clear). With many horses there are positives and negatives that still confuse me after 40 years.

Sometimes it makes sense to simply be familiar with the general quality and styles of the horses that were in the race, watch the way the race developed, and assess the performances of each horse relative to others with similar trips. That kind of thing sometimes screams A ran better than B without trying to quantify conflicting impacts of pace, bias, ground loss, wind, pressure etc.. individually.

If there was a duel in fast fractions, did the duelers actually back up the way you would expect or not?

Were the duelers consistent high quality speed horses or horses that show occasional speed?

Who won the duel and how badly did the losers back up relative to expectations?

Have any of the duelers or chasers that tired come back out of the race to run better under more honest circumstances or did they run poorly again?

Was that closer in a slow paced race the only horse to make up a lot of ground in a spectacular closing time or did several horses do the same thing?

Was that horses that looped 4w the only horse that ran well outside or did several horses in the race run huge with wide trips?

Many a time I think racing is more of a chess game than a race. All the barns have a feel for who's who in the race. The question then becomes, 'is their horse capable of beating the alpha ?' If not why challenge him? So they hold their horse back. Or they are out for an exercise and go for the lead just to give it up. Therefore, the validity of the fractions are questionable. The best that I've come up with is to only look at winning efforts.

[EMD4ME]

Originally Posted by Capper Al

Many a time I think racing is more of a chess game than a race. All the barns have a feel for who's who in the race. The question then becomes, 'is their horse capable of beating the alpha ?' If not why challenge him? So they hold their horse back. Or they are out for an exercise and go for the lead just to give it up. Therefore, the validity of the fractions are questionable. The best that I've come up with is to only look at winning efforts.

Some good points Al.

Many times its important to see what shouldve happened and didn't happen... there's an important reason why....and more importantly , an important reason to follow up on that runner.

[Dave Schwartz]

Many a time I think racing is more of a chess game than a race. All the barns have a feel for who's who in the race. The question then becomes, 'is their horse capable of beating the alpha ?' If not why challenge him? So they hold their horse back. Or they are out for an exercise and go for the lead just to give it up. Therefore, the validity of the fractions are questionable. The best that I've come up with is to only look at winning efforts.

I think you give the trainers too much credit for big thinking and knowing how well a horse will perform.

There are certainly some who do so, but in any given race I doubt that there are more than 3-4 horses (maybe less) that are actually "trying" to win.

[pandy]

Originally Posted by Capper Al

Well the big debates used to be on picking pace lines. Now that has seemed to have faded. There has been a lot of movement for using the last race or the next to last race. It's a kind of pace form idea. But that's not my problem here. My problem is in reading the tea leaves of pace. One hears lone pace or early pace or in the lead at the second call or ability time. All great concepts after the race. What about before the race? Can that lone speed hold out? Or can the closer far behind at the second call catch up? If you think you have a handle on this, please explain reading the tea leaves.

Thanks

BTW, I use key race(similar distance and same surface) for my pace selections.

My new book Power Pace Handicapping will handle all of these questions. One thing I'll say, pace figures, or pace handicapping, whatever you want to call it, is similar to speed figures/handicapping in this way, in some races, the figures are not going to be that much help. If all of the horses have similar figures, you have to either skip the race or use other factors to decipher the past performances. However, in some races, pace figures are powerful indicators.

[pandy]

Originally Posted by Dave Schwartz

I think you give the trainers too much credit for big thinking and knowing how well a horse will perform.

There are certainly some who do so, but in any given race I doubt that there are more than 3-4 horses (maybe less) that are actually "trying" to win.

Do you mean that the horse itself isn't trying to win, or that the trainer isn't try to win? Although either way, I would disagree. I hit a horse at Woodbine yesterday that was 1 for 19 coming into the race. Some people would say that a horse like that doesn't try to win, but since breaking its maiden the horse had been put in tough spots. Yesterday it was dropping into a n2l $20,000 claimer and cutting back from a route to 7 furlongs. When it broke its maiden it was over the same track and distance and for the same price tag. They all seem to try harder when they're not over classed or running at the wrong distance or on the wrong surface.

The only time I think that some horses aren't really intended to win is sometimes off long layoffs, and sometimes the trainer will put a horse in a bad spot for conditioning, for instance, putting a sprinter in a turf route to leg it up a bit. But those are pretty easy to spot. Most of the time, I assume that the horse is trying to win. The horse is an athlete, it's bred to race, and it will race as well as it can in its current physical condition.

[traynor]

Originally Posted by Capper Al

I have that book and will look his pace theory again. The thing about pace seems to be that it can explain most winners after the race.

... there is little credible support for the use of "pace analysis" as a predictor ...

Emphasis on "credible." Most have more than a few examples of scenarios in which pre-race pace analysis "seemed" to predict events in the race. However, apocryphal examples do not do well in prediction. Especially if one intends to wager on such predictions.

In the majority of pace scenarios, the "preferred running style" of the jockey is more significant than the "preferred running style" of the horse (if any such exists in the real world, beyond (very) broad generalities of little or no predictive value).

In many other pace scenarios, post-race pace analysis often degenerates into the equivalent of "the bleeping jockey stiffed him" rationalizations to explain why one lost one's wager(s).

[classhandicapper]

I know where you are coming from, but I can't agree with you entirely Traynor.

I have some personal queries that will look through the PPs of all the horses in race, generate a running style for each horse, look at some other factors, tell me how much pace pressure is likely to occur in the race, and tell me what is likely to happen at that distance, on that surface, at that track.

When I was developing it, I checked the projected running styles against the results in the race and kept tweaking and adding factors until I got the best results I could (it's an ongoing process with more enhancements to come).

When I project a very fast or slow pace, I also have the ability to check how accurate my projections were.

I can verify them with a positional analysis of where the winner eventually came from, where the speed horses finished, and what pace figures actually occurred in the race. I can do that by distance, surface, track, class or whatever other criteria I'm interested in.

That's a pretty comprehensive and objective approach with the ability to do a lot of testing. I'm not done with it, but it's already pretty good.

Lots of races don't develop the way I expect and I'm sure some of this kind of thing is already built into the odds, but you can certainly make pace projections, start estimating how likely it is you will be correct, and know how that projection will probably play out at that track/distance/surface using a tool like this.

[Dave Schwartz]

Originally Posted by pandy

Do you mean that the horse itself isn't trying to win, or that the trainer isn't try to win?

The only time I think that some horses aren't really intended to win is sometimes off long layoffs, and sometimes the trainer will put a horse in a bad spot for conditioning, for instance, putting a sprinter in a turf route to leg it up a bit. But those are pretty easy to spot. Most of the time, I assume that the horse is trying to win. The horse is an athlete, it's bred to race, and it will race as well as it can in its current physical condition.

Pandy, as always, I have great respect for your opinions. That being said, I have to say...

... Absolutely, the trainer.

Back in the early 80s I used to make a habit of grabbing the condition book in SoCal when it became available. Remember that those were the days of 12-horse fields with 3-6 also eligibles in many races.

There was actually a note to trainers in the bottom of the race conditions (not the published part, of course) that said, "If there are also eligibles, trainers will be asked to designate whether or not they are trying today."

The first time I saw that I about fell over. NOT TRYING? You mean not every horse is running hard for my hard-earned dollars? How does one get THAT information?

My opinion is that most races contain only 3 or 4 horses that are really "well intended." Depending upon the trainer, the layoffs may be either a positive or a negative. Statistically, short layoffs (31-35 days) are actually a positive, winning more as well as returning more money.

BTW, that does not mean that the not-well-intended horses never win. Especially true when the anticipated front-running speed collapses or barely fires at all. Strange things happen.

[traynor]

Originally Posted by classhandicapper

I know where you are coming from, but I can't agree with you entirely Traynor.

I have some personal queries that will look through the PPs of all the horses in race, generate a running style for each horse, look at some other factors, tell me how much pace pressure is likely to occur in the race, and tell me what is likely to happen at that distance, on that surface, at that track.

When I was developing it, I checked the projected running styles against the results in the race and kept tweaking and adding factors until I got the best results I could (it's an ongoing process with more enhancements to come).

When I project a very fast or slow pace, I also have the ability to check how accurate my projections were.

I can verify them with a positional analysis of where the winner eventually came from, where the speed horses finished, and what pace figures actually occurred in the race. I can do that by distance, surface, track, class or whatever other criteria I'm interested in.

That's a pretty comprehensive and objective approach with the ability to do a lot of testing. I'm not done with it, but it's already pretty good.

Lots of races don't develop the way I expect and I'm sure some of this kind of thing is already built into the odds, but you can certainly make pace projections, start estimating how likely it is you will be correct, and know how that projection will probably play out at that track/distance/surface using a tool like this.

I wrote (and have spent years continually improving) an app that does what your queries do (as you state above), and more. I think when you get to the serious research phase of applying the pace predictions so generated to a large database you will find that much of the promise of pace analysis is only realized after the race is over. And much of "pace theory" is little more than smoke and mirrors--big on promise, but short on useful application to the real world problem of predicting winners.

I am definitely not "anti-pace." I have been using (and continually learning more about) pace analysis since the early 1980s. I even wrote a training app to enable members of the blackjack team I was "associated with" to develop the pattern-recognition skills to find races worth betting, the "true contenders" in such races, and the "most predictive pace lines" for each of those contenders. It was (and is) a non-trivial piece of work.

Pace can be useful in prediction, but that usefulness requires considerably more complex a perspective on pace analysis than the simplistic "popular" theories might suggest is required.