JRand and Rich Val,

You are correct that most races have a significant component in positional running style. And, today, most serious pace handicappers do acknowledge the positional component.

But, there are a few races where positional running completely breaks down into chaos. There is no doubt that chaos races do exist. I'm not suggesting this is an every race approach. I still look at published running style and a running style I learned from a prominent handicapper (CJ). I like to look at factors from many angles, searching for a "false positive". When fractional times tell us that the positions could easily blow up, for me that is a false positive on the positional approach.

So, when is positional handicapping likely to break down? When pretty much none of the horses has the early ability to maintain a normal early pace. That's what I am saying.

Just imagine that you have to actually watch EVERY SINGLE RACE to pull the trigger. — Dave Schwartz

My state does not allow ADW's anymore. Are conditional wagers still available? Odds of 11/1 or more are probably not going to drop significantly in the last seconds, are they?

Dave, I have created a new topic. You may delete it from this thread if you wish. I don't think I know how to delete a post here.

I've done some research that is a little bit similar.

Most serious researchers probably know that chaos races are easy to spot after the fact, but not quite so easy beforehand. Well, I think chaos ensues when none of the horses in the race really want to exert early energy. But I define that a little differently from most folks. I am only talking about dirt racing because grass tends to be late more often than dirt.

Sartin followers are probably familiar with %M (percent median). It shows in which part of a race a horse exerts energy, early or late. I believe this is the true running style of the horse. But, from which race? I think all of them. Huh? I take the median of all of the %M's available and refer to it as M%M.

Through a little research, I split the M%M figures into somewhat equal categories and those are my E, E/P, P, P/S, S and L running styles.

I then assign numbers to those 6 running styles, 1 for E down to 6 for L.

Then I average the running style numbers for all of the horses in the race. So, a typical race will be somewhere around 2.0 to 3.0.

So, when that race running style is high (at least 3.2), I find the race becomes more likely to be chaotic. Why? I think it is because some horse or horses are called on to atypically expend early energy and that is not what they are accustomed to doing and the other horses try to keep up and many tire. You end up with a horse that has relatively poor speed figures winning the race coming from off the pace... chaos.

So, which horse wins? I find that it is often a horse with low Quirin speed points and has shown an ability to close in recent races, in position and/or lengths, preferably both. Yes, even if it only went from 9th to 4th or even 5th to 4th. Not backing up is the key.

Admittedly this is somewhat theoretical at this point. I haven't fully proven it. And, I am still looking for more criteria as to when to utilize it.

It should be noted that my running styles are often much different from published running styles. In my opinion, the published styles tend to be better correlated to position rather than fractional speed.

Also, this often does not work when there is a clearly superior horse in the race.

Any thoughts?

Interesting, Dave. What is PSR? I don't necessarily mean specifically, but is that a speed number of some sort?

We need this place to work because PA is dead and there really isn't anywhere else. — Darren

I agree. I'll try to do better, too. We need more discussion on the serious aspects of handicapping.

I moved my comment to a different thread.

Yeah, Tony, I have lots more from the old days, but I'm with you on hoping those days are gone. Sometimes it was more efficient to just pay attention than to actually handicap. lol

Okay, I've seen some weird things at the track, but this may be the strangest. Again, Delta Downs many years ago.

A casual friend tells me, hey, you hear that announcement? For the car with the lights on? There's no car with the lights on. That's a code for the winner. Arrange the horses by morning line odds, then bet the first three digits of the license number. Well, that sounded pretty far fetched, so I didn't buy in. But the guy goes to the window and comes back and shows me a cold trifecta on the three horses.

The race is run and it is the right three horses, but the wrong sequence. "PLEASE HOLD ALL TICKETS. THERE HAS BEEN A STEWARD'S INQUIRY." May have been an objection, don't remember, long time ago. A horse's butt swung a little wide going into the first turn, not severely. This happens in nearly every race, but in this one they DQ the horse and now my buddy has the winning trifecta.

As if that wasn't enough, the payoff was $580, just below the IRS threshold. I have no idea if it was true, but there were always rumors that in this type case they punched up tickets after the race to bring the payout down below the IRS level.

So, to this day I have no idea of whether this guy was pulling my leg and got lucky. But it was certainly mighty suspicious, especially with the DQ going his way.

I'm interested.

The racing commission could not levy a max penalty for a misdemeanor. So, they kept issuing lighter penalties until it became a felony, then issued a more severe penalty.

LOL
That's funny. — Dave Schwartz

You think that's funny... when he finally told the truth, that meant he had committed perjury, which is a felony.

I remember that! — Dave Schwartz

The jockey was Sylvester Carmouche, Jr., father of Kendrick Carmouche and Sylvester Carmouche III, who are both jockeys.

The fog incident was in a race with such a low purse that the jockey could not be charged with a felony.

My early handicapping was at Delta Downs. First, I want to point out that I have not been to that track in many years and I have no idea whether it is different or the same. But back then, cheating was there. I can think of at least 6 races that I am rather certain were fixed and therefore I can speculate that there were many others as I was generally not an every day attendee.

The most infamous incident at Delta was the "fog jockey" incident. On a very foggy night, one jockey parked his horse where the chute met the main track and waited for the other horses to come around to complete the mile run. When he heard the hoofbeats, he got his horse to take off. In this dreadfully conditioned race, the horse not only won by double digit lengths, but set a track record. The rest is a long story, but he did much later admit what had happened.

When I was carefully monitoring trainer pattens about 20 years ago, I became convinced that there were improprieties of at least a few trainers.

Some of the other stories I am familiar with are so bizarre that I would likely be labeled a liar if I told them. Admittedly, they sound like mighty odd stuff. I will just say that there are a lot of ways to cheat.

Today, I am not really in a position to know very much. I will say that in reviewing races, I find that most are very explainable, either based on the quality of the winner or on the way the pace panned out. But I wouldn't be surprised if cheating exists.

Good point on short-term trends. Sometimes it fails because it just regresses to the mean. But sometimes we can accidentally stumble on something important. Maybe the trainer has a better staff. Or he put a goat in his barn. Or the better performance through chemistry kicked in. Or he got better horses from better clients. Or he discovered better feed. We don't really care why he's winning, only that he is.

Another important aspect about a trainer is recognizing when a trainer is dropping a horse to try to unload a hopeless horse or trying to get a win. How much does the trainer drop a horse and still win? A lot of top trainers have new horses coming in that they need room to have.

Yes, Dave, there are many opportunities.

Another set of stats that might be ripe is workouts. Is there a difference between when the horses win and lose? Does the trainer work the horses long or short? Any difference for distances or surfaces? Fast or slow? Frequency? Does the typical layoff after a race disclose anything? Does the trainer have access to a private training facility?

Generally, I find that the best trainers just lead me to the already known to be best horses and they usually carry a low morning line. And, most of the stuff from the major data sources fuels a lot of wagers. Of course, there are exceptions.

If you can track data that is not in the hands of the public, it can be powerful. For instance, which trainers win the most at the beginning of a season and which win the most at the end of the season? That sort of thing.

Two issues I see.

One, the stretch runs will differ. For instance, Delta has a two turn mile on a 6f track, with a long chute leading into a straight portion of the track, running the stretch section twice. The stretch is very short.

Two, what triggers some horses to finish well is changing leads off the turn. So, I don't see the number of turns to be very significant, but actual research could prove me wrong. I think there may be more to be learned from the length of the stretch.