I didn't have a chance to look until late in the day. Apparently your logic was good. Horse was a vet scratch. I agree with your approach. I look at the auction price and the claiming price.

Would there be plenty of room for mistakes? lol

From the people I have encountered, recreational handicappers frequently look to high percentage plays for their enjoyment. Professionals look for profit. And there are a lot of folks in between.

Thanks Ranch. You make a good point as we must balance the 'time investment' in the handicapping process. Formulator does offer quick and easy access to result charts and toggles back to the PP's. — Tony Kofalt

I've never tried Formulator. Seems like a good product.

One thing I learned from Dave was that my process should be my priority and should be concise and organized. That has helped me a lot.

Now to answer your question I think I am betting the horses in the correct proportions but rarely do I bet 2 or 3 horses to win — Conley

I remember one day at the track I told a guy I was going to bet two horses to win. He laughed and told me you can't make money betting two horses to win. I laughed and told him that last race I bet three horses and hit a $51 horse.

It isn't where you start... it is where you end up.

Jim, are you making a profit on your place and show wagers?

I do look at the "company line" next out winners from the last 10 starts. And, I do look at the prior matchups of today's horses back 10 races. I seldom look at the charts... I haven't found it to be the best use of my time, but your mileage may vary and I could be on the wrong path.

For me, I prefer a wager that is solid but with a higher return. I had Very Subtle when Groovy had a million plus to show and finished off the board.

Thanks, Tony!

Good points and thank you.

But I figure that just because the vet thinks the horse should be able to finish the race alive, I still don't know whether the horse is just a victim of paperwork or might be below normal. Or, if paperwork, maybe above normal.

Yes, excellent point.

When I see a horse with a voided claim, it tempts me to pass the race since I have no idea what the real status of that horse is.

I can see where this is overall good for horse racing, but the problem for handicappers is that I don't find there to be adequate transparency as to why the void was processed. So, I end up downgrading the chances of any horse I note to have had a voided claim.

Thanks, Tom.

Good one, Tony.

Now #8 is scratched in R8.

#1: 2.1
#2: scratch
#3 2.1
#4: 6.5
#5: 11.5
#6: 5.7
#7: 5.8
#8 scratch

With the scratch of Eternal Glory, East Coast Girl figures to get the lead, with an early challenge from Helicopter Money, but HM may not hang in there.

My pace numbers show Tunnel Vision and East Coast Girl as nearly equal.

For what it's worth, here's my line:

#1: 2.4
#2: scratch
#3 2.4
#4: 7.0
#5: 14.5
#6: 6.5
#7: 6.8
#8 7.5

I didn't get into it here because Tony indicated he is not into pace. but I can cover it however much interests everyone.

My interest is in % Median, a Sartin principle. It is based on the percentage of early pace versus late, early energy if you will.

So, I look at three factors: positional early (Quirin speed points), speed early (Sartin early pace, more or less early feet per second or else a comparison to early fractional par) and %Median (early energy).

The concept is that when a field of horses have a combined low %Median ( I actually take the combined median of each horse's median of its % Medians of all its shown races, obviously a computerized task) , then some of those horses are going to find themselves on the lead despite low early energy and are likely to exert more early energy than they are accustomed to and thus more than they can handle. This makes the situation ripe for a pace meltdown and a chaos race. Generally, my experience suggests that this is not a good way to bet against odds-on horses that don't seem to be bet against, though i have no data to back this up. In other words, I don't find this method to be stand-alone bet against on odd-on horses. Many of those are simply good enough to overcome the adversity.

People were very skeptical when I introduced this concept, but the next day I predicted a big longshot win. My memory suggests that it paid something like $47 to win, not sure. Granted, that was just one race, but I was 1 for 1 and I did it under the pressure of possibly looking like an idiot. :)

I am still studying this method. It doesn't work on turf because many of those horses have low % Medians -- their big run is late. The same is also likely for all-weather (Tapeta, etc), though I have little experience with all-weather. I am also studying the extent to which the energy requirement changes per distance or whether that is very relevant.

As most of you probably know, chaos races often have huge payouts, sometimes 20/1 and more. These races that fall into the range for my method are scarce. My GUESS is that you would be unlikely to find more than 1 per week per track, but there is nothing to say that it would be impossible to find a lot in one week or none in a week.

Another gotcha here is that the % Medians all need to be recalculated based on scratches. So, I am working on a new program that will provide for scratch changes much faster than my prior program, which wrote out HTML files for entire cards.

And, one last known caveat is that chaos seldom ensues in fields of less than 6 or 7 horses. So, 8 or more entrants are preferable. Sheesh, in today's racing, that alone narrows the opportunities.

I also know people who model %Median by track and distance and severely downgrade the chances of horses that fall outside the range of their model.

Also, I don’t put too much faith in the published running style.

Something that should fit well with what you are doing is the Giles race speed points that Dave discussed on this board a few months ago. It looks at the horses with high Quirin points and you are already calculating those.

Congrats, Conley!