Very good! And I agree.

But I have also been looking recently at a much different approach... antivolatiity. Looking at what is not predictable and considering how we might use those possibilities. Handicapping always has risks and rewards.

Had all 8 winners in my 4 contenders again today at FG. Nobody hit the P5 or P6 (again).

Racing is good at FG and usually gets even better after Christmas.

There was a chaos race at AQU today with a 48/1 winner, coming from next-to-last to win.

Lots of Cs at FG today, sloppy, yet a pretty formful day. I had all 8 winners in my contenders. Yet nobody hit the P6. Highest win pay on the day was $8.80

One thing I am seeing so far is a good way to just say a race is not worth the rest of the work and move on. — Tom

Good point, Tom. I find the grades to be helpful. I am still having to do other handicapping, but it is a great way to evaluate form cycle.

I am looking at this, but it may be a while before I have much. With this being Thanksgiving week, I have a busy schedule right now. I have a friend in town from overseas.

I am only half-way through reading the thread, but already my mind is jumping through hoops thinking about form, class and pace scenarios. lol

Tom, I also read the boards and I check out a lot of what I find. Some of my best calculations come from messages posted publicly In fact, nearly all of my best numbers came either directly or indirectly from message boards. Of course, I do have a few adaptations and a few that I created on my own and some emulations of other sources..

When there are a lot of people singling particular horses in horizontals, it is essential to make the right move as to whether to play the single or spread.

I saw a guy play all-5-all with the 5 being Easy Go'er at 2/5 and he won big, playing all-5-all twice, all-5-3 twice and all-5-4 twice. He hit 4 times for fairly big bucks.

On the other hand, it you can beat the single that "everyone" else is playing, you can also win big.

My point is that my perception is that the horizontals are likely to outperform the parlays.

I haven't found that thread. Can you direct me to it?

In 1982 I wrote a horse racing fractional times program with manual input and sold a few copies. A friend kept asking me what to do with it. My answer way back then… I don’t know.

I agree about bias. Much is explainable. Much of the rest is coincidence. One notable exception was the old Aqueduct Inner Dirt... inside was for real.

For trainers, fertile for looks is how a trainer performs early meet, mid-meet, late meet. And, where the horse came in from because that might be a change of assistant trainers.

There are a lot of possible trainer and jockey studies, but sometimes you have to think outside the box.

I am not an expert on Sartin, but here's what I use (by rank of the pace line):

Early Pace
Late Pace
Total Energy
Turn Time
Hidden fraction
FW
FX

To correct myself, though, I use this as a significant number, but I don't think I include this in my odds line, though I certainly couldn't disagree with anyone who does.

I use the ranks of the 7 primary Sartin factors.

I take my totals and raise them to a power of 1.2 to 1.6 because the low odds horses will usually be overbet and this takes that into account.

But, in the end, I tend to generally not put a lot of credence in the specific odds. I just want to know which horses should be most likely to make my contenders list. Not all low odds horses are contenders, though.

Another approach is to assign Fibonacci numbers to the rankings.

I watched a show this morning and it finally struck me... what I should have noted long ago. There's no structure. None. To get anything out of the show, you have to listen carefully to every word. Even then, it is difficult.

If you do not want it weighted, also convert to percentages.

Yes, I would invert to the range.