Good job ,Conley! Having trouble bringing up the replay....

@Dave Schwartz
"If you have an edge, you *** ARE *** the casino."
LoL! What a fanciful notion! Your suggestion would mean that the "highly selective" ,profitable player would have a monetary interest in All of the races rather than just the ones in which they have an "edge".

@Dave Schwartz
"Casinos seem to do reasonably well despite the fact that "chance" exists."

Horseplayers are not casinos. A more appropriate analogy would be that they are "players" in a massive casino that holds a much larger "edge" than the conventional casinos.

@RanchWest
"I think sometimes we can be greatly rewarded for finding strange stuff."

I applaud your willingness to consider "strange stuff" , that esoteric or "organic" type of data which can yield positive results.

@RanchWest
I agree that "good data usage can pay off" and serve to counter balance "chance" if we're using "good data". The fact remains that horses,jockeys ,trainers and players all lose more often than they win, by a large margin...that is the "chance" effect from all of the factors that we cannot see or know .

What on earth does this have to do with horse racing!? Lololol

When 4vdecks in play and reshuffling at the halfway mark?? No

Every payout on every game is lower than what random chance would indicate .

Casinos don't deal in "chance" , that's why they thrive.

Although winning methods can exist , which counter balance the effects of "random chance ", the "Holy Grail" cannot exist unless "chance" is completely eliminated.

Interesting.. we'll need to discover "Which " components to use and "How" to combine them, perhaps tossing in some "negative enhancement" features ?

I do like your choice in the 4th .

@Tony Kofalt
Looks like a tricky card at a track that I haven't seen much recently,however, I did find 3 on the card that might warrant a second look as having potential to outrun their odds
R2; #4 Prairie Fire
R5; #6 Vasariance
R7; #2 Easy to Bless

@Tony Kofalt
Here's hoping your 2023 is significantly less stressful from a personal perspective.

Happy non denominational seasons celebrations to everyone!!

@RanchWest
While I largely agree with your reasoning, I think those occasions are more the rule than the exception. Why is it so difficult for any ,except the most exceptional horses , to win more than 20/25 % of their starts?

@RanchWest
What about the inherently unpredictable nature of the sport , the "randomness" factor?

My thoughts on the racing "market" being at or near its limit of efficiency stem from the following observations;
1; North Horseplayers (and owners/breeders) appear to obsessed with "Speed" ,almost to the exclusion of other factors.
2; Prior to 1990 most players used only the DRF for PPs which contained only raw times and daily track variants. Some would pay for "speed figs" or analysis from various sources such as Beyer figs or Brisnet (or any of the various "sheets") In the early 90s, much of this information became widely available either by the "Beyer " figs being included in the DRF or the "Brisnet" figs in those PPS. There may also be others of which I'm unaware .
3: Winning favorites (and second favorites) only slightly increased in their winning percentage) but "The Age of Speed Figs" was born and it wasn't long before a seemingly endless variety of Figs for both speed and pace hit the market. The winning figures in 1992 for the top 2 in betting were
roughly 32% for favorites and 18% for second favorites.
4; By 2002 ,interest in computer analysis for handicapping was gaining support and the Tracks started offering rebates, which paved the way for the "whales" . Although other players had also already started using computers ,the majority were still a bit wary of it . Still "The Age of Computer Handicapping" and the "Age of the Whales " were born.
5: By 2012, computer analysis continued to get better results (as did the whales) and analysis of all of the thousands (or tens of thousands)of possible permutations of all of the speed and pace figs as well as class ratings and jockey/trainer stats (and any other factors that were quantifiable) was not only possible, but likely tested in every possible way. The quantity of data ,however, is a (large) but finite number and ,of course, so is the number of permutations.
6: Now,in 2022 ,we see the winning percentage of winners at roughly 38% and second choices at 22% .( An increase of 18.75% for favorites and 22.22 % for second favorites) For the pair this is ONLY a collective 20% increase in 30 years including 20 years of extensive computer study. In the absence of significant new information,I don't see any significant change over the rest of this decade.
While my exact numbers may be off a bit, I think it's clear that we're near peak market efficiency and need to alter our methods significantly.
If everyone is using the same data ,they'll get the same or similar results and since that data is largely "speed oriented" data , it'll be "baked into the odds" and yield low rewards .

@RanchWest
That would certainly apply!

"Luck" might also be described as "that moment when randomness trumps the probabilities"...