Hello Pio. Welcome to the DET team.

Hi Everyone,
My name is Jeff Piotraschke, but you can call me “Pio” (PY-OH ) I’m not new to Dave Schwartz land, but new to the deTerminator and this forum, Since this thread was still open, I thought it was as good a spot as any to make my first post and introduce myself to what seems to be the core of the DET Community.
I Live in the Minneapolis, MN area, and have been an impassioned horseracing fan for nearly 40 years (with a few life-induced breaks along the way). My wife and I became Thoroughbred Owners/Breeders in 2019, and I plan to make racing study and investment my full-time gig when I retire in Feb of 2025. I am just wrapping up almost 20 years in Corporate IT Security, after a 22-year career in Law Enforcement.
I am a Pace handicapper and have used many different tools along the way. It seems I have exposed myself to many ideas, methodologies and applications without becoming an expert in any of them My goal is become more consistently successful in my business, and the deTerminator, this community and my personal commitment to the “Mission” seems to be the best/only way to achieve that goal.

Thanks to Brian’s generosity with his time to provide me a nice overview of DET on Friday, and Dave willingness to help me throughout the weekend, I am up and running with the deTerminator. I may be close to useless for a while as I crawl along the learning curve but am truly committed to doing whatever I can to help build this user community.

My apologies for the length of my post, but I am excited to get to know all of you and the deTerminator!

Hey Dave, will the video be available to view on this site?

Those of you who have seen our most recent State of the Program video saw the 55-race test I did.

Here were the conditions of the test.
Hypothesis
The AI Best Horse object might be good enough to win all by itself.

My Steps
1. I designed a simple strategy to use AI Best Horse.
2. That strategy had 4 simple rules, which are available to everyone on the video.
3. I scribbled the rules on an index card - which is shown in the video.


Pre-decision
A. The field is divided into Low & High odds, where high odds are natural odds and above (using the AI Line).
B. The AI Best Horse is pitted against the tote odds, producing a $net and a Grade.

The Rules:
1. All A+ and A horses are marked to be bet.
2. We must have an L (low odds) horse. If there isn't one, we must add one.
3. If there is MORE THAN ONE qualified "L" ...
or
4. If there is NO qualified "L" ...
... then we use The Neal approach to pick the L to bet.

Note: "The Neal" was the invention of @Neal Freedman - one of our Dream Team members. Simply put, it measures the difference between the book% of the TOTE and the AI LINE.

The Actual Test
1. I picked a random day using deTERMINATOR's random day function.
Aug. 22, 2024 was the day selected.
2. I started with the 1st race on the day and committed to do several hours of racing.
I rejected playing CNL and one other very small track - don't recall what it was.
3. I committed to playing EVERY RACE, provided it had at least 5 betting interests.
IOW, I was not permitted to skip any races.
4. All races would be $30 bets, using the built-in Dutching function.
Because of rounding, sometimes this resulted in betting as little as $29 and as much as $32.
5. All qualified horses would be bet.

Below are the results.


This is pretty amazing output.
____________________________
DUTCHING: TOTE ODDS represents the actual dutched betting for the 55 races.
Hit 54% of all races, with a $2.84 $net.
____________________________
FLAT BETTING (A, A+) represents betting $2 on each A or A+ horse. IOW, betting only the horses that computed as having a $2.20 or higher $Net.

IOW, these were the horses that were projected to be $2.20 $net or better.

Again, the results were pretty fantastic.
The hit rate was low at 10% but we were fishing mostly in deep water.
Notice the average pay of $25.74 and the $Net of $2.57.

Hitting back-to-back $50 horses didn't hurt, but the plays were quite obvious.
____________________________
FLAT BETTING (BAD BETS) represents all the horses bet that were not A or A+ HORSES (according to the rules provided).

IOW, these were the Projected LOW ODDS horses that were NOT supposed to be good bets.
____________________________

I've started using the method Dave described in his 11/14 seminar (What if it just worked?). I've only gone through 10 races but hit 8 of them. I have some questions about making bets, I.e., what if I don't want to Dutch the horses, play only 3 even if 4 are possibilities, etc.

A Zoom meeting with me showing what I'm doing and my questions about that would be optimal.

Thanks!

Andrew

Very deep questions.

Not simple enough to answer in writing.

We'll have to discuss this in a meeting.
(Also, some will likely be proprietary.)

I believe the Grades (A+, D, etc.) were initially portrayed as ways to find who the whales are likely to bet on (mainly A+ and As) but I'm curious to find if anyone here really rely on those for their handicapping. It's still not clear to me what/how they contribute as opposed to say Magnitude and Rank. Any responses appreciated... — Atakante

Short version from my POV:
First, Grades are derived from pure math.

As Tom said, it is always the payoff from the "selected odds" times the hit rate.

The correct formula is (Odds x 2 +2) x Pct = $net.
"Grade" is also as Tom said; a function of the $net.
____________________
In a perfect world, All we'd need is to bet all the A+ horses and retire to wherever we want that has an internet connection.

Here's the problem:
$Net is a function of odds x hit rate and NEITHER OF THOSE IS ACCURATE!

Still, it is a good estimate of both probability and profit, but... honestly, it takes more.

BTW, Optimum% is probably a better measuring stick in the sense that you'd be better off betting more on a low odds A+ than a high odds A+.

While there is a time and a place for just using Grade, $Net, or Opt%, the game isn't that simple.

There are complications to the entire picture. At this morning's live play session we discussed a process that I call "Using Boxes" to build systems. In the coming days I will try to find time to expand on it.

I believe the Grades (A+, D, etc.) were initially portrayed as ways to find who the whales are likely to bet on (mainly A+ and As) but I'm curious to find if anyone here really rely on those for their handicapping. It's still not clear to me what/how they contribute as opposed to say Magnitude and Rank. Any responses appreciated...

Thanks Dave!

i was following parx as well today, ram, after your genius recommendations. was the race it missed r4? that race fs suggested the 8 but the 4 which won and paid over $44 was a jockey switch to ruiz and a top work out horse. the $2x paid almost $300! the 8 placed and paid $8.60! thanks dave for your key insight! and jimmy p. thank you as well!

So far today, thru 5 races at Parx, there has been two horses Ranked 1,1 in every race and they have won 4 out of 5 races and narrowly missing on the other.

Hello Neal. I've been working on a strategy similar to Ram. First I have one (1) report that I use to pick contenders. Then in the Final Step I meld the two (2) Green "3" and "4" AI pacelines. For Turf and Tapeta, I meld a little different. Under GENRES I've been using ODS 63 with an Obj Wgt of "46". 46 will elevate a horse in this object versus using 50 or higher.
I think the key is being consistent, especially with the initial Prime AI melding. Dirt, sprints, routes, turf, track specific-- be consistent with what you use. I've found using the two (2) Green "3" and "4" AI pacelines works pretty well for dirt races.

Did you check out the Chaos5 races with A+ horses on Friday?

(I only looked at Friday.)

Just to be clear... Last November's races were not included in the training set. The AI was trained during the summer and for Graded races I went all the way back to 2013.

A few things I have found today. I handicapped all two days of last year's BC at SA. What seemed to get some really good results was using FS. I used AI BH 1.0, the 3 and 4 pace at 1.0. Then I used Meld on, Meld Obj 7, Obj Wgt 30 and #55 RS1. Super results and I would expect close to the same at DMR. I am pretty sure both tracks run pretty similar. Also found that if you play Parx use the same as above but on the genres switch to BH 37. Great results handicapping about 6 cards. Seems like we are tasked with finding the right combinations for each track.

[DES Edit: This thread could help a lot of people, so I've moved it to DET Questions, where it can be seen by the world.]