I Feel the Need For Speed

Among serious handicappers there are two major schools of philosophy. In one intellectual camp are the empiricists, who view every race as a unique problem to be solved by intuition and analysis. They evaluate horses’ records by weighing many factors and subtleties, and reject the notion that a horses’ ability can be measured in any precise, concrete way. In the other camp are the rationalists, the speed handicappers, who believe that a horse can be measured by how fast he runs. Speed handicappers perform various arcane calculations to translate a horse’s ability into a number.

No area of handicapping inspires passion of controversy. The advocates of speed figures share the view of Pat Lynch, an astute New York handicapper, who says,, “Time is the one absolute truth in the game.” The critics, who include writers of most books on betting the races view speed handicappers as madmen looking for certainty and easy answer in a game in which they don’t exist. Author Tom Ainslie approvingly quotes a horseplayer who says, “very few speed handicappers are lolling in loot, In fact, one of them we know is rarely let out of the attic, and steadfastly maintains he is Martin Van Buren”

For the most of my career as a horseplayer, I shared this scepticism. But when I finally became acquainted, I was infected by their messianic fervour. I started making my own figures. I proceeded gingerly at first, with caution of a bather dipping one toe in a cold lake. But soon I was completely immersed. Discover figures were one of the momentous events of my life.

Andrew Beyer – Picking Winners

With an average strike rate of 15% and 96 pts profit since July 09, you would think that I was well on my way toward professional status. Alias when I benchmark my strike rate performance against newspaper tipsters, there is room improvement

How did the cycling team win eight gold medals?

The explanation used by the cycling performance director, Dave Brailsford, was that it was achieved through the “aggregation of marginal gains”. By looking for a 1% gain at everything they do, from mechanics upwards, they pulled together a whole series of small gains that enabled their athletes to dominate their sport

Using similar techniques I have reviewed my overall process and determine that I should reinstate the use of Speed Ratings in my approach.

Why use Speed Ratings?

The purpose of a speed rating is to take the different tracks and conditions creating a common number using a complex computer generated number that gives us a representation of how fast a horse is. The numbers are generally between a low figure (say 50) and high figure (say 100,) the higher the number the faster the horse.

Speed Ratings allow a handicapper to analyse a horse’s particular performance in a race simply and easily, without having to worry about which size track the time was run at, or what the condition of the track was during the race, or in some cases even the distance of the race itself.

As outlined in various All Weather racing books, given the nature of racing on this surface, Speed Ratings are particularly useful for contender selection (by the use of Class Pars) as most races are pace oriented and therefore truly ran (in theory)

Back in 2004 in my fledgling punting career (my mug days) I utilised Speed Ratings extensively based on the teachings of Mr Mordlin. In fact way back then I created a price of software to automatically produce “pseudo” Speed Ratings based on final time and beaten lengths. With the demise of my free online source of data for the software (Teletext), I abandoned their use in preference of form analysis.

Little did I know that it would take me years to become proficient in other aspects of handicapping before returning to Speed Ratings.

Related Posts

• No Related Post