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Fundamentals
By Ed Bain
From the November 2000 issue:
I recently read an article by Dick Mitchell titled “Some Thoughts on the Fundamentals of Handicapping.” You can read this at his web site http://www.cynpub.com.
Mitchell states that the fundamentals of speed, pace, class, and form are the fundamentals of handicapping.
It goes something like this. In racing the first thing a handicapper must do is assess the ability of each contender. If a horse can’t run to the pars and the profiles demanded of winners at today’s class level, then it’s a throw out. Second, determine the current form and condition of each of your contenders, adjusted final time is always a function of pace. Class is speed. The non-classy horse will always succumb to his superior. All par times have higher classes running faster final times than lower classes. These are the so-called fundamentals of handicapping. I too have some thoughts on the fundamentals of handicapping. It goes something like this. When you look at speed, it’s subjective. The fastest horse does not always win. Even with a set of pars that tell you the winning times through each quarter mile, each half mile and each stretch fraction, the speed of the horse is no more than a guess. One reason is the races may be carded at about a mile and 1/16 or at about 7 furlongs. The distances in racing are not specific and the horse is not timed from a stand still like they time all human athletes. There is a run up to the timer, and the distance for the run up varies from track to track and can be as much as 150 feet. This run up is half the length of a football field before the timer is tripped and you wonder why race after race is determined by a photo finish and your speed horse is losing at the wire it’s because they are running further than the stated distance. In horse racing the times are counted in hundreds, not thousands. Through each timed quarter the time is off by about a tenth of a second. At a mile this can be two lengths. The experts are telling people to learn the tenants of handicapping and the fundamentals of speed. But they offer no evidence that this technique either works or is profitable. I have never seen a set of statistics that prove speed in any form is a profitable approach to betting on the races. I have never seen any type of computer program select winners based on pars win and be profitable over the long term. And by the way, all computer speed programs use the same set of pars irrelevant to the cost of the program.
The handicapping technique that may be as vague as handicapping the speed is class. The argument that class is speed needs to be proven by statistics. When handicapping any race, many horses are
dropping one or two levels as well as some rising one or two levels. Class moves perform best when the trainer is fulfilling a specialty move. A class rise or drop by itself has little value. They drop
or rise in class because of the way the conditions are written for this race and may mean that some horses that are moving down two levels may in fact be moving up two class levels.
The only legitimate identifiable class drop in racing is Maiden Special Weight to Maiden Claim. Some claiming horses like “John Henry” who was a $7,500 claimer move into the stakes grades and win. And some stakes horses drop into the claiming level and win. There is a lot of movement and much overlapping in the class ladder however when evaluating class from track to track, I don’t believe a $10,000 claimer at Mountaineer Park is in the same class as a $10,000 claimer at Saratoga.
The rate of speed is called pace. This is another foundation or basis that is essential to the so-called fundamentals of horse racing. Who will get the lead out of the gate? Who or how many
will be on the lead at the quarter? Who is the speed of the speed? When will the early speed peel off? Who will have the lead at the half mile?
Where will the closing speed come from and from how far back? Pace seems to travel in the same company as speed. More descriptions that seem plausible but where are the statistics that say pace wins races? What is the return on investment for pace horses, where are the percentages on these races and how do you identify pace advantages and be profitable? Most races are won by the horse on the lead but pace has a very difficult time identifying who will be on the lead from one quarter to another and is impossible to reach a statistic and an ROI on this fundamental. Pace makes the race. This saying is great for discussions. But is it an effective way to make money? Race after race is won by the lone speed. The handicapper who can predict which horse was the pace and the speed may be wrong and then another pace and speed horse goes on and wins.
If you think speed, pace and class is confusing, and practically invisible the form factor may be the most ambiguous.
Of these fundamentals the form factor means a printed document with blanks to be filled in. With any cycle a period of time within which a round of regularly reoccurring events is completed is labeled a form cycle.
To this day there is no starting point or how many races are in a form cycle. There is no checklist to run through to identify any form cycle. There is no way to recognize the first race in this form
cycle so you can view the series. The question is what is the accepted routine for a form cycle?
Experts talk about the form cycle as though we all have the same understanding. I never did. I have a friend who is a smoker. Every time he offers me a Marlboro, I turn him down and say I don’t smoke. With a laugh he says you have been in the same form cycle for twelve years, as long as we’ve known each other. According to Dick Mitchell handicapping is supposed to be an orderly process based on the fundamentals of speed, pace, class and form. What a laugh. It seems you can’t pin any of these fundamentals down by getting a hit rate or ROI on any of them. Of all the sports, racing has no room for statistics. In every sport the fundamentals has a count and percentage. There is also a count on every conceivable move on every situation for every sport except horse racing. Pro sports players apply statistics to produce a living. To people like Dick Mitchell, statistics are short cuts. Statistics are a secondary factor. Even when you can prove to a speed, class, pace and form guy who does not win, that statistics played on an ROI basis means you can win long term placing bets on the horses for a living. They cop out and say I’ll take the speed over your trainer stat, your horse has no speed. I attempted to play these amazing fundamentals of speed, pace, class and form for about ten years. I could win on any day using these four handicapping factors and lose money even as I was winning. You would think after ten years of playing that stuff I should be able to come up with one players name who ended up a winner. The sad truth is, I can’t. Including me, but I always thought I could because some expert like Dick Mitchell wrote about speed and it’s impact on racing and how we needed to know and learn the fundamentals because they were selling books or systems or computer programs. Or some expert going on and on about the speed, the lone speed, the speed of the speed, the pace and speed, the finishing speed, adding in he is in perfect form and running at his proper class level. I always understood but when I applied this orderly process I could not make a living using this expert double speak. And my opinion is they couldn’t either.
The proper measurement for success in racing is ROI (Return On Investment). Pro players look at the amount of money pushed through the mutuel windows for an entire year, then calculate the amount churned to
profit. If they come out 10 percent above their churn, they will tell you I had a very big year. I pushed a million and made a 100K but you don’t need a million on hand to churn a million. But for those
types of players, they rarely make 10 percent on their churn. They dream about producing anything near 10 percent. And speed, pace, class and form has never been able to show a positive ROI or that it is
profitable on any percentage basis. When a fundamental handicapper is in a discussion with trainer players, it’s almost a religious comparison.
These fundamentalists will say I need a twenty thousand race study to make any reasonable conclusion. Yet they will require no study at all on the so-called fundamentals of handicapping. As a trainer capper I can guarantee a profit. How much of a percentage or how much of an edge is up to me. If you want a 20 percent ROI, you can reach that with trainer statistics. But one thing not to do is blindly put trainers into artificially created groups and expect results. Like betting only when the trainer has odds of 10-1 or above. Trainer statistics are not general in their approach. They are individual and specific.
Betting on them for a living means you have to know before you place the bet if this trainer is profitable over the long term on this trainer move. Neil Drysdale from southern California on 1st after a
layoff in a sprint has 94 starts, 29 wins, a 31 percent win rate and a $1 ROI of $1.71.
I bet $200 to win on all 94 starts. I pushed $18,800 through the windows. I hit for $32,148 and made $13,348 on the 94 win bets. The rub is of these 94 layoff sprints I did not know which of the 29 wins would come in so I had to bet all 94. These statistics are from my betting records and I did not consult any of the fundamentals espoused by Dick Mitchell. I could have cared less what all 94 speed, pace, class or form these horses were in. This record is from 94 when I committed to trainer stats and as I was playing them I began to understand what ROI really means. It means making a living based on the proof of a statistic. There is no proof on speed, pace, class or form. 94 bets are not many bets in six years. However, that’s only one trainer move from one trainer. Of the original five circuits I had stats on, there are about 1,500 trainers. For “Layoffs” and “Claims” on my style of tracking them, there are 16 trainer moves or about 24,000 combinations. From those I have ended up placing bets on about 100 trainers who show a positive ROI. Not one bet was made consulting with the fundamentals. If I had handicapped with the fundamentals, I would not have a positive ROI because the trainer statistic does not show if the horse could not run to the pars or could not make the pace or was not in a form cycle or did not have enough class. More than likely I would have passed many of the double digit winners and ending up betting many of the low-priced favorites.
This is what Dick Mitchell’s closing paragraph states: “I have had the good fortune to personally know many winning players. I don’t know a single winner that doesn’t apply the fundamentals of speed,
pace, class and the form factor before the trainer enters his or her consideration.
The trainer factor is a secondary factor. Please don’t listen to so called “Trainer Experts” who claim to win using on trainer statistics and nothing else. I promise you that they could improve their results dramatically by adding good solid fundamental handicapping to their present methodology. See you on the short line.”
After reading this wrong-headed article from Dick Mitchell and after I stopped shaking my head at the ridiculousness of his statements, I thought to myself.
With these fundamentals of handicapping you would think that the race tracks, OTB’s and race books would be overflowing with pros and minor leaguers learning the ropes of the fundamentals of handicapping - and using these great tools to make a living betting on the horses. After all, once you learn the fundamentals you should be able to reproduce the same results over any period of time and make a living betting on the horses with speed, pace, class and form. The tracks, OTB’s, and the Race Books are not overflowing with winners but they are with players who bought into these four factors that cannot show a profit.
But there is one question that makes me wonder what the answer would be. And the question is “Is that short line the unemployment line?”
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