UNUSUAL TRENDS

Most handicappers and quite a substantial number of players require rationale in their decision-making process. For ages, speed and fitness were staples of most handicapping systems.

From time to time we meet a player who found another angle and after careful validation is able to make a profit betting trainer-jock combination or local combination of trainer-days-after-claim pattern. Once I even met a fellow whose father devised a method in early fifties and it still works; he didn’t want to share details but I believe him.

Just after the first week at Oak Tree this year I finished my usual computations with standard evaluation methods and found out that speed alone was the best choice. The computation was showing very good return with disturbingly high winning percentage.

Usually single factor rarely holds for a longer period of time and since workouts and competitiveness were non-contributing I’ve decided to take a look at factors, which till now never proved to be useful. The ‘Trainer-year-to-date winning percentage’ was the first one and to my astonishment it not only showed positive expectation but also had a winning percentage above 25%. Remember that all of that was done after first five racing days at the meet.

So at this point it was a matter of balancing those two factors to find the best combination of influence variables. Few computations later it was obvious that Tr-S(0.7-0.2) was the best – Trainer-year-to-date with Factor Influence(FI) set to 0.7 and Speed with FI set to 0.2. The trainer took predominance and the speed became a supporting element. At first glance there was little cooperation between factors; as a matter of fact the Tr seemed to drag the evaluation method down and speed alone was producing better results.

But usual look at other picks showed very interesting results of the third pick with a win wager.

It actually showed better profitability then the first pick and the winning percentage was above 25%. That is something we all are looking for. Any time there is regularity on the lower pick with winning percentage above 20% every trend player starts salivating. If the trend remains valid (holds) the profit is guarantied.

Here you have the whole trend from the sixth racing day (entry point).

Handicappers might ask “Why is it that the third pick of a combination of trainer’s winning percentage and speed evaluation produces such terrific result?” Quite frankly I don’t have a rational justification for this phenomenon. Most handicappers will not be able to play unexplicable patterns, they need rationale. Players on the other hand will cash-in every penny and will agree to live in the blissful ignorance of causes. After all that's what being a player is all about.

Tadeusz Kulacz