Par for the race.
 

1) Do you try to bet horses that have run "par for the race" (speed figure - speed par) in a previous race before ? I know this can be sometimes be only one horse or several horses.

2) Do you trust Brisnet pars ?

3) How important is this to your handicapping ?

I put a lot of emphasis on a horse's ability run to par.
I am trying a new idea out on MSW races right now, using pars as an intrical part of it. Pars and figuring who will improve to the par range in the second start.

Focusing on 1st and 2nd time starters, idea mentioned by James Quinn in his last book.

I would be wary of some BRIS pars. Like at NYRA, the pars for Mistake Breds will be too high, I find. I am doing a study of them to see how reliable they really are, NYRA and GP only. I'll post my results later in the week, when I get enough done to use to compare.

I do find just have a good set of pars can tell you things about the class structure at a track. Some classes are really not better horses, just because the claiming price is higher.

At NYRA, MSW 3Up par is 91-93, and for 3yo, it is 89-91.
See how that lines up with the PPs listing for pars.

I got a chuckle out of "Mistake Breds".

I've heard all the arguments against class pars. Some of them are valid, but I still use them in maiden races and some pace scenarios.

Suppose I told you a race earned a 90 to the pace call and an 80 final time.

Was that a fast or slow pace?

You'd probably say fast because 90 is 10 points greater than 80.

Now supposed I told you the Par for that class was 95.

Your understanding of the race would change subtly. It was actually a slow pace for that class in a race that totally fell apart.

Suppose a race went in 110 - 110?

That looks like a neutral pace.

But suppose the Par for that class was 95?

It was actually a blistering pace and a lot of the horses that chased it might have totally collapsed even though the winner was a monster and continued on.

The only way I can get the BRIS SR into a spreadsheet is to download the PP file I have. I have a program that will print out the dat I need, but I can't put it into Access because everytime I buy a new file, I get many of the same pacelines I already have, and if I save them by track,date, r#, I might end up with a race where the horse was beaten by 15 lengths and then reject one with the winner.

So I have sometimes 6-8 races for one race, each horse listed in order of finish with it's own SR. So I have to manually go in and delete all the line s other the best finish. Lot of wor, that I will do once! :lol:

Point being, I see the margins in each race, and say PARis looking like 90, but on race the winner gets a 100, and the place horse gets a 85. Something was not normal about that race. Do I use it? Do I average? This seems somehow to be significant, but just how so, not so much yet. Anyway, it is fun work and it gives me some races to go back and look at how horses did coming out of them.

I have been using pars since Quirrin published his first book. I find them to be very helpful in many case, and not at all relevant in others.

Basically, I use the method Brohamer suggested, look for the horse having run to par or within 5 points twice before, 80% of the races. Of course, there are horses who will not have done so who are strong contender, but that is why we call it handicapping.

Not sure why you are doing what you are doing. Creating unique indexes is sure to solve the problem


Open the table in design view in MS Access, select the three columns that you want to make into the unique index, and then click the little key on the toolbar. You cannot have null values in a primary key (set).

I only get lines from the PPs, so I may have the winner or I may not. I may have several horses. If the first line I get is one where the horse is beaten by many lengths, I will never get the winner or a horse who finished closer. I have to get the winner's SR by adjusting for beaten lengths, and sometimes it comes out a point or two off. Plus, I do want to get the winner's E2 pace ratings whenever possible for a future study.

This isn't too bad now, I have it down to a process in Excel that is pretty quick considering. I guess I could try doing it your way, and Exotic1 also suggested it, to see how it works for just SR.

Thanks both of you!
PA is great for getting help from other players.

I think looking at pars makes sense for races with young and / or lightly raced horses, i.e. 3yos, maiden races, etc. A lot of horses in the field are able to jump up and beat horses that have the "best" figure but one that is below par. Often times races like this are won with a better than par figure.

But for older horses I don't buy it, particularly claimers. The horses are what they are. Maybe a 10k claiming field has all run below par, but the horses don't know it isn't a 5k claimer or 2k claimer. What usually happens in these races is a logical horse wins with a below par figure.

Tom,

Use date, track, race number and finish position as a key. Then make a query to select the entry with the best finish position available in your data table to take it to the next step.

I use them on claimers. If he has run the par in his last 4 race and my other handicapping say that he is the horse then I will bet him. If he hasn't run close to par in his last 4 I throw him out.

I didn't read it well enough at first. I was talking about races where none of the horses have run to par. That is one I've read often in handicapping books, that they are chaos races. Sorry about the confusion.

I like horses who have run par, especially if they are at a price and have run it fairly recently, and I think there is a false favorite.

I also like fields where no one has run par, but the tote is tilted towards one or two contenders that you feel comfortable tossing. Sometimes you can catch a price betting on the imbalance, especially in the verticals, and I imagine most of us have done it at one time or another.

your whole post is invalid, because it's how you think it should be, not how somebody else thinks it should.



just one point, same applies to it all....

110 for a section and 110 for all would mean that section speed WAS the same as the overall my way.
i think you are very good at making assumptions, and you do it often, not that it matters at all that you do.

I'm not sure you understand my post.

If you use a different method that's fine, but there's not much to debate about what I am saying. It's arithmetic.

The PAR represents the average figure for that class at each point of call including the final time. Any deviation from the average for that class suggests the lead horse and then winner ran faster/slower than the average for that class.

There's nothing complex or controversial in that.

If the PAR for the class is 100-100 and the race goes in 110-110, the leader got to the pace call faster than the average horse for that class and the winner's final time was faster than the average winners time for that class.

There's nothing complex or controversial in that.

The point I am making is that people tend to look at Race Shapes in terms of whether the pace was fast or slow relative to the final time. They think 90-100 is automatically slow pace. 100-90 is automatically fast pace.

In one way that's valid, but suppose a race has a shape of 90 - 100. That makes it look like the pace was slow because the final time was relatively faster than the pace.

However, if the PAR for the class was 80, what really happened was the horse on the lead was actually running much faster than the typical horse in that class and then the race kept getting even faster.

That can change the perception.

Let's say some average 80 horses was chasing that 90 pace and then collapsed. He didn't collapse in a slow paced race. He collapsed chasing a tough fast pace for that class in a race where some horse that was a total monster went on to run 100.

A+ Class!
Exactly how I use pars.