Yo dudes! I hope you've been enjoying the free pp's i've correlated for ya'llz! While I'll maintain updating the free pps (people LOVE free stuff), I'll also be enacting a new initiative, which will hopefully help fill in some blanks in the handicapping process. Massive holes that I see in informing the public about the product. I'd love to hear your feedback, so feel free to reach out to me at my e-mail: Roadtothekentuckyderby@gmail.com
Race horses are bred all over the world and all over this great country of ours (USA! USA!) and race horses ship to all corners of the globe, while all but the most international of globe trotting horses stay at a particular jurisdiction. Think the NYRA circuit of Belmont, Aqueduct and Saratoga or SoCal's Santa Anita, Los Alamitos and Del Mar or South Florida's Gulfstream Park and Gulfstream Park West. There are even a few tracks that stand alone and are their own jurisdiction and not really part of any circuit, like Emerald Downs. But just as the Aqueduct claimer will ship to Finger Lakes, the Emerald Downs stakes winner may ship to SoCal.
When it comes to stakes, clearly horses will ship coast to coast for the biggest purses. For the most part even these prized horses will knock heads with the same company. Three year old colts duke it out starting in January to see who will get in the gate on the First Saturday in May and then compete in the three Triple Crown races. So by the end of this season in early June, you really understand who is who and what each can accomplish on the track. You've come to know a lot about each competitor, from breeding to distance limitations to gate habits to running styles, etc...
HORSE POPULATION therefore, extends not just to the particular horses permanently stabled at the track, but also the horses that run against each other numerous times in a stakes series. Knowing a HORSE POPULATION is one of the biggest factors in my personal handicapping. To know a horse means that is one less horse that you have to understand and that saves valuable time. I recall the track handicapper at Hong Kong track Sha-Tin boast a gaudy 43% win percentage, a feat he chalked up to HORSE POPULATION. Horses ship in to Sha-Tin and only race there and the other track in Hong Kong and that's pretty much it! While the fields are massive by US standards and the pools dwarf any action we could conceive and the past performances incomprehensible, this man watched the races, studied the horse population and killed it because he knew that few if any new horses would ship into the jurisdiction. Many horses race their entire careers and only know the two tracks.
While it's possible to quantify a horse population at a track, I don't think that's indicative of what I'm trying to achieve here. What I'm looking for is a relatively stable population with few competitive shippers. Therefore boutique meets like Kentucky Downs or Keeneland or Gulfstream's Championship Meet with horses shipping in from every jurisdiction in the world can take a long time to decipher the pp's. So for my first foray into this new venture, I'll grade each track's horse population with regards to HORSE POPULATION stability and give a little blurb about what I think is going on with each track. I would appreciate any feedback you can offer, again my e-mail address is: Roadtothekentuckyderby@gmail.com
There are countless great books and websites that teach you about handicapping. From how to read the past performances to the nuances of pedigree and all topics in between. There's not much ground that hasn't been covered already. But all of these books attempt to handicap in a vacuum. As though any track is just like any other, like every pool is just like every other pool at every other track. And if you've been in the game for a minute, you know not every track or race is like any other. But as Mark Twain once said "History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes."
The goal of this project is not to find tracks and races that rhyme most often. But to find tracks that can be clearly seen to be rhyming. In other words, to find the best tracks to handicap and ones that have the fewest barriers to handicapping. The best places to apply your knowledge gleaned from the myriad of other books on the subject.
The Horseplayer's Association of North America has done extensive work on addressing this subject already with their track rankings, the most recent were published in 2017. HANA takes into account seven factors in determining their single digit "composite rating." While this is a great start to figuring out the problem of "what track(s) should I handicap" it is rooted solely in numbers. Pool size, field size, takeout, etc... are quantifiable attributes of a track. So if the HANA rankings were taken on face value, the best places to "invest" your money would be Kentucky Downs. Kentucky Downs, with it's huge pools and field sizes combined with it's low takeout are surely a horseplayer's dream!
This got me thinking, Kentucky Downs is nearly impossible to handicap. It's unique course layout, undulating turf, and uphill final furlong are more reminiscent of a European course. Projecting which horses should run well on the course wouldn't as be much of a problem if the horse population all shipped in from the same jurisdiction. With monumental purses, horses are shipped in from all over the country. Familiarity with more than a few horses in each race is a rarity and attainable by all but the few most studied handicappers. The short meet doesn't allow for detailed study of replays, as very few horses will run twice during the meet. And even if they did run multiple times, the horrific television coverage with two stretch run cameras can be disorienting and deceiving. While the HANA rankings indicate Kentucky Downs to be the best BETTING track, I find it might be the worst HANDICAPPING track. It's hard to get the track to rhyme.
So this is where we will start. What are the unquantifiable factors in handicapping a track? I've already detailed a few, but there must be innumerable factors. For this project we will limit the factors to a few categories. Let's start with the most important part of horse racing, the HORSE. More specifically the HORSE POPULATION.
The goal of this project is not to find tracks and races that rhyme most often. But to find tracks that can be clearly seen to be rhyming. In other words, to find the best tracks to handicap and ones that have the fewest barriers to handicapping. The best places to apply your knowledge gleaned from the myriad of other books on the subject.
The Horseplayer's Association of North America has done extensive work on addressing this subject already with their track rankings, the most recent were published in 2017. HANA takes into account seven factors in determining their single digit "composite rating." While this is a great start to figuring out the problem of "what track(s) should I handicap" it is rooted solely in numbers. Pool size, field size, takeout, etc... are quantifiable attributes of a track. So if the HANA rankings were taken on face value, the best places to "invest" your money would be Kentucky Downs. Kentucky Downs, with it's huge pools and field sizes combined with it's low takeout are surely a horseplayer's dream!
This got me thinking, Kentucky Downs is nearly impossible to handicap. It's unique course layout, undulating turf, and uphill final furlong are more reminiscent of a European course. Projecting which horses should run well on the course wouldn't as be much of a problem if the horse population all shipped in from the same jurisdiction. With monumental purses, horses are shipped in from all over the country. Familiarity with more than a few horses in each race is a rarity and attainable by all but the few most studied handicappers. The short meet doesn't allow for detailed study of replays, as very few horses will run twice during the meet. And even if they did run multiple times, the horrific television coverage with two stretch run cameras can be disorienting and deceiving. While the HANA rankings indicate Kentucky Downs to be the best BETTING track, I find it might be the worst HANDICAPPING track. It's hard to get the track to rhyme.
So this is where we will start. What are the unquantifiable factors in handicapping a track? I've already detailed a few, but there must be innumerable factors. For this project we will limit the factors to a few categories. Let's start with the most important part of horse racing, the HORSE. More specifically the HORSE POPULATION.
Race horses are bred all over the world and all over this great country of ours (USA! USA!) and race horses ship to all corners of the globe, while all but the most international of globe trotting horses stay at a particular jurisdiction. Think the NYRA circuit of Belmont, Aqueduct and Saratoga or SoCal's Santa Anita, Los Alamitos and Del Mar or South Florida's Gulfstream Park and Gulfstream Park West. There are even a few tracks that stand alone and are their own jurisdiction and not really part of any circuit, like Emerald Downs. But just as the Aqueduct claimer will ship to Finger Lakes, the Emerald Downs stakes winner may ship to SoCal.
When it comes to stakes, clearly horses will ship coast to coast for the biggest purses. For the most part even these prized horses will knock heads with the same company. Three year old colts duke it out starting in January to see who will get in the gate on the First Saturday in May and then compete in the three Triple Crown races. So by the end of this season in early June, you really understand who is who and what each can accomplish on the track. You've come to know a lot about each competitor, from breeding to distance limitations to gate habits to running styles, etc...
HORSE POPULATION therefore, extends not just to the particular horses permanently stabled at the track, but also the horses that run against each other numerous times in a stakes series. Knowing a HORSE POPULATION is one of the biggest factors in my personal handicapping. To know a horse means that is one less horse that you have to understand and that saves valuable time. I recall the track handicapper at Hong Kong track Sha-Tin boast a gaudy 43% win percentage, a feat he chalked up to HORSE POPULATION. Horses ship in to Sha-Tin and only race there and the other track in Hong Kong and that's pretty much it! While the fields are massive by US standards and the pools dwarf any action we could conceive and the past performances incomprehensible, this man watched the races, studied the horse population and killed it because he knew that few if any new horses would ship into the jurisdiction. Many horses race their entire careers and only know the two tracks.
While it's possible to quantify a horse population at a track, I don't think that's indicative of what I'm trying to achieve here. What I'm looking for is a relatively stable population with few competitive shippers. Therefore boutique meets like Kentucky Downs or Keeneland or Gulfstream's Championship Meet with horses shipping in from every jurisdiction in the world can take a long time to decipher the pp's. So for my first foray into this new venture, I'll grade each track's horse population with regards to HORSE POPULATION stability and give a little blurb about what I think is going on with each track. I would appreciate any feedback you can offer, again my e-mail address is: Roadtothekentuckyderby@gmail.com
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