Jody Jamieson has vaulted to second place among North American leading drivers this season, trailing only Aaron Merriman. In past years, unless your name is Walter Case, he who drives most wins most. Jody I think will fall short, due to stakes season this year, but it should be fun to watch. He is working his tail off.
Kentucky Derby stats. Jessica has some up via google docs. There are a lot of cool ways to play the Derby. I think you could do worse than picking the horse that fits the most criteria. I will play Derby Day, but I do not know where I will go yet. Two throwouts for me - I Want Revenge and Pioneer of the Nile. But no throw ins yet.
We have said quite many times on the blog that the world is changing. I think prime evidence of that is the Santa Anita meet this spring. Attendance was up 1%, but all source handle was down 12%. This game (from a pure revenue standpoint) in 2009 is not about getting people out to the track.
Have you picked up this months Trot Magazine? If not, you might want to. It is the horseplayer issue. There are some excellent articles, including a good one by Roy Sproxton about betting class that is a must read.
Survey Time! Click here and help out the Standardbred Wagering conference will ya? It is a good survey and kind of fun.
We spoke below about the Woodbine experiment and how I think the lack of movement is simply due to a lack of chaos, due to field depth. One poster who keeps stats on such things posted some on Pace this past week. In a nutshell, he looked at race strength at the M versus Woodbine.
In my programming I calculate a factor called field strength. Any race with a field strength 7 or above is a strong field. Last night for example at M1, races 1,2,3,5,6,10,12 ranged from 7.14 to 9.38 (9.38 = 5th race). At Wb, races 3 = 7.38 and the race 10 = 10.0.
So for the first 11 races at M1 compared to Wb's 11 races the total field strength was 80.38 versus 67.01.
Some in the Meadowlands training colony have an interesting past which bettors are well-aware. However, they do put on better races than just about anywhere.
Keith at Tripledeadheat has a photo essay on the track changes, and driver thoughts on his fine blog.
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1 comment:
Your stuff on race competitiveness is interesting. Without compiling stats, and as just a casual fan of the weekend racing at Woodbine and the Meadowlands, I would say that Woodbine's cards often have more open, competitive races than the Meadowlands. In the better 'non-winners' categories on the Saturday cards, for example, I find many Woodbine races completely wide open, with 8 or 9 of 10 horses with past performances within a second of each other's recent races. They are complete crapshoots.
I suppose a more specific breakdown of winning-favorite stats would reveal more. For example, what is the category of race (e.g.$50,000 claimers, or non-winners of $10,000) which has the lowest percentage of winning favorites? Which has the highest?
Thanks for the blog.
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