Early days

[rpjd99]

a Dragon Rapide or similar vintage aircraft... You have seven miles or more to fall

Wow, a Dragon Rapide at FL360 (36,000ft)! Now, that I'd like to see on radar. My first flight ever was on that same aircraft type when I was about seven or eight - a sight-seeing trip around Dublin. Sixty years later, I avoid airports like the plague, despite working 40+ years in aviation. Probably very ungracious of me.

Ray

 

[davejb]

It takes a very VERY strong length of elastic....

 

[davejb]

Right, last ratings until next week - I ought to be back sometime Wednesday, but will have a week's worth of results to check and process so it may take a day or so to catch up.

I still have to set the alarms - it will take more than one to get me up at 4am to get ready for a 6.40 flight - that's assuming the weather doesn't kybosh all our plans. In my youth I enjoyed travelling immensely - I managed it rarely - I found motorway service stations places of wonder and delight, even.... that lasted until I learned to drive in my mid 30's, and started zooming up and down the UK quite frequently. Same with air travel - I never left the UK until travelling to Germany via Norway on a training flight during my RAF training at the age of 23... in one weekend I managed to add Holland to the collection and considered myself a seasoned traveller! Within a few years I'd been to probably a dozen other countries and was getting blasé about the whole thing.

Now blasé has aged into vague distaste - I wish they'd invent the Star Trek transporter and save all the hassle of actually travelling - knowing governments you'd only be allowed to use one of 6 booths, all in major cities, and have to queue for 6 hours to show papers before using one, (Did I mention 'at great cost' - 3p for the electricity in the quantum entanglement generator and £15,767.42 tax).

Right, how did yesterday go?

Report for : 18/09/2018
Flat Handicaps
Raw ratings: 0/18 Odds: (Return: 0)
Mkt filter 0/7 Odds: (Return: 0)
Flat Non - Handicaps
Raw ratings 2/19 Odds: 1.5 0.8 (Return: 4.3)
Mkt filter 1/7 Odds: 1.5 (Return: 2.5)
NH Handicaps
Raw ratings: 0/0 Odds: (Return: 0)
Mkt filter 0/0 Odds: (Return: 0)
NH Non - Handicaps
Raw ratings 0/0 Odds: (Return: 0)
Mkt filter 0/0 Odds: (Return: 0)
Total Out = 37 Total return (raw) = 4.3
Total wins: 2 / 37

Good grief - 2/37? I'm glad I'm going away - before the mob turn up with the pitchforks and torches.

well here's tomorrow's stuff anyhow - after yesterday there's a decent swing due - either that or pick names from a hat.

Dave

 

[dave58]

Tell me about it Dave, our friend Marian came to visit us yesterday. 4 hour flight to go 3000 miles, no problem. Lands on an island that is only around 100 miles end to end, we can make the south airport in about an hour by bus , but she was sold a cheap shuttle bus service that visited every hotel en route. 3 hours later we get a text from her saying she has been dropped somewhere a good half hours walk away, so we had to go walkabout to find her.
This is an island whose main industry is tourism.

 

[davejb]

Okay,
I'm back from traipsing the length of Britain - got soaked 2 days running in 'sunny St Annes', then 4 days in Devon drying out in lovely sunny weather.... only to exit the plane in Inverness this afternoon to grey skies and a misty rain..... leaving Bristol the weather was lovely.

I've done some daily files, but the card file is all lumped together - it's taken me long enough to catch up on the results and I didn't have time to separate out the meetings - same info, just not quite as tidy then. Normal service will resume tomorrow, now I'm up to speed.

My brother has always regarded me as a capitalist swine, a lackey of the imperial whatnots, and all that stuff, so I can't wait to tell him we found a flat to buy in the old home town, which he has lived in for the past umpty years.... he'll be delighted to find I'm joining him. There's an off chance we'll move into the new flat, our retirement place, by Christmas as it's all been agreed and there's no chains etc involved - we just have to prove we're not money laundering apparently. I find it a bit risible, the proceeds of our house are paying for the flat, and the solicitors are throwing the money back and forth with gay abandon, but my wife and I, whenever we try to shift any of it (such as from the current account to a savings account) find ourselves having our accounts blocked and all sorts....

I also got stopped (as usual) at airport security going, my wife drew the short straw coming back (I swear she told the security guy there'd been a mistake, as it was me they usually stopped) - what is it about ex service/ex teachers in their 60's that sees me picked repeatedly by airport security and those who protect us from nasty drug dealing types? I suppose they're trying to prove they're not profiling by picking obviously non criminal types whilst letting the pony tailed guy with the loud sniff walk on through.

Ho hum, here it all is....

Dave

 

[TheBluesBrother]

davejb

Hi Dave, welcome back.
I'll give you the heads up about yesterday's meeting at Perth, I took one look at the 3:15 2m(C) and noticed a major red flag regarding the wining time, slow by 4.60s run over an extra 98yds (6.53s) on going described as GOOD (Good to soft in places; 7.0).
Just looking at the chase course, and correcting for the time anomaly, I still had to make the chase course good to firm and the hurdles course good.



Mike.

 

[markfinn]

How good is Google as an advertising media ? - I googled Dragon Ride the plane mentioned by Dave earlier



Impressed - very

 

[davejb]

A 'Dragon Rapide at FL360' would indeed be impressive! Of course the non-pressurised cabin might prove a small problem for the passengers at that height...

 

[davejb]

davejb

Hi Dave, welcome back.
I'll give you the heads up about yesterday's meeting at Perth, I took one look at the 3:15 2m(C) and noticed a major red flag regarding the wining time, slow by 4.60s run over an extra 98yds (6.53s) on going described as GOOD (Good to soft in places; 7.0).
Just looking at the chase course, and correcting for the time anomaly, I still had to make the chase course good to firm and the hurdles course good.

View attachment 65950

Mike.

I ended up with 0.02 and 0.65 MIke

 

[TheBluesBrother]

I ended up with 0.02 and 0.65 MIke

Are you happy with the results, just because I ended up with a set of best fit speed figures, it doesn't make them correct!
DE has the right idea, just rate the whole meeting around the one dodgy race, and end up with a set of low speed figures for the rest of the meeting.
RP are having a problem at the moment, I can't access my speed figures they have gone AWOL.

Mike.

 

[davejb]

I'm happy that the hurdles and chase races weren't over a common going allowance - I processed this as a single meeting and looked at the figures, and there were 2 obvious groupings NHH and NHC - ignoring the RPR substitution in race 1 for now, the raw values from running it all through as a single meeting (allowance 0.58) give differences of 0, 32, 69 for the chases (this is diff between OR and the calculated rating) and for hurdles 91, 76. 52 - 2 of three chase are in the target area you might say, while all the hurdles are at least 20+ lbs below expectation. The only other possibility I considered was a progressive change in allowance, but the sequence 91-0-32-69-76-52 does not show any sensible trend.

Therefore the most likely cause would be that either the going on the two courses differed, or there was some systematic error in measurement - eg all the hurdle courses ran over a bit further than stated whilst the chases were ad advertised, which will mimic a going variation.

Dave

ps there is a chance that the going on the chase course degenerated over time, that 0-32-69 progression would make rather a straight line on a graph, but I think that would entail a correction too far for comfort. (ie if you keep correcting until you get what you expect, you might as well make the numbers up to begin with.... I prefer to 'fiddle' as little as possible).

 

[TheBluesBrother]

davejb

The method I used was to ignore the 2m chase, then calculate a going allowance from the rest of the races, I ended up with a going allowance of +0.27s/f, which I suspect was about right, the problem was the official races distances!
I now fired up my distance calculator and entered in the race information.



It says that the 2m chase distance was short by 63yards (4.2s), so after the rail movement calculations, I added 4.2s to the comparison per furlong time, the 15.71f calculated race distance would explain the high speed figure so I was happy with that, I then recalculated the hurdles and chase going allowances separately.

DE doesn't have this problem, rule 1 ignore the rail movements, rule 2 calculate one going allowance, It's easier...



The punters (the sheep) have no idea what he is doing.

Racing Post's 200 experts have their say...

Mike.

 

[davejb]

200 people all sharing opinions is the nearest thing to chaos I can imagine. The trick isn't in having more opinions or 'experts', it's in having not very many who are genuinely experts. From both my previous careers I cannot recall a single occasion where any sort of consensus opinion did more than expose the mediocrity of the majority.... often to be saved by the exasperated (eventual) input of a single person who actually had a clue.

Anyway, I'm sure we've all been there, and you can't blame the RP for trying to make a bob... it's our own fault if we ascribe to them abilities they do not really possess.

Back to normal, or as close to normal as I ever get, here's tomorrow's cards etc. No results report of course as today's ratings are still running.
Dave

 

[Thedeadheat]

That is some dedication you have there. Will follow this topic and spend some time reading through.

 

[davejb]

I'll start with the first set of results since I finished wandering the country...
Yesterday:
Flat Handicaps
Raw ratings: 1/9 Odds: 20.0 (Return: 21.0)
Mkt filter 0/5 Odds: (Return: 0)
Flat Non - Handicaps
Raw ratings 3/13 Odds: 5.0 8.0 1.38 (Return: 17.38)
Mkt filter 0/2 Odds: (Return: 0)
NH Handicaps
Raw ratings: 1/6 Odds: 2.0 (Return: 3.0)
Mkt filter 1/1 Odds: 2.0 (Return: 3.0)
NH Non - Handicaps
Raw ratings 2/7 Odds: 0.14 0.73 (Return: 2.87)
Mkt filter 1/2 Odds: 0.14 (Return: 1.14)
Total Out = 35 Total return (raw) = 44.25
Total wins: 7 / 35

Ah, unexpected - a win! It's the first I've seen of yesterday's results - I processed them this afternoon, as my days are still a bit topsy turvy. My wife keeps finding things for me to do - in our previous house we were often quite far apart, opposite corners of the house or perhaps I would be in the 'office' while she was down the fields with the last of our horses, but these days we can be at our furthest apart in the flat and probably almost still touch each other. We met a friend whilst out with the dog earlier and she expressed surprise that we hadn't killed each other as a reaction to being forced closer together, like a matter-anti matter annihilation. I DID tell everyone who asked that I was fine moving to a tiny flat, I guess nobody believed me!

Mind you, I'm getting in far too many healthy walks with the dog, who is herself leaning down - two weeks back she was a fat spaniel, today she's fast approaching a funny looking whippet. I've explained to my wife that such walks are supposed to end up at a convenient pub at least some of the time.

Right, tomorrow attached as ever - I think I'll have a pin stab at Afaak for the Cambridgeshire, and I really do mean a pin stab, there's no great thought behind the pick because frankly I don't see how you CAN pick anything sensibly in the cavalry charge that should occur. Ten Sovereigns in the Middle park looks okay to me, but it's almost certainly a day I'll watch rather than bet.

Enjoy the racing,
Dave

 

[davejb]

Right, putting up the results first paid off yesterday, so best do it again eh?

Yesterday:
Flat Handicaps
Raw ratings: 1/19 Odds: 5.0 (Return: 6.0)
Mkt filter 1/11 Odds: 5.0 (Return: 6.0)
Flat Non - Handicaps
Raw ratings 3/14 Odds: 0.29 0.29 4.0 (Return: 7.58)
Mkt filter 2/4 Odds: 0.29 0.29 (Return: 2.58)
NH Handicaps
Raw ratings: 0/6 Odds: (Return: 0)
Mkt filter 0/2 Odds: (Return: 0)
NH Non - Handicaps
Raw ratings 2/8 Odds: 1.38 4.0 (Return: 7.38)
Mkt filter 0/3 Odds: (Return: 0)
Total Out = 47 Total return (raw) = 20.96
Total wins: 6 / 47

...and another theory bites the dust then. Bahh!
I know the filter list had 16 runners and a return of 12.58, as I've added a few lines of code to tell me that stuff - let's see how today went.

My Cambridgeshire random pin pick got one mention as being just behind the leaders a couple out, then sank without trace - I wasn't surprised of course, a 33 runner handicap is never going to be my chosen betting medium. Ten Sovereigns surprised nobody with his win, but as he's the only other one I picked out for the day I was pleased he won so well. I was a bit miffed about the opener mind, Mohawk was a classic O'Brien switcheroo for Donnacha - in theory not the best of the O'Brien runners but you couldn't bet against Donnacha with confidence, could you?

Tomorrow is blissfully quiet, so after I get today's results processed I'll be free to start replying to the solicitor's bumf for the new flat, there are several forms to fill in, scan and return, and numerous things to answer.... I think solving the Cambridgeshire will turn out to be the easier task.

Dave

 

[davejb]

One problem here is I have little room to work in - before moving I had a large room to myself, a big desk with a small file drawer, a laser printer on an adjoining table, plenty of room to lay out papers, notes. coffee, sandwiches, small mammals.... well, you get the idea, I had a lot of space. Now I have my laptop on a small breakfast bar -well, every meal bar, as there's no room for a table - and there's room for a clipboard and coffee mug. I mention this to explain why I may sometimes struggle to find notes made earlier, which have been scrunched up and thrown out by mistake.

So, I know a little bit about yesterday's picks - the raw ratings did this:-
Report for : 29/09/2018
Flat Handicaps
Raw ratings: 2/27 Odds: 3.5 4.0 (Return: 9.5)
Mkt filter 2/12 Odds: 3.5 4.0 (Return: 9.5)
Flat Non - Handicaps
Raw ratings 8/21 Odds: 8.0 1.38 2.25 7.0 2.0 3.5 1.75 4.0 (Return: 37.88)
Mkt filter 4/7 Odds: 2.25 2.0 3.5 1.75 (Return: 13.5)
NH Handicaps
Raw ratings: 0/4 Odds: (Return: 0)
Mkt filter 0/3 Odds: (Return: 0)
NH Non - Handicaps
Raw ratings 1/3 Odds: 3.0 (Return: 4.0)
Mkt filter 0/2 Odds: (Return: 0)
Total Out = 55 Total return (raw) = 51.38
Total wins: 11 / 55
- which isn't a win, but came close. I also know that the filter lust did okay, 10 winners from 30 picks produced a return of 44, which was pretty decent.

The Beresford stakes today showed how easy it would be to go broke backing AP O'Brien's runners - as Seamie Heffernan (Japan) mugged Ryan Moore (Mount Everest) on the line, so the third string beat the first string with the second string (Sovereign) in 4th. Presumably Ryan gets to pick the one to ride, but this seems to happen more often than not.... mind you there was a case to be made for all 3 this time round, if Mount Everest hadn't been THE one everyone was talking about (including APO'B) almost exclusively perhaps the race would have seemed a bit more open.

Mendelssohn ran a pretty gutsy race in defeat, although I couldn't help thinking he was unlikely to get to the finish when he stayed up with the early leader (who went like a bat out of hell) - I expect Ryan Moore knows better than I do what he needed to do on the day, I wasn't amazed to see the sprint start allowed a closer to storm past in the straight.

Okay, I'm not planning to go anywhere all week (thankfully), and the flat buying is all going ahead via email so far, long may that continue, so I'm hoping for a bit of a quiet time... it would be nice to get a bit of work done on the horses, it's a good while since I last had time to look into ideas that arise every now and the.

Have a peaceful week, next Sunday will be a corker.
Dave

 

[davejb]

Do I come here often?

Sorry, I red a Terry Wogan book and liked the sound of his 'TOG' T-shirts, what amused me is how people doubtless thought them funny rather than accurate statements of how life treats us as we age. Now I'm about 2/3 of the way through Lord of the Rings on my Kindle, which I'm sure I am reading much quicker this time round, and on the whole I'd say it's a bit bleaker than the Wogan book but less frightening as there are as yet no Eurovision song contest references. (Although I'm pretty sure some Orcs won it a year or two back).

Anyhow, back to reality - yesterday, being Sunday, obviously didn't set any records for profit :
Flat Handicaps
Raw ratings: 1/13 Odds: 3.0 (Return: 4.0)
Mkt filter 1/7 Odds: 3.0 (Return: 4.0)
Flat Non - Handicaps
Raw ratings 3/9 Odds: 0.11 1.25 6.0 (Return: 10.36)
Mkt filter 2/3 Odds: 0.11 1.25 (Return: 3.36)
NH Handicaps
Raw ratings: 0/0 Odds: (Return: 0)
Mkt filter 0/0 Odds: (Return: 0)
NH Non - Handicaps
Raw ratings 0/0 Odds: (Return: 0)
Mkt filter 0/0 Odds: (Return: 0)
Total Out = 22 Total return (raw) = 14.36
Total wins: 4 / 22

The filters didn't really do much better - 3 winners from 8 returned 7.36... well, almost breakeven then, and although 37.5% win rate is not too shabby I was hoping for better. Like many ideas you find something that looks really good, wonder how you failed to spot it sooner, then as soon as you start watching it the results start falling off.

Attached is the usual stuff.

Enable for the Arc, I wish her 4yo season had been more straightforward and I think it's asking quite a lot of any horse to win at the highest level after coming back from injury, but I'm still pretty hopeful we'll see her at her best on Sunday. Cracksman is going for the Champion Stakes instead, it seems, due to the firm going at Longchamps - will he be as effective over 10f as 12f? I think he's vulnerable but he's another I want to see win. Might as well round the next weekend or two off with Battaash for a repeat on Sunday in the Abbaye, Laurens to take add another big win in the Sun Chariot, and I'm going to stick with Harry Angel in the Champion sprint - he's 7/1 right now, but if I back him it'll be on the day.

My wife keeps asking if the flat is over yet, I explained about Newmarket, Ascot and the Arc, so she asked if that was it, so then I mentioned the Manchester Handicap...… I still remember Gritti Palace romping home carrying 7-7 or some ludicrously low weight, that must have been about 1976... so no, I guess there's a good bit left to enjoy yet. The second half f this season was better than the first half I reckon.

Dave

Edited - EPSchart was missing Southwell, new version uploaded

 

[mick]

davejb with you Re Gritti Palace good memory (well sort of) and a good pay day.I can take no credit as i was tipped the horse AP by a Newmarket source i had at the time,but back in those days the race was a very big deal and the whole pub followed me in.The manager of our local Corals was weeping tears of blood and almost had a riot on his hands when requesting that Gritti backers returned on Monday as he did not have enough cash available to pay out on the day.The hangovers where massive.!

PS It was 1974 and i was 21 i recall this for all of the wrong reasons because i had not long bought my first new motor "on the book",and leaving the pub that night i am ashamed to admit pissed as a witches nipple ,i managed to reverse into a concrete post with the cost of repairs putting another dent in the Gritti earn.!

 

[davejb]

Nothing much doing today, it makes a nice change, although there was still a boring bit of sending stuff to the solicitor 400 miles or so away who is handling the flat purchase. Darn good job somebody invented the internet and email and all that, as I hate to imagine the faff involved in doing this by mail, or even in person. Come to think of it we came up with our shortlist of places to view via the web, so we'd probably still be looking at brochures prior to the web.... You have to admire Dr Who (how's that for a non sequitur?) Dr Who pops back thousands of years with nothing but a screwdriver, I'd be completely useless if I just nipped back a few decades.... (It might be okay provided I remembered the race results etc of course).

Yesterday:
Report for : 01/10/2018
Flat Handicaps
Raw ratings: 2/15 Odds: 5.5 6.0 (Return: 13.5)
Mkt filter 2/11 Odds: 5.5 6.0 (Return: 13.5)
Flat Non - Handicaps
Raw ratings 1/8 Odds: 8.0 (Return: 9.0)
Mkt filter 0/3 Odds: (Return: 0)
NH Handicaps
Raw ratings: 1/4 Odds: 5.5 (Return: 6.5)
Mkt filter 1/3 Odds: 5.5 (Return: 6.5)
NH Non - Handicaps
Raw ratings 5/9 Odds: 6.0 1.25 10.0 3.0 4.0 (Return: 29.25)
Mkt filter 0/0 Odds: (Return: 0)
Total Out = 36 Total return (raw) = 58.25
Total wins: 9 / 36
That was a good day then, The filter list struggled, 4/14 winners returned 11 pts.

Attached as usual, enjoy.

Dave