Post Race Analysis: The Mother Goose. "It's Just Numbers and Patterns"

 It's just numbers and pattern recognition.  While there are always outliers, if you approach your handicapping from the same place mentally, with the same application of thoughts applied to the runners, if you avoid the greatest traps of all, "the biases", you'll likely predict winners regularly and be successful with your handicap to at least have a fighting chance at assembling a proper bet.  

Two different sides of the coin, handicapping and bet construction.  I am a top shelf handicapper, especially with my approach to only handicapping in low volumes, but I'm just an OK bettor, much better as a bettor (say that three times) when I don't concern myself with losing.  That's a hard thing when you write about the races and your perceived credibility is measured strictly by wins and losses.  It took me a long time to realize that the only person who will ever truly know at how good I am at the horse game is me, and once I realized that, I stopped picking chalk to win in these written blog posts and started picking the best risk/reward combinations.  I always did that when I was just sitting in the stands and banging out bets, but it's more difficult than you might imagine when you write out the handicap and you are sticking your ass and credibility out there.  Anyways, I've been doing this a very long time and my closest readers know my handicappers eye, that's all I really care about.  

Bias.  Avoid the biases

•     Authority Bias:  Morning Line or TV Personality picks.  
•    Bandwagon Effect:  Putting aside my fan instincts.
•    Confirmation Bias:  Keep an open mind and don't prejudge the outcomes prematurely. 
•    Recency:  Important, but not everything.  Where are these athlete's in their cycle?
  

You'll find the Race Replay here at NYRA Website, I wasn't able to find a shareable Youtube video yet.  

As I said prerace, Xigera was heavy chalk and I predicted 5 out of 10 times he would win this race.  The real key is always identifying horses that can run better than their odds and horses that don't deserve their short odds. I already identified that Xigera deserved short odds, but look at Defining Purpose, fourth down the tote board at $7.2-$1 odds.   I thought she could match Xigera early (she did) I thought she could be better late (she couldn't).  Still, a simple $1 Exacta Box of these two returned $8.20 on a $2 investment.  That's how you make money better favorites in the Exacta.  

If you boxed my top four in the Superfecta a $1 bet for $24 returned $63.50.  It ultimately comes down to the handicapper's secret weapon, the Fair Odds table. I didn't win these bets, I would have never placed these bets, but the handicap and the analysis pointed to these selections and this race is a classic "don't overthink it" example.  Undervalued Asset was early speed and hadn't been past 6.5f.  Foggy Night was slow overall but had early speed.  Julia Shining has the flashy pedigree but doesn't know what she is, nor does Peak Popularity.  You see these sorts of patterns every week.  A handicapper must learn to understand why a horse is entered into the particular race and what the plan is for that horse by the connections.  

Xigera, if she comes back as a 4 YO, will be fun to watch.  Everyone else, what is the plan?

 It's all numbers friends, Turk Out!