Woodbine on Saturday

Woodbine is a track where the Handicap Wizard has generally performed well. The results of Saturday’s races were no different, with the program picking winners in five of eight non-maiden races (e.g. races 2,3,4,7,8) including in the $175K G2 Play King Stakes over 7f on turf. According to the model, it was a close contest between #4 Mr. Havercamp, #5 Hording Gold and #2 La Sardane, with only 2.0% percentage points separating the top three. Mr. Havercamp prevailed, paying $3.80.

The big score was in the 7th race, a $16K claiming race over 6f on dirt, in which the program had #7 Majesic Slew heavily favored with a 42.61% winning estimate,  despite having long odds of 7-1. The reason the horse was an underdog in the public’s view was due to the horse posting sub-par or even poor final speed figures in its last two races, the last being just 60 compared to a field average in the high 70s. Through its simulation approach, the Handicap Wizard is able to measure a horse’s potential speed versus other horses in the field, where a bad speed figure in the last race does not automatically disqualify it. Going back four races, Majestic Slew had posted a final speed figure of 90 and five plus 90 figures before that, which the program took into account. In this case, the HW nailed it, with Majestic Slew paying $14.90 for the win. It also had the tri-fecta horses in the top four, with the $2 tri-fecta paying $220.00.

As a note, among the three other non-maiden races on Saturday at Woodbine, two of them had scant data, specifically, the 6th with 0 data integrity and the 10th with only 0.5 data integrity. These are races where the program has little or nothing to assess and therefore, should not be applied. Excluding these two, the HW success rate at Woodbine on Saturday was 5/6 or 83%.