The assessment of the outcome of the Preakness by the Handicap Wizard is that it was a difficult race to handicap because of the parity in the field, in which no horse deserved less than 5-1 odds, and because War of War had sub-par performances in the Kentucky Derby and Louisiana Derby that made him virtually impossible to value accurately quantitatively. Since his speed figures hinted at no advantage over the other horses given his 0% final speed estimate in simulation and relatively weak component estimates, the only metric one could gauge him by was Winning Percentage, adjusted for stakes, which at 7.4% indicated a fair value price around 12-1. At 6-1 War of Will was a 1/2 overlay, when you would rather have him be a 2/1 underlay. His performance in the Kentucky Derby, until he was interfered with, gave a glimpse of his strength perhaps, when he was running to the inside of Maximum Security coming out of the far turn, but that brief flash is not something that could be captured in a probabilistic model other than in one E2 data point. On the day at Pimlico, the Handicap Wizard had winners with its top selection in five out of twelve non-maiden races for a 42% hit rate, including with Catholic Boy in the G2 Dixie Stakes in the 12th, who had the highest probability at 20% along with Real Story, and in the G3 Galorett in the 10th with Mitchell Road.
Pro-Handicap Analytics 