Day: August 3, 2019

Today’s featured race is race 9 at Saratoga, the $1 million Whitney Stakes, run at 1 1/8 on the dirt for three-year olds and upwards. In the field are a number of top contenders, including the Dubai World Cup winner, Thundersnow, the winner of the Alysheba and Malibu Stakes in McKinzie from the Baffert Barn, the winner of the Suburban Handicap, Preservationist, and the winner of the Santa Anita Gold Cup, Vino Rosso. The Handicap Wizard is favoring Thundersnow in this race with a 34% total winning probability for his class in winning the $12 million Dubai World Cup, while having Preservationist (26.3%) and then McKinzie (17.8%) as its second and third selections. Preservationist has the highest final speed winning estimate in the field according to the simulation results at 68.3%, thanks to a blow out most recent final figure of 116—the highest in the field. This is especially impressive in the context of handicapping the 1 1/8 mi. Whitney, given that the Suburban Handicap was at 1 1/4 mi. Next in the speed results is McKinzie with 24% final speed winning probability, who was second to Mitole in the 1 mile Metropolitan Handicap at the beginning of June. In sum, Preservationalist at 3-1 on the M/L appears to have the edge in this race after having won his last four races, despite the the Suburban Handicap being his only stakes race. This race is reminiscent of the Florida Derby, when Maximum Security with the most speed won, even though he had not run in a graded stakes race until that point. Those riding the Baffert bandwagon in taking McKinzie at 3-2 on the M/L may be fooled. However, at the same time, Thundersnow should not be counted out as a horse who shown he can step up to the challenge in big races. The following results were generated using 0.5 as the alpha value.

One of the settings in the program that can affect results is the alpha setting, which determines the degree of exponential smoothing in the model for simulation. The alpha setting is found on the User Settings sheet toward the bottom. With a 0.25 alpha, the greatest weight is placed on the most recent final speed figures in determining the means and standard deviations for the simulation, while 0.5 alpha takes into account more final speed figures than just the must recent in doing the same. A case where it might be advantageous to change the setting from 0.25 to 0.5 is when a good horse had an off performance in his most recent race, where he or she might be expected to bounce back. The 0.5 alpha would not discount that off-performance as much as the 0.25 alpha would. Sometimes this leads to winning results where such horses find themselves in the top three selections, where otherwise the market is heavily discounting them. This happened in the G1 Alfred Vanderbilt race at Saratoga mentioned on the Disclaimer page, where Imperial Hint, who won the race, had odds of 5-1 because of recent sub-par form in terms of final speed figures, but as it turns out, also had the highest winning percentage in the field, adjusted for stakes, at 37.6%, reflecting that historically Imperial Hint was a winning horse, even more so than the heavy favorite, Mitole, in that race. By being aware of the difference between the 0.25 and 0.5 alpha, a user can make the handicapping adjustment in the model that can lead to more successful results in certain cases. Or if he prefers, a user can choose the 0.5 alpha setting all the time to angle for such horses who would be discounted or ignored by the market because of recent sub-par performance, but because of that, offer higher odds and have greater winning payouts.