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Originally Posted by xfile
It has everything to do with the psychology of this game and that one reason is the roadblock for most horseplayers.
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Thank you. I was going to start a topic on this
Use the analogy of getting a broad liberal arts education before moving to on advanced Physics degree. It's about learning how to think critically about different subjects, and learning about the holes in your own thinking. (We all have them).
Studying FAILURE is critical; you may be able to see it coming next time around. Yet failure is so often stressed in the negative! I remember asking if people here carefully reviewed their failures at the end of the day, was suprised, many said they don't.
So yes, I read beyer, brohamer, et. al. But you must find your own truths, and methods, based on your own observations.
I believe that statistics can become propaganda, and sytems can become indoctrination. Both can lead followers to looking at information "the wrong way", or looking at data in a way that the real information they
need is either not being looked at, or obscured. The devil is in the details and I believe a certain amount of critical thinking
will get far. I believe that pragmatists, using varying but associated theories, probably have more of a shot than those who are overly systematic.
An example I saw recently was a maiden ..........with a sprinter's pedigree ......running in a long route. Once a friend pointed out that pedigree to me, I glanced at the speed figs, and realized the horse had no talent in the area of what he was bred to be good at. So they were running him long...... because there is nothing else to do with him. The trainer had a high % with 2nd time starters over a large number of starts. But looking deeper, the trainer runs so rarely "at that distance" so his % was actually dismal for "this" endeavor.
So, most of the mantra-like evaluations used to analyze this horse were not of much use.
Weave some new patterns into your brain and you see what comes out!!!
If you tend to look at the forest, put some serious time into looking at the trees. Those who concentrate on trees, spend some time looking at the forest. What comes out of doing this is invaluable in terms of perspective.
Experimenting led me to playing around with euro handicapping. Couldn't help but notice how few numbers there are (no beyers, points of call, etc.) and how people handicap those races
successfully. These are horses running different distances on different surfaces quite often, too. yet, they are handicappable. It's achievement based and you have to learn about how these horses handle different footing......because they run many different distances, at many different tracks.
Read the horse racing books, but read outside them, too. One of the things about READING
non-horse racing materials,
because many of these books help you examine how you think.
"Psychology of Intelligence Analysis,
by Richards J. Heuer, Jr."
http://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Intelligence-Analysis-Richards-Heuer/dp/B0016OST3O/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1284278930&sr=1-1
Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink".
On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not, Robert Burton
