Derby Week Handicapping Need

[Rudy]

My heavy-duty horse handicapping is now limited to Derby week (this will be my 19th), and I always like to have a different set of decent speed/pace figs to use rather than relying on the Beyers like every other Tom/Dick/Harry.

Had great success for several years with Bill Olmsted's figs, but he stopped doing them a few years ago. I'm not attracted to a selection-based product; my style is to isolate a handful of horses who have a legitimate chance to win, hunt for tote value, and box a few in exotics. This has worked great over the years during Derby Week, when there are a ton of shippers, no CD form established yet, and a crowd full of favorite-players.

Tried Handicapper's Daily last year, but the figures seemed to not be very good (based on results). Should I try them again or is there another service that I can subscribe to for a week or month, is fairly intuitive to learn (thus disqualifying the sheets-type of products), has as good or better figures than the Beyers, and requires no software learning curve? Something like a Beyer figure, based on accurate par times, is probably ideal.

Having trouble finding what I'm looking for on the web; seeing lots of software, but all too arcane or expensive for my 4-day need.

Licking my chops for the Derby this year -- it's my kind of race.

 

[Dogfish]

not quiet what your looking for but may be helpful.there's a guy out of new york,jim lehane sells his derby analyist for fifteen bucks.its based on solid handicaping and internal fractions maybe some info not everyone has.he did well last year.he also sells fractions for most tracks daily no picks very reasonable.been using fractions since a book by william scott came out in early 80's maybe you remember it.save's me a ton of math time.think you can find him at free horsracing info.i have nothing to do with his business,just been dealing with him for some time.as far as speed figures try a site by that name might help.there's some good ones out there but way over my price range.gl

 

[Rudy]

Took me a little while to find it, but I did. His name is Lehane and the site address is free-horse-racing.com. Looks like and interesting approach that I could work with, but he doesn't do Churchill except for the Derby itself. May spend the $10 for his Derby analysis. Need reasons to winnow that field down. Thanks for the tip, Dogfish.

 

[Rudy]

Found one that appears to fill my needs and is reasonably priced, KeyPony.com. I have no idea how good their numbers are, but we'll see this week. Did a dry run trying Handicappers Daily again yesterday, but I just can't trust ther numbers. When they varied widely from Beyer numbers on certain horses and key races, I'd have to say the Beyers were closer to being right about 70% of the time. That said, I would've caught one big Tri that Beyers wouldn't have identified. With such a small sample set, not sure if it was just blind luck. Too often I was left scratching my head about how they could've so overrated some high-priced horses and underrated lower-priced ones.