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The following was prepared by Tom Atwater:
Six ARVers who signed up and paid last January to enter the National Handicapping Championship online contests participated in ARVing for yesterday’s contest. We finished 153rd out of 1328 entries, or in the top 12%–an excellent showing!
CONGRATULATIONS to our two ARVers who had contest winners – BOB and MIKE! And to ME, whose pick finished 2nd! Plus we had several other good ARV sessions. All in all, great work by the group!
Here are the details:
(For the group login, I used only ARV top Targ CR choices as self-judged by the viewer. No logical handicapping was used to make picks.)
RaceA: Mike’s 140-1 (!) shot made a menacing move on the turn, but tired in the stretch to finish 4th. But at such a price it was a high ROI – and remember the max ROI is our goal now. So it’s a good thing when an extreme longshot comes fairly close like that.
RaceB: Bob’s top choice scratched. We both agreed on judging the 2nd choice. It was no factor and finished 7th at 58-1. Hey, longshots are good – they only need to come in once in a while to generate success in contests and in bets!
RaceC: This was my session. I had 2 horses tied with Targ CR 4 – originally had picked #3 at 6-1, but switched at the last minute to #4, also at 6-1.
#3 finished 2nd (in race and in contest $) paying $5.10, so that was the wrong decision 😉 but didn’t cost us that much in contest $.
RaceD: Bob’s 30-1 shot made a strong rally from behind to finish 2nd! As the odds-on favorite won, Bob’s horse’s $14.80 place payoff was larger than the win+place payoffs of the winner – so Bob’s horse was the CONTEST WINNER for this race! Way to go BOB!
After 4 of 10 contest races, we were in 331st place out of 1328 entries, well within striking distance, as only one horse had paid more in the contest than Bob’s horse so far.
RaceE: Teresa’s 4-1 horse finished 3rd.
RaceF: Teresa judged for Essie. Her top pick ran 8th at 70-1. I also AJed this race – but I was rushed, and actually only judged Teresa’s top 2 picks. I saw the order reversed from the way Teresa saw it. But the other horse was the 8-5 favorite, so I stuck with Teresa’s pick. My pick ran 9th 😉 so she made the right decision there. However, in looking at the race afterwards, I noticed that Teresa’s 3rd pick was the winner of the race/contest at 4-1 – and I saw many matches in that photo too. It is difficult judging so many photos, no question, and sometimes one gets away…. (especially if one only judges 2 of the 9 photos like I did) 😉 – but overall our judges do a great job.
RaceG: In this race Mike’s 76-1 horse made a strong move to get to the lead by a head at the eighth pole in the stretch – with me SCREAMING at the top of my lungs! – but the 2-5 favorite recovered from his trouble and went on by him to win by 2 lengths. But the $33.80 place price ($22 in contest winnings because of the odds cap) was much higher than the winner’s win+place prices, so Mike ARVed the CONTEST WINNER!!! EXCELLENT!!!
So now after 7 of 10 races, we were in 130th place – only about $30 out of 3rd place, the last NHC qualifying spot!
RaceI: This was my 2nd session. (came before RaceH, I got the times out of sequence). My pick was #3 at 8-1 (Targ CR 5) over #2 at 10-1 (Targ CR 4). The favorite won easily, but my #3 rallied to just nip #2 by a nose at the wire. The place price was only $6.20 though, lower because the favorite won, and was not the contest winner either, since the win+place prices of the winner were higher than that. But it was still nice to get more points, and validated the high ROI intent once again.
RaceH: Lorraine’s horse, Targ CR 6 (!) and 22-1, was clobbered on both sides coming out of the gate, and as a result dropped far back on the backstretch – he was 15 lengths behind at one point, after being near the lead in his prior races. Amazingly, he rallied around the field to finish 3rd, beaten only a half length for 2nd, and 1 1/4 lengths for the win. There is no doubt in my mind that her horse would have won the race had he not been bumped so hard coming out of the gate and dropped back – it easily cost him 4 or 5 lengths.
So, this was a moral victory, I have no doubt that Loraine ARVed the max ROI horse, at the time of her session; but the probabilities may have changed between then and post time, such that the gate problems actualized. These contests make it impractical to ARV near post time, so this is just the way it goes, sometimes.
At this point we were in 130th place, $34.70 in contest points out of 3rd place and NHC qualifying. It would take at least a 12-1 shot for us to have chance to get in.
RaceJ: Loraine’s pick in fact was between 9-1 and 12-1 throughout the betting, going off at 11.5 to 1 at post time. There were other possibilities at longer odds that I had in my own judging determined to have some matches to her sketch, but in the end it felt right to go with her own pick. Her horse looped the field to make a run up to 3rd at the eighth pole in the stretch, but tired to finish 6 lengths behind, as the even-money favorite won.
So, we ended up with 2 contest wins and one second in 10 races, which is not bad. And the prices put us in the top 12%, which is excellent!
We had many longshots who outran their odds, and though none of them won, the fact that most of them finished in the top 4 is really great work. Such horses are supposed to finish in the rear of the field – yet our ARVing indentified them as being high ROI horses. This is the key to winning both contests, and in making winning bets, in the long run – identifying horses that give positive expectation. So, we are definitely on the right track with were we want to go.
— Tom