Saratoga Race 6
This race was only in the BCBC contest.
Viewer Joanie Sullivan got a direct hit on this photosite – she gave it the very high Targ CR of 6.
The associated horse #7 Spa City Fever won wire-wire easily, at 5-1.
Unfortunately, neither Tom nor Marty had the horse as his contest selection.
Tom decided that another photosite matched the sketch better (horse #3), mainly because it fit more of the viewer’s sketch and notes than the single direct hit the viewer got.
This was one of the only judgings Tom and Marty spent a lot of time on, with the end result being Marty also decided to change his selection from the direct hit horse #7.
So Marty’s lesson learned here was to stick with his original predictions no matter what anyone says 😉
This does bring up an interesting point: the Targ CR scale description for the value 6 reads
“Good correspondence with good analytical information (e.g. naming the function of the target), and relatively little incorrect information.”
Based on this, Tom also gave the winning photosite a 6, since viewing a clock and having a clock in the photosite certainly satisfies the first part of the definition of naming the target function; the problem was, it does not satisfy the 2nd part, of little incorrect information.
So a lesson learned here for Tom as judge is to pay more attention to direct hits from part of a sketch, and put less emphasis on the photosite matching all parts of a sketch.
Joanie did win some real cash on this race, so all was not lost 😉
We didn’t advance ourselves much in the contest though.
We were initially discouraged about this result, as you can imagine – the horse paid $19.40 total win and place, and missing a horse like that can easily be the difference between winning and losing in these contests.
But we recovered quickly, and were confident things would get better.
Circular; spoked; black; pointy + sketch and aoled “clock”
But also had land; biological; feel with brown and furry/fuzzy and shape like camel
That was a complex viewing for me. I felt I had viewed three different photosites. You are correct that I probably should not have scored this a 6 due to the 2nd part of the definition. Clearly I had a lot of incorrect information. Sometimes I rush through the judging and also judge “by intuition” as well. I note now that the three pics I drew on the second page of the transcript are all in the shape of the clock. Interesting. Thanks again Tom for marvelous write-ups. I enjoyed the tremendous excitement of the day!