Jim P: You stole a good slice of my thunder. Well done.
Silver Charm: Please, enough with Chilukki. The importance of an event does not increase by virtue of your presence at it.
Nunzio: In regard to an old post of yours, I believe Beyer is contractually bound to produce a figure for every race. He didn't have the option of refusing to give a figure for Chilukki's debut--another reason the DRF needs an ombudsman.
JB,
I see no reason to wait for you to get back to town. I agree with you on the big things: Ragozin lied more than once in his book. Friedman tolerates lying to potential customers because his hatred of you overwhelms the part of him that knows that innocents should be treated as innocents. Ragozin butchered the 2000 Wood. Ragozin butchered the ground loss at the 2002 BC. Friedman's "centrifugal force" routine was BS. All in all, I prefer your methodology. We have been through all this.
The day Friedman won the Suncoast Tournament, I made a post on a different--non-sheets--board and I congratulated him for his win. This was obviously well before the latest Marc-JB battle. Some arrogant moron on this other board had been getting on my nerves with a series of idiotic posts in which he bashed speed handicapping. Friedman's victory was, in a sense, your victory, just as your previous victories (Kentucky Derby wager, buying horses, that TV show before my time, etc., etc.) were, in a sense, Friedman's victories. You and Friedman have much more in common than you two like to admit. As Marc wrote, incorporating ground loss is not universally accepted, nor is adjusting for weight--not to mention bounce theory, which is almost universally disdained.
Friedman has taken a lot of heat here for not being specific in his handicapping analyses. Well, three years in a row, he has taken a plane from NYC to Vegas, paid his way into the Suncoast Tournament, and made specific picks for the world to see. Results: If I remember correctly, he has taken home about 184,000 dollars. How the hell can anyone fail to respect this? Why did he enter this tournament three times? Does anyone think he needed the money? He entered at considerable risk to his reputation. Why would he do this? Isn't it quite likely that based on his PRIVATE results, he thought he could compete with the best handicappers in the country? When people discuss his performance, the one word I don't want to see is "luck." It's OK from him, but I don't want to see it from anyone else. This man is an outstanding handicapper--just as you are. And, as Marc said, he has been studying good (not necessarily the best) figures. He didn't get the confidence to get on that plane by studying angels dancing on the head of a pin. You two must have been something else when you were best friends.
You wrote: ""As for the $1000 he mentions, what I got for that was Friedman’s admission that track maintenance affects track speed, which contradicted his earlier statements (regarding the 2000 Wood Memorial figures) that it did not."
I was not reading the Sheets board in April of 2000. That's slightly before my time. But I've read everything since, and I cannot remember this. Ragozin/Friedman did mention track maintenance in their book, in regard to Easy Goer, but only briefly. What they did make clear, as Marc wrote, is that they are open to departing from the one-variant-fits-all routine if the weather changes--as it did on Preakness day 2002. When did Ragozin/Friedman give you their formula for handling rainy days? I honestly do not know. I have studied their words (and yours) for almost three years without hearing their rainy-day formula. (Unlike you, I consider their 2000 Wood method to be an aberration.)
"Yeah, I knew you would duck that last one. Here's a thought-- why not ask Friedman to explain how they measure "physical resiliency', and how it produces "objective numbers". After he explains it I'm sure you'll understand it better, so you should want to ask, no?"
To Friedman, "physical resiliency" is open to change when there has been a change in the weather (or possibly maintenance beyond standard watering between races). If the weather has changed, he will assume that the deck (the track) has been shuffled, and he will be more open to slides, short-longs, and cutting races loose in the manner he practically did with the last race on Preakness day. What kept him from cutting it entirely loose is practically beyond me. My only guess is that he (or whoever made the figure) was prevented from going all the way by the mechanical Ragozin straitjacket.
When Friedman talks about "objective numbers," I believe he's talking about his/Ragozin's preference for straitjackets (read: the clock) as against your preference for cutting races loose when you choose. I think he sees the clock as objective--outside the mind--and the decision to ignore it as subjective. To his mind, the bigger the straitjacket, the more objective. This is obviously just a guess, but when the "authorities" deny us the facts, we have the right to paint with a broad brush.
Enjoy your vacation, pal.
