AS we go to a new race track — The Main Track at Aqueduct – we have to review the way the PPN on the Power Page’s are made.   The PPN the “Projected Power Number” attempts to capture or “project” the form of a horse and express it in numerical form — then order them from top to bottom.   As we have always maintained, the most recent races have more impact on the upcoming races than the numbers a horse ran in the past.  The further back the time the less predictive the race number is.   There are several reasons for this, in the case of very young horse, they mature and improve simply because of growth.  While in older horses – particularly claimers, their back history form may represent the horse in a different state of form, maybe the horse was younger – and helathier, and now the older horse might have infirmities that make it harder to get this particular runner into tip top shape.  There are a million scenarios, but in effect hey are all pretty much the same — LESS PREDICTIVE!

When we go to a new track we encounter one particular factor that can turn the above mentioned predictive characteristics of back history” on it’s A@#$@#$.  That factor is under the heading of “horse for course”,  so if a horse came to the Aqueduct Main Track after a series of races on the Inner Dirt Track – which for ths sake of discussion – disliked the Inner Dirt Track.   In this case, back history on the Main Track could well be more predictive!   But that is not something the Power Page as a product can pivot on, simply put, it’s the mission of the Power Page to function as information, but producing information in the same manner.  And thereby relying on our customers to apply good handicapping principles and valuations…

This has been raised since the first day I started to make the product.  And it was a decision that was made so that we could present the Power Page and information and not selections…  And most importantly this should give you — the handicapper — the chance to really have  control of the handicapping.  And that can only happen if the PPN’s are made in the same way — all the time….