As I may have mentioned, I am presently using a computer algorithm of my own design to handicap horses. I am using data from Bloodstock Research and writing the software in Python using the Pandas data library.
This started out as a test but has taken on a life of its own as the program has evolved. I have spent a lot of time debugging it because I never really took the time to design it. I just kept chiseling away until now I think it is very close to being what I never envisioned.
It seems like I'm having a bad year, but it must all be in the exotics as flat bets to win are breaking even.
The truth is there were a lot of bugs in the code when Oaklawn started up back in December. I've been trouble-shooting more than adding things. There are so many different things that have to be accounted for just to keep the program from crashing due to unforeseen circumstances. Jockeys fall off. Horses ran at a foreign track. And so many tracks and distances to attempt to account for. It's really pretty wild.
I think it's working per design, as far as doing what it was written to do. It uses another program that needs a little tweaking, but that is another story.
It's a pretty solid automatic handicapper right now, but I am bothered by workouts. The algorithm looks at each horse's last two workouts and uses the higher one as it's workout score. If they are both slow workouts, that fairly dooms a horse's chance of topping the list.
Not every workout is meant to be speedy. Some are just routine maintenance. The algorithm doesn't know that. It just takes the faster one. I'm starting to think just having a workout is worth more than a very low speed rating score.
I think I'll have to establish a higher minimum rating for workouts, just to boost horses like this. BRIS provides the average race speed rating, and it may be useful to generate a replacement value. Workouts are usually slower than a horse runs, so perhaps two-thirds of the race rating?
Also, I'm getting tired of calling it "The Algorithm."
