I don't think my opinion of various tracks is 100% correct, but most of the ones I use frequently are pretty close. I wonder a bit if OP is too high and CNL a bit too low. American Promise?
Oaklawn Park is my home track. I live about a mile away. You would think that would make it easy to tell its class and speed, but really none of this handicapping stuff is easy.
Whatever my opinion of any track, if all the horses in a race ran at that track, then only their times and track conditions can tell them apart. Speed ratings vary by track the way I do them. Different tracks have different adjustments based on my opinion. Horses who run at Tampa Bay Downs are not generally of the same class as here at Oaklawn. Some tracks are just faster than others. I have a general variant for each track in turf and dirt.
I mean, I don't think you'd expect a Derby winner to come out of Tampa Bay, but an extraordinary horse might score a high enough speed rating there to appear competitive. And yet, it's Tampa Bay, right?
So, my track variants are mostly adjusted from default by watching race outcomes and changing variants to try to match outcomes. Of course, I look at Beyer and BRIS ratings as well as any other information I can find. However, mostly it's me trying to match ratings to performance. It's a slow process.
On Friday the 18th of April 2025, I felt pretty confident in the software but suffered 10 straight losers. Absolutely shut out of winners. In fact, few of the races resembled anything like my predictions.
As bad as Friday was, Saturday was great. Had six of twelve winners. As usual, hitting exotics proved difficult. Oaklawn seems to always put some strange horse between my first and second choices, taking my exotic money.
Cold and hot. Hot and cold. The idea is to be HOT all the time, eh? I'm working on it.
