A Few Basic Questions

[Mall]

Is the ronnie h from Lexington who I met at the Canterbury contest last week the same ronnie h who posts here? If so, congrats on a very nice win. I'm looking forward to seeing you at the Kee meet & the NTRA Championship.

What if anything do you do when, like the 5th & 6th at Sar yesterday, races are not only taken off the turf, but changed to a very different distance?

I have been able to determine that Edif on the Impact screen represents a "unit difference" in Esp, but have not been able to find any explanation of what the unit is. Does anyone know? The only article on the subject which I have been able to find in the archive indicates that there was an in depth discussion the previous month, but I'm guessing the reference might be to some month other than the immediately preceding one.

[Victor]

ESP is the horse's effort in the First Fraction.

[Mall]

Thanks Victor, but I know, or think I know what Esp is. What I was asking was, for example, if horse A is -20 Edif(the Esp difference), does that tranlate into, say, 10 lengths, 5 lengths, etc.

[Victor]

That's a tough question for me to answer . . .

I would go further to say it's a tough question for ANYBODY to answer :)

I would say a horse that is -20 in ESP is "in trouble" unless they can come from the back.

[Rick]

You can change the surface of a race by using the Scratch button. I don't think km has added anything to change the distance of a race.

The Mar 01 newsletter probably has the most information about the Impact screen. It was written for the DOS version but most of the info should still be good.

[km]

Right - you can't change the distance manually in HTR. That would be a tricky programming addition for something that is so rare.

Important to note that after the Results files are downloaded, the correct distance and surface are always embedded into the Racefile. This insures 100% accurate testing and db query after the fact.

re: SAR Sunday
They can't run 8.0 or 8.5 on the main, so they switched those races to 7.0D and 9.0D. This is rarely a problem for the (K) before hand if the HTR user removes the scratches and switches the surface to "Dirt Fast" or "Wet". I have run tests specifically on races with such changes and the results are actually improved. However, attribute this to reduced field size, not anything special in HTR. Typically the races that are moved off the grass and change distance suffer from lots of scratches and chalky outcomes as those two on Sunday proved.