I mean, in every race, someone’s going to win at Saratoga (less any of those “no money in them” races). Ultimately you’re competing against the other bettors. So if Saratoga is harder to win at, it’d just be because better bettors tend to play there.
Or could it be that Saratoga has more variance?
If Saratoga has more variance, that’d make it more likely for the less-skilled bettor to win. For a true indicator of “If you can win at _____, you can win anywhere”, you’d want a course that has low variance.
I think it would make it more likely for a good better to consistently win at Saratoga.
@Spoons was saying there is high variance between when the race is set and run, meaning there are no safe bets. If you come out net positive over the whole day of races, then you navigated the minefield and picked well.
You’re right that high variance means some people that pick randomly will come out ahead at the end of the day, but I took the saying to be intended for aficionados.
Of course, one of the dangers of gambling is that every schmuck who bets randomly thinks they have some clever sophisticated system.
Right. The big challenge at Saratoga are the changes that occur between when the card is set (remember, that would be three or four days prior), and when the race goes. And these do not tend to be small changes, like a jockey change, or a horse carrying more than the assigned weight. They can be radical changes, such as a race scheduled for 1 1/8 miles on the turf, is suddenly changed to 7 furlongs on the dirt. Or vice-versa. Or 1 1/4 miles on the dirt suddenly shortens to 6 furlongs on the dirt. This can result in a lot of scratches—trainers pull their horses out, because they can’t handle the different distance or surface or whatever.
I can get a Saratoga Form for Saturday on Friday. I can spend Friday night with it, making my preliminary selections, based on class, speed, distance, surface, and so on. And I can arrive at the track on Saturday only to find that a lot of my selections have been scratched due to changes. Then I have to quickly handicap all over again, to arrive at reasonable selections based on conditions after the radical changes.
That’s the challenge at Saratoga. There is little point in handicapping ahead of time, because the selections you made a day before might not even be running. You have to analyze each race based on sudden changes resulting in recent scratches, and you have to do it quickly—with perhaps only 15 or 20 MTP. If you can look at a race’s worth of past performances in a few minutes, and make selections based on changed conditions, and succeed, you’re doing it right.