Beyer Pars

[joeydb]

Steve, I have a question about "Beyer Pars" as are listed in the Daily Racing Form's Formulator PP's.

Is that number a computation based on the particular horses in a given race, or a number statistically arrived at from past runnings of the race at the same track, event type, surface and distance, or something altogether different?

The reason I ask is if the Beyer Par is an estimate of how fast today's race will be, how do I factor in the scratch of a particular horse in terms of how it affects that par?

Example: Horse A has the fastest Beyer times and Horse B has the second fastest Beyer times (peak, average, whatever). The Beyer Par for today's race is 90 as printed, assuming no scratches. If Horse A is scratched, Horse B is now the fastest, but is he still expected to have the best chance of running a 90? Or is that 90 now irrelevant because presumably Horse A most contributed to the calculation of that number in the first place?

Thanks in advance everybody for any help on this.

If you could ask Andy Beyer or even Steve Crist to go over this a little next time they are on, I'd be very interested to hear what they have to say.

Joe

[Kasept]

The Beyer pars (or any similar par) are simply the averages over a period of time (typically past three years) of the particular class in question. They don't reflect what horses in any one race will specifically run, rather what that level of race will typically produce. It wouldn't/shouldn't matter who was in or who came out of a particular race. The class level is the class level... Here's the AQU Beyer pars in fact as examples:

Colt 3-Year-Olds, Dirt (Condition - Par)

CLM 50,000 - 74,000 81
CLM 75,000 - UP 88
MSW 89
ACN(1-Y), ANC, ANS 90
AN2X, AN3L 90
STK, GSTK 92

[Conrad]

Beyer's supposed parallel time/speed chart is outdated and flawed. I do no trust any figure of his at 9f or longer.
ANY BEYER FIG OVER 9F IS A JOKE !!!

see Drosselmeyer's BC Classic fig. He shoud have gotten a 96 at the most but wound up getting around a 104...pathetically inaccurate.

[Travis Stone]

Originally Posted by Conrad

Beyer's supposed parallel time/speed chart is outdated and flawed. I do no trust any figure of his at 9f or longer.
ANY BEYER FIG OVER 9F IS A JOKE !!!

How do you figure?

[Conrad]

How do i make my figures or how do i figure that Beyers at long distances are a joke?

Having made my own pace and speed figs for over 10yrs i can tell you with a great degree of certainty that a final time in the range of 2:02 and breeze for 10f deserves nowhere near a plus 100 Beyer. The track was not playing slow on BrCup day.

Seek out other speed fig guys on this or other sites and they will tell you that Beyer loses it a bit when distances approach 9.5-10f and beyond.
In fact, i know of one guy who changed his entire parallel time chart as a result of being frustrated by Beyer's chart.

Also, how would you explain the Amazombie and Solar Rocket figs from 7Apr at SA? And they were only going 6.5f...one race was run in 1:14.16 and the other in 1:14.31 on the same day on a fast track and received 105 and 93 Beyers respectively.
There is something VERY wrong with that.

[Thunder Gulch]

There is no doubt that in his attempt to improve his figures with projection times and split variants that Beyer has added much more subjectivity to his numbers. IMO, an attempt to make it better, often makes it more difficult to use a figure at face value. I do think his figures are useful and relevant to the modern game, even if their value is zero (or negative) from a parimutuel perspective.

To answer Joey's question. I highly recommend some of Beyer's books starting with Picking Winners. Though he changed some of the methodology, the basics of figure making are discussed, and at least you start to understand the value of what they mean in terms of beaten lengths, class pars, etc. If nothing else, they're pretty entertaining and easy to read.