May 19

Fourteen Days Into The Project

We've had fourteen racing days to date of the Churchill Downs Handicapping Project and I had to stop and give myself a pat on the back.  Over the ten years that I have been seriously handicapping, which I'd define as keeping records to see how I actually perform because the "numbers don't lie," I have often compared my numbers to professional handicappers who post their selections online.  And I have always had numbers better than most.  But, to be fair I have those numbers based on my selections which allows me to pick and choose my spots while the professionals are required by their job to select every race, every day.  And so on occasion I have, like this summer, handicapped every day / every race and kept track of my results and compared them to theirs for the same period of time.  I have found two handicappers that are far superior to any others - Ron Nicoletti at Gulfstream and Jill Byrne at Churchill Downs, and it is clearly Jill who is the best of the two.  I tried taking on Ron Nicoletti at the 2012 Gulfstream meet and had these results:

As you can see my numbers were "good" but not nearly a match for his.  The summer of 2012 I was even more thoroughly out-handicapped by Jill Byrne in my first Churchill Downs project:

I wasn't surprised in the end because I have always seemed to be a notch below my typical numbers when I analyze my selections at Churchill Downs.  But it is also noteworthy that the project results were skewed, in my opinion, by the fact that over the last 42 selections I had only four wins!  Take that streak out and my numbers were much better, but still not on par with Jilly....not only attractive, but a great handicapper - hard to get past that.  BUT, in other handicapping challenges I have fared much better, two notable examples was when I took on Mike Costanzo at Gufstream in 2010 and Mike Welsch, a national DRF handicapper, at Calder in 2009:

And so we come to this summer's project.  I knew that Jill was the best, but I also felt like my handicapping has moved to a new level, and I wanted to have two projects this summer, and the eight week Churchill meet was a great fit for my handicapping schedule.  And so here we are, three weeks into the meet and I am keeping track on a daily basis of how our numbers compare.  My plan was to have a half-way analysis and a post-meet analysis, but instead I am posting this today because of our current status.  It reminds me of former college coach Lee Corso, a celebrated analysis on ESPN's College Game Day, once said when he was coaching Indiana and they had never beaten Ohio State.  So on this one Saturday they were winning at halftime so he had the entire team pose for a photo in front of the scoreboard :)  And so I wanted to pause and boast about my numbers after three weeks: 

There is nothing wrong with Jill's numbers, but at this point not only am I keeping pace, but I am ahead of her!  No matter what happens through the final 34 days of the meet, I can always look back at this specific point of the project and say I was "winning!"  Perhaps lost in the overall numbers, is how exceptional I am doing with my betting selections here - I have NEVER had those kind of numbers at Churchill Downs.  GO ME!