SUCKER BETS---(part 25)
32---IGNORING “RAILS-OUT” POSITIONS by Joe Takach

When handicapping any turf race and evaluating the past performances of every entrant, does your assessment include the “rail positions” for every turf race for every runner?
If it doesn’t, there’s a very good chance that you are about to make a “sucker bet”!
In part 13 of this series on sucker bets, I briefly made my case for the impossibility of making “turf numbers”. When soapboxing my position, one of the reasons offered as to why you can’t make accurate turf numbers was the constant “in and out” movement of the turf rails.
Rather than make you reread part 13, we’ll start from the beginning and elaborate. I’m also going to throw in excerpts from one of my past series entitled The Immutable Laws of Handicapping. If you’d like to review that entire 24 part series and it is not currently listed on your favorite website, it can be found on my website at http://joe-takach.com/The_Laws_/the_laws_.html .
As a backdrop to the importance of the rails being moved “in and out”, we’ll use my home circuit of Southern California. I’ve been on track playing this circuit on a daily basis since my relocation from the East coast 15 years ago. My Southern California circuit consists of Santa Anita, Del Mar and Hollywood Park.
Turf rails are moved “in and out” constantly in Southern California as they are over the country. The rails can usually be found in 1 of 7 positions depending on what Southern California track we are looking at.
If they are at “0” and not moved out, this is the normal position of the rails.
If not at “0”, they are out 8, 10, 15, 20, 24, or 30 feet depending on the specific turf course.
The reason for the constant movement in and out is not to make handicappers crazy, but rather to spread the “wear and tear” evenly over the entire course and thus extend its shelf life for the entire meet. If this weren’t done, the course would become worthless and very dangerous within 2 weeks.
So what does the movement of the rails “in and out” mean to punters when they are handicapping a race?
Read on!
There have been countless chapters in handicapping books and innumerable articles written about the importance of saving ground, especially when grassing. I’m not about to re-invent the wheel, nor add a hellava lot more. My only point in bringing it up is to remind you to always favor horses closest to the rail (hedge) unless there is a negative inside bias (I’ll explain this in part 26 of this series). This is doubly true when the rail is artificially moved out 8, 10, 15, 20, 24, or 30 feet to save wear and tear on the inside.
Just do the math.
Regardless of turf or dirt, for every path a horse is removed from the rail, he loses about a full length when going around any turn! When the rail is moved out to 30 feet, even if you rode your horse and saved every inch of ground by scraping the rail with your boot, you still lose tons of ground!
How much? At “30 feet out” in any 2-turn turf race, you lose about 10 lengths even when running flush against the rail.
Shocked? Think of a turf course as a track for human high school or college runners with the separate lanes clearly marked. In horseracing, each lane is about 6 feet wide and with the rails moved out 30 feet, 30 divided by 6 = 5 paths out! So the 1 path suddenly moves out 5 paths and becomes the 6 path.
Again, even if running flush against the rail when it’s out 30 feet, you lose about 10 lengths. Or put another way, any 2-turn turf race with the “rails” out 30 feet is 10 lengths longer in total distance than when the rail is at zero. And again that is if you are dead flush against the rail saving every possible inch of ground.
If you ran in the 2 path the entire race around both turns with the rail out 30 feet, you lost or ran 12 lengths longer than if the rail was at zero or in its normal position.
If you ran in the 3 path the entire race around both turns, you lost 14 lengths.
If you ran in the 4 path the entire race around both turns, you lost 16 lengths.
Allow me to shock you into reality.
In your entire horse-playing career, how many races have you lost by 16 lengths or less? What about 14 lengths, 12 or 10? What about 1 length or less than a length?
I don’t know about you, but I’d be a multi-millionaire if every racetrack in the world merely paid me on wagers on races that I lost by a length or less!
Before getting off the topic of saving ground, let me give you more food for thought.
In human track races, they stagger the start of events that go around one turn or more to compensate for the obvious disadvantage the outside runners have to overcome. If a human race is a 100 yard dash and no turns are involved (thus no advantage to saving ground), everybody starts from the same starting line.
Unfortunately in horseracing, everybody always starts from the same starting gate all the time! Only the “luck of a random draw” offers any horse the potential for a ground-saving trip, or the likelihood of a ground loss if forced to break from the outside.
Whether the rail is “in or out”, saving ground is the only way to go over the turf unless there is an evident negative inside bias.
Let’s delve a bit deeper and look at Santa Anita as an example.
There are 5 rail positions for turf routes. They begin at 0 and then go out to 8, 15, 24 and 30 feet respectively.
Yet Santa Anita only has 3 different starting gate positions.
The entire staff of the DAILY SCHTW has watched this for years. The same 3 route gate positions that were obvious to us in 1992 are the same 3 gate positions that were used at this Fall 2006 meet and for the last 14 years.
The 3 gate positions for Santa Anita routes are as follows.
There is 1 gate placement for both 0 and 8 feet out. There’s another separate placement for 15 feet out. And there is 1 placement is for both 24 and 30 feet out.
Can you see the problem?
You can’t have the same gate position for 2 entirely different “rails out” situations.
You need 5 separate and distinct gate placements!!!!!
Every time the rails are moved further out, the starting gate should be moved forward to compensate.
Why?
Because moving the “rails out” actually enlarges the course! I’m not going to bore you with the math. If you need mathematical proof of this, any high school teacher can fill you in within 3 minutes.
You simply can’t run a mile turf race with the rail at 0 and then next day run another mile turf race with the “rails out” 8 feet and see these races as equal in distance.
They positively are not the same!
When the gate placement for 0 and 8 feet out are identical, the horses in the race with the rails out 8 feet actually ran further. And no, they don’t change the “run up time” (the point where the race begins being electronically timed). At the DAILY SCHTW we have hand timed these races and the evidence is positively irrefutable. Santa Anita treats 0 feet out identically to 8 feet out, because the starting gate is located exactly in the same spot for both rail positions.
The same situation occurs at Santa Anita when the rails are out 24 or 30 feet. The gate placement is identical and there is no change in “run up time”.

PART 26----IGNORING “RAILS-OUT” POSITIONS continued

© Joe Takach 2006