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Originally Posted by cmorioles
Since many, many people are betting based on figures, it is wise to understand how they are made. Once you do this, you can figure out the flaws and look for ways to exploit them.
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But there are other ways to winning, without figures. However, as you mentioned, this would go against the mold, and, I would think, is alot harder than just picking up someone else's work. There's a paradigm in place for playing the races and it makes sense that all initiats would be expected to follow and embrace it.
Then again, novel methods wouldn't have all that competition.
And once you develop a more intuitive understanding of the game, you can properly incorporate figures into your method.
Think about what I'm saying: if you start with figures, it molds your perspective into a figure fueled one ---any analysis you do will always begin with a figure. Look at some of the better players on this forum; when they're making a point it always involves a number.
But this all ties in more generally with the way people have come to play races. They get the past performances and they try to make sense of the races for the card (or cards). This is a counterintuitive way to play, for me.
I'd rather make note of horses that have run exceptional races and wait for them to come back. Those are races I'll handicap. So I play where I have an opinion as a starting point rather than starting from scratch and looking for one.
If you need to play races where you basically don't have an opinion, then you certainly need figures as a way to distinguish between the horses. If you start off with a horse whose abilty level you've properly gauged in the past, and you know is sitting on a big effort, you can just go on with it (with qualifications, of course).