historic handicapping book

[ezpace]

A New Englander whose last name was Moore wrote a handicapping book 20 -30 years ago that had a form /condition point stystem as it's basis ,,the title i can't remember . IT was EXcellent .... The friend who loaned it to me 15 yrs ago and the book are gone. Anybody here remember the book. /?? Tia

[kev]

I don't know about that one, but here's one that goes back to 1936, this from the Thorograph.

"History Lesson - 20 September 2003

Okay, I’ve been trying to get to this for some time, but I haven’t had the time until now.

Earlier this summer Connie Merjos, who is now retired and lives most of the year in Puerto Rico, came to town. As some of you may know Connie was Ragozin’s first trackman and worked for Len for 25 years, and the friendship we formed back when I was associated with that office lasted even after I split off and the hostilities broke out.

Anyway, Connie and I were sitting around talking, and the subject of Ragozin’s book came up, a subject which makes Connie even crazier than it does me due to Ragozin’s playing extremely fast and loose with the truth, and basically claiming to have invented virtually everything associated with speed figures. This is especially galling to Connie because he was making his own figures using live wind and ground long before Len ever was ( Len was using hourly wind readings from airports, and estimating ground loss by reading charts), and was the one who showed Len how it was done. He also was clocking races from the gate, which Len was not (and had probably never even thought of), and gave Len his run-up table, which Len had never heard of let alone seen before. They worked out a division of labor where Connie would be the observer at the track, and Len would make the figures using the data Connie supplied. All subsequent trackmen, both TG and Ragozin, have been trained by Connie, either directly or indirectly.

So, in the course of conversation, I asked Connie where he learned how to make figures. There were a few different influences, and then he said “I used to have this book… I might even still have it.” I told him I would love to see it, and sure enough he brought it round to my office the next day. It was falling apart, and when I opened it up it had so much dust I started sneezing. It still had a penciled price of one dollar on the cover—Connie had bought it used, when he was very young. I glanced through it, and it was amazing, but there was a problem in that it was falling apart to the touch. I mentioned it to a friend of mine (who posts as Mandown on this site, and is a lot more internet savvy than I am), and he found a good copy at a bookstore in Seminole, Florida. I have it in my possession, and it is absolutely amazing.

The book is “Consistent Handicapping Profits”, by E.W. Donaldson, published by Montee Publishing of Baltimore. The second edition, which I have, is from 1936. It is apparently a series of articles that first appeared in a publication called Turf and Sport Digest (and if anyone knows any more about them I would love to hear about it). And before I go on, I want to point out that the articles make it clear that individuals other than the author were ALSO making figures at the time, and that one of the ads following the text of the book is for ready made figures that can be purchased by mail on a monthly basis—IN 1936. But the articles assume that the reader will be making his own figures, and discuss how to do so, and to use them, and with one exception do not claim to be discussing anything new.

Among the contents:

1—A pretty good “Parallel Time Chart” (speed chart), and explanation of why beaten length corrections change as the distances do.

2—A ground loss chart (with underlying reasoning) that is pretty close to what we use. Donaldson calls them “widths”, not paths, and says this is the first time anyone has put forward a usable lengths correction for figures.

3—A couple of articles discussing weight, some of which are better than others. The better one uses a weight correction close to ours (he uses 4 pounds = 1 point), and it is worth noting that the horses might have weighed less then (certainly the jocks did), and his correction might work out about the same as the one we use for the average horse today. And it is also worth noting that there is a discussion of weight relative to the size of the individual carrying the weight, a point that seems to escape Friedman to this day. (As a practical matter there is not much we can do about this, unless they start giving us the weights of the individual horses).

4—A brief discussion of how wind affects the time of races, in some cases significantly. Some of his reasoning here is flawed (he sees that a wind behind them on the backstretch is canceled by the headwind in the stretch, but mistakenly thinks a crosswind has no effect in one turn races, missing that it is either helping or hurting them on the turn). He does not discuss how to adjust the figures for wind here, but there is a good chance that happened in later articles, and for sure Connie knows of guys making wind corrections going way back, far before Ragozin.

5—DISCUSSES FIGURE PATTERNS. On Donaldson’s scale higher is better, and in the book he shows two examples (not on a graph)—“Horse A 10-11-12-13”, “Horse B 17-16-15-14.” He recommends betting the improving horse, and says “The handicapper, looking back at the figures for the last race, made the foolish error of taking it for granted that the horses would duplicate their last performance. Although they had been changing up until that race, the worker somehow believed that they would remain stable for him in the next race. He did not figure on the change although his ratings predicted it for him.”

He also uses graphs to compare the FORM CYCLES of “cheaper” horses, who peak suddenly and quickly go out of form, and that of “higher class” horses. The graphs are hand drawn line graphs, and he does not specifically refer to using speed figures on a graph IN THIS ARTICLE, but does anyone think that no one made the logical jump to put the two together? I would very much like to know what was in future articles.

6—A statement that moisture affects track speed (!)

I have to say that it never occurred to me to find out anything about the history of figure making until recently, or that it would be in print. If I have time I’m going to try to find out more , and it turns out that the cousin of someone who used to work here is going for a degree in Library Science at, of all places, University of Kentucky, in Lexington. So stay tuned, and I welcome any additional information."

[Overlay]

I've done some searches (including the American Turf Monthly Master Index) for what the author's full name might be, and the only thing I was able to come up with was Those Wonderful Days by Bob Moore, which I believe was mainly about history and personal reminiscences rather than handicapping. Anyone else have any luck?

[saevena]

To Kev and other speed handicappers (I am not one): Tom Ainslie, in his Encyclopedia of Thoroughbred Handicapping section on speed handicapping, said that the most complete work on speed handicapping was a book titled How to Select Winning Horses. He stated that it was written by an anonymous author in the 1920's. I did some research in old Turf and Sport Digests going back to 1927 and found that the first 7 chapters of this book were written by none other than E.W. Donaldson; the last 5 were written by one W. Elwyn Backus, who also wrote mysteries. The book is on sale at Amazon.com at, I believe, $49.95, for those who are interested. Donaldson seems to have been a regular contributor to National Turf Digest and Turf and Sport (same outfit published both) from 1927 to 1937. I assume that he passed away about that time because there no more articles by him after 1937. He wrote a number of articles expressing the most original views on different topics, such as how to rate jockeys and the relationship between weight and time. To show that there is "nothing new under the sun," he was writing about handicapping speed by feet per second in 1929 and 1930. His rating method for jockeys was fascinating and, I guess, could be applied to trainers: In each race, list the horses by the odds at which they go off and the jockeys on each of the horses. If a horse is the 4th lowest in odds (4th choice on the odds board) and he finishes 2d, credit the jockey with a 2 (the horse finished 2 positions better than he should have (assuming that the odds are an accurate reflection of a horse's chance of winning). If the horse finished 4th or worse, give the jockey a 0. Do this for each horse/jockey. After about 6 days of races, add the totals accumulated by each jockey and divide by the number of races in which he rode. If your records show that an unpopular or low percentage rider is actually riding very well, when he gets on a horse with a chance he is a good bet. It was refreshing to read original ideas in a day when most players and book writers are simply playing follow the leader and echoing what every else is saying uncritically. Long live the Donaldsons of the world! (The reason Donaldson couldn't be found in American Turf Monthy is that it didn't begin publication until 1946, I believe, and Donaldson was long gone by then.

[Ponyplayr]

I don't have Power point so I can't open the file.
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLJ,GGLJ:2006-17,GGLJ:en&q=Consistent+Handicapping+Profits

[kev]

Thanks Saevena for looking into that. I'll have to check that out. Good looking out. :cool:

[PlanB]

I was lurking but this thread lured me in. Im not suprised -- but at the same time I am. Math, nerds, engineers, geeks existed long ago too, so it doesn't shock me to learn that speed capping with variants of all sorts have a history. I wish I had the know-how to publish a book on the history of all these things right up to now. What a great historical perspective.

[saevena]

Does anyone know of any printed interviews or other printed matter relative to the renowned handicapper Jule Fink?

[Good4Now]

one of those biographies recited as a story to a writer by this most accomplished trainer "Guess I'm Lucky" . He does go over their association.

[saevena]

Thanks, Good4Now. I've already seen the source to which you referred, and Fink is also mentioned in a book byToney Betts (Pseudonym). The only quote I ever read from Fink was one critical of the "Johnny-come-latelys who say you can't use (DRF) speed ratings and track variants to pick winners." It's amazing how many of the great handicappers (Fink, Sam Lewin, who said Fink was far better than him, and Al Windemere (the brain)) have been scarcely mentioned in the handicapping literature. Fink and the other members of the "speed boys" legally incorporated their betting enterprise. Lewin was the track handicapper at Atlantic City in the 60's. I remember that in the program at the bottom he would provide a morning line; then just below that he would put "Sam's Picks." For three straight years (more than 500 races each year), if you had bet all of Sam's top picks, you would have made a profit each year. I'm sure nothing like that has been done or ever will be done. Again, Good4Now, thanks for your response.

[Good4Now]

Didn't they call him, or didn't he go by "the Genius"??
How about Clem Florio. I think he used to do the morning line for Maryland tracks, and put out his own plays as well. He did understand the live today horse theory. Think he was a trainer at one time as well. Thanks for removing the fog!

[saevena]

Good4Now:

Sam Lewin was called "the genius," the name given him by his mentor, one Fatty Anderson (it was said that Anderson ate a dozen eggs plus bacon for breakfast, then washed it down with a gallon of ice cream). I haven't seen Clem Florio around the Maryland tracks for quite awhile. We always exhanged hellos when we saw each other. He was the racing writer for the Washington Post before Beyer. Other horseplayers have told me that he was a much better public handicapper early in his career than he was later. Some years ago, he had a 1 horse stable he ran at Penn National. He is an incredible after dinner speaker. A racing club in the D.C. area that I belonged to many years ago, had him as a guest speaker, and he was great. I could have listened to his racing stories all night. In an earlier life, I believe he was a boxer, but as a speaker, he's a champ.