Norman Ford's Force Method

[nalley0710]

I've recently bought the first 7 books and code book of this series. I heard that there were something like 35 books in this series. Does anyone know where there is a list of the titles of this series of books ?

[Donnie]

Here is what I have in my library:

Book Number / Book Name
1 Basic Principals
2 Class
3 Readiness
4 Betting
5 Dictionary of Races
6 Daily Double
7 Longshots
8 $2036 A Week at Aqueduct
9 Secrets of a Professional
10 Rockingham Park
11 Weight - Performance
12 Race Differentiation
13 Maidens and First Time Starters
14 Class in Claiming Races
15 Class in Allowance Races
16 Place and Show Betting
17 Weight vs. Odds
18 10-1 Horses
19 Special Longshots
20 Professional Racing Day
21 "No Title on this book" - A Story about his Grandma
22 More Grandma
23 Pittsburgh Phil Returns
24 Track Pattern
25 Consistency Scoring
26 Dear Horseplayer
27 Dear Horseplayer (contd.)
not numbered Top Secret (Uniscore - Directions)
not numbered Top Secret (Uniscore - Charts)
not numbered Code Book
31 The Forward Horse Mehtod
32 Doubles, Parlays, Quinellas & Exactas
33 Odds-Backward Horse Method
34 New Zealand Method - Part One - Dunedin Plan
35 New Zealand Method - Part Two - Invercargill Plan
36 New Zealand Method - Part Three - Rules
51 Harness Tracks (Beginning of a Series on Harness Racing)

[Tom]

Never heard of this guy.....who is he and why is writing all those little books? ;)

[Donnie]

Very popular in the mid-60's, Tom (but then again, so was acid! :lol: )

Sports Illustrated actually did a story back then on Ford and his success. I ahve never read that story personally. I am sure someone here probably could point a person to it......

[Dave Schwartz]

Donnie,

Could you synopsize this massive work?


Dave

[RaceBookJoe]

Donnie,

Could you synopsize this massive work?


Dave

Here ya go...bet the favorite and double up to place :lol:

[nalley0710]

Think of a cross between Kenny Powers in Eastbound and Down and Andrew Beyer. Interesting books though. Thanks for the list Donnie.

[Donnie]

Maybe RBJ has owned these in the past, but I am just glad he saved me all that time typing out my thoughts.... :bang:

It amazes me how the more and more you look, pace was discussed "way back when"....

Nalley--->He is pretty direct in the Dear Horseplayer books! LOL!!

[saevena]

I believe the author's name was Norman Ford. If my memory serves me correctly, he ran a handicapping school; said he had been fired from many teaching positions; was a West Point or some other military school graduate; wrote a book lambasting the school; was the brother of Geoffrey Ford, who also ran a handicapping school in New York City and also wrote a handicapping course, etc.; his main thesis was that the reason horses took turns beating each other was that the losers ran hard races last time and the winners ran easy races last time (wrong). Many horses with easy races keep running easy races and don't win. Of course, the real question is: Was that easy race the horse ran really an easy race for him/her, or was the horse running his/her guts out and simply appears to have had an easy race?

[Tom Barrister]

The man's name is Norman Robert Ford. The book about West Point was titled: "The Black, The Gray, and The Gold".

Ford resigned his West Point commission in 1934.

Ford became a somewhat recognized name while writing in Robert Harrison's magazines "Confidential" and the earlier "Whisper", forerunners of today's gossip magainzes/tabloids. At one point in the mid 1950's, "Confidential" had a circulation of over 5 million copies, more than TV Guide. The magazine, which was a bit too frank, was sued by several Hollywood celebrities, the settlement/agreement that entailed forbade the magazine from mentioning these celebrities. Several future generations of tabloids (i.e. The National Enquirer) learned from Harrison's mistakes and ambiguated their stories and/or sources enough to avoid most libel litigation.

For decades, Ford chased his dream of being a novelist, with several novel-length manuscripts, hundreds of short stories, much poetry, and a few plays. None were very successful, and the vast majority were unpublished.

Ford had many jobs during his lifetime, among them: military officer, teacher at various prep schools (the reclusive author J. D. Salinger ("Catcher in the Rye") was once his student at Valley Forge Academy), bookkeeper, clerk, and typesetter, as well as working for his brother Geoffrey, who ran a racing school. To keep himself financially afloat while between jobs, Ford wrote booklets on every imaginable subject (including how to run a racing school!). Ford taught at several prep schools and colleges: among them Valley Forge, Riverside, Taft, Darrow, NYMA, Montclair, and Lycoming College. Ford hated teaching and generally quit each position in a school year or less.

In 1962, Ford began the "Force" series (the name supposedly came from the fact that using his booklets would force the user to pick the right horses). The books sold for $3 apiece (about $25 in today's dollars at the rate books have risen in the interim). Ford's method focused on recency, weight, class, and what he called "signal", which focused solely on the last race. Of note, Ford prefered horses who showed early speed and then quit. The horses final score was somewhat an encrypted number; the user needed a code book (sold separately) to understand the relevance of the scores.

Each Force book cost about a dime to produce (this in 1960's money) and took about three days to write. The booklet series had as many as 5,000 subscribers in its heyday, and it made Ford quite a bit of money.

[Robert Goren]

http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1077741/1/index.htm

The link to Frank Deford SI article.

[llegend39]

I've recently bought the first 7 books and code book of this series. I heard that there were something like 35 books in this series. Does anyone know where there is a list of the titles of this series of books ?

Found theses on Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=NORMAN+FORD%27S+FORCE+METHOD+&x=18&y=22

[Donnie]

Great article Robert! Thanks for the link!

[Donnie]

if one were to purchase any of these books, I would suggest you ask for a photo of said book....especially if you are a collector....I have seen many over the years tattered and torn....the covers are nothing but heavy grade paper, so they take a real beating. Wow. Up to 5000 customers!! These must be stored somewhere all over the East Coast!?

[Jeff P]

From the article in the Sports Illustrated vault:
http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1077741/4/index.htm
It begins with an ominous preface aptly titled A Warning to New Students. In the way of thanks for their $3, the freshmen promptly catch it as Ford answers 100 questions—stupid ones that he says people are always asking him and that he doesn't want to find students ever asking him again. Samples:

Q. Do you guarantee I can make money with this method?

A. Don't be a jackass. How do I know you can even understand it?

Q. Will you make me a package deal so that I can learn the Force Method at one mailing?

A. Dear Mr. Paderewski, send me a package deal to play the Tchaikovsky concerto in one lesson.
I Love it!

Thanks for the article. :ThmbUp: :ThmbUp:

-jp

.

[dutchboy]

Questions in the above post could have been asked of the "PT truck driver".

[craig chapman]

Larry Voegle used some of Fords info on horseracing, to help him write books and do seminars

[Warren Henry]

Larry Voegle used some of Fords info on horseracing, to help him write books and do seminars

Larry Voegle borrowed the Impact Values from Fred Davis' book for a pencil and paper method that he sold a long time ago.

The method worked too but was prohibitively time consuming when done by hand. I know the method worked because I borrowed the same figures for a piece of software that was successful for many years in the mid 80s.

When someone tells you that there is nothing new in racing, he may know what he is talking about. :lol: