What is your most important Handicapping tool/trait?
 

What is your "go to" handicapping trait/tool that you have or use that results in success?

Experience my "go to"

I seen everything that can happen on a race track at least once.

Allan

You ever seen an amateur jockey race with a professional jockey?

You ever seen a ringer?

Caffeine and adderall are good tools for handicapping. :D

But seriously, I use different angles for different types of races.

For maidens, I like the "Pop and Stop" angle. Find a horse that has had only one race and ran well early, but then faded badly. Then it had a long layoff before it's second start in today's maiden race. This tells me trainer had the horse ready to go, but something went wrong. The trainer laid the horse off and hopefully fixed whatever the problem was. Now it might be ready to run today.

Lone speed in a turf marathon. For example, Buck's Boy in the BC Turf Classic.

"Turf Decline Line". This is from Cary Fotias' revolutionary book "Blinkers Off". I use the term "revolutionary" in all seriousness.

I rely on pure luck.

Good luck! :D

I'm obviously a complete 180 of your opinion.


I haven't seen everything. I have much more to learn. And anything and everything can happen in the very next race. I need to prepare for that.

Good point. I will even give you one "meow meow beenz" for that. ;)

Had a good full belly chuckle. Thank you. :ThmbUp::pound:

I would have given you 5, but PA only gives them out one at a time.

I wonder if I can go back and hit the button 4 more times?

Or maybe I can go and try to find 4 other of your posts that I agree with? :D No. That would be 20 meow meow beenz. I will click on 4 others that I don't agree with. LOL

My most important horse-betting trait is my extremely high pain threshold. I can lose 30 consecutive serious wagers...and lose the 31st with the same equanimity. Such a trait comes in handy at Saratoga and Presque Isles. :ThmbUp:

Alright, now I can see that you're just pandering for meow meow beenz, but I'm going to go ahead and give you one because your post might help some newbies. ;)

Just speaking for myself, Presque Isle's a piece of cake compared to Saratoga!

The newbies usually don't stick around long enough to lose 30 consecutive serious wagers. My post was intended for the "veteran" players.

1. Nope you are correct I have never seen a pro riding in an amateur race. But I have seen many times an amateur riding in a pro race.

2. Yeah I am old, I can remember riding the bus to the big M in 1977 and two old railbirds talking about a bomber that came in the last race at Belmont, Lebon at 50-1.

I take a look at the form. Lebon? should have been 5000-1. needless to say had no idea it was actually Cinzano.

https://www.nytimes.com/1977/11/22/a...-saratoga.html

what a great time to be a horseplayer. Belmont in the day. Big M at night.

Allan

It happened at Aqueduct in the mid 1990's. I had never seen an amateur jockey race in NY. I was with a friend at the time who was a racing journalist from England. He said amateur rider races were common in England -- especially jump races. We were surprised when we saw their was an amateur rider race. He said the key to handicapping the race was to look for the jockey how had the best looking form when sitting on the horse in the post parade. Sure enough, there was a jockey sitting on a horse that had perfect posture. He was sitting the same way Jerry Bailey sat -- upright and full of confidence. The jockey won at 3-1, but when the race ended the announcer said to hold all tickets because there was an inquiry. The race was declared a non-betting race because the winning jockey was a pro from Panama. I knew it was too good to be true. But at least I learned a good tip for the future.

Those were the days! Even back in the 1990s Big M was racing at night if I am not mistaken.

Of course, nowadays you can bet Europe at 6:00am, Belmont in the afternoon, Santa Anita late afternoon into early evening, Mountaineer at night, and then Hong Kong and Australia until 6:00am. :headbanger:

I put patience. I'm not the most experienced player around by far but I did learn after a few years that you have to be very patient to have any sustainable bankroll.

I know some guys that insist on having action on every single race, or worse after a bad streak instead of sitting a few out will try to "make it up" by throwing down a huge win or place bet far above their normal bet size.

Patience is truly a virtue.



Especially when it comes to wagering on ponies.



Fantastic post my friend. :ThmbUp:

Syncretizing Beyer's trip handicapping protagonist, "Charlie" ("It's not how fast they run. It's how they run fast that counts", i.e., in theory the higher the speed figure, the easier the trip, contextualized within today's potential trip), with respectable public speed ratings to begin the interpretive process, with Benter's "public odds as an independent variable" (public does the analytical heavy lifting) to arrive at value.

Every Time
 

I rely on software and patience and 2 horse betting ala Sartin.
Been watching and betting race since the 50's and everytime I think I've seen it all they show me something else!

Thank you for the post lefty. This is just pure awesomeness to me.



The eyes and ears of what you have experienced must be incredible. :ThmbUp:

Dick Mitchell, rest his soul, used to say that chess was "finite" and thus "easy" compared to horse racing. "All" you had to do to become a chess master was to learn the approximately 1M moves that are possible on a fixed chessboard with pieces whose moves are controlled by fixed rules. Horse racing has an infinite number of factors that can combine in infinite ways under dynamic conditions, with no fixed rules to control the "moves" of the "pieces", resulting in possibilities that no one can possibly master. At least not in the short run.

Here's one such example, a blast from my past of note:

Why More Worry (KY)
TB, DK B/, M, FOALED APRIL 23, 1971
( TIME TESTED - WAVE OF JOY, BY JOHNS JOY )

Must have been 1975 @ Hollywood Park. This filly always went to the lead going 2 turns on the turf and often won as the favorite (2-1 was a fairly "heavy" favorite in those days, fields were larger, lament, lament).

That day she did her thing at her usual 2-1, was breezing on the lead by open daylight in deep stretch, then about 10 feet from the wire she decides she's a steeplechaser, jumps the inner rail, tosses the jockey, and runs off to go swimming with the Goose Girl in one of the infield lakes.

Record keeping.

ONE MILLION?

I always liked Dick Mitchell, but he had this grossly underestimated.

I recall reading a book - I think it was Artificial Life - where the potential situations on a chessboard could be describe as -

If you studied one position per second, and started back at the time of the Big Bang, you'd not yet be half way through all the possibilities.

Nevertheless, he was right about horse racing having an infinite number of permutations. One reason for that is that the game falls into the category of Complex Adaptive System.

That is, the game is constantly evolving and changing.

By comparison, there actually are a finite number of chess situations.

Dick Mitchell is obviously wrong. I know horseplayers who claim to be wildly successful bettors...and they only need to memorize a few easy-to-remember handicapping "angles". Good luck trying to beat a Garry Kasparov by memorizing a few fancy opening moves.

Speaking of chess, I just got my final piece of my CIvil War Chess Set this week! :jump::jump::jump:

Software and experience. Software tells me when to get in. Experience tells me when to stay the hell out.

What software do you use?

If I can only pick one tool.
 

For me, it's hand down the the Toteboard. For the most part, the smart phone has replaced the actual tote on track or at my OTB. I use DRF's Live odds screens, which gives me most of what I require. The information can be used either with pen and paper, or on excel spreadsheets. One of PA's highly skilled programmers has coded the info. into his software, but I'm mostly a pen and paper guy or an excel ss user.

Tote board!

For Selections:
The ONLY tool I use is a very sophisticated Tote Board analysis program. It goes into far more detail then just viewing the Odds (the Win Pool). It generates a composite value for each Entry at each of 3 different intervals during the O.A. betting cycle. At each interval a simple comparison is made between each entry’s value and a Par value which encompasses all of the money in all the betting pools being monitored. Only those entries with values close to Par are considered as potential play regardless of their odds.

For Play or Pass
ONLY if the odds on the selected entries offer potential Value is a wager made. Because there are often more then 2 or 3 selections I generally hedge my bets by either Dutching, or boxing Quinellas, Exactas, Triples and possibly even an occasional Super. I never make a straight Win, Place or Show bet.

Sample:
This is a portion (single betting interval) of the tote analysis for Race 10 @ Del Mar on Sat 8/11/18
A) Top line = M/L Odds…..B) Middle line = Current Odds…..C) Bottom line – Entry & Par Values.

(Sometimes they just jump off the page.)

I always feel humbled by Nitro's posts, as even though I have many years experience , I can barely follow what he's talking about, and NEVER understand his examples.


I'm sure it's just me.

The ability to pass. I get deluded and think I can win every race. Only low payoffs make me pass. But I bet races where I believe in nothing but try to extract $$$. No real opinion. Passing is my greatest asset.

other
 

Hope you didn't vote Other:lol:

For me its more along the lines of...

I am deluded and think I can win every race.

I voted "other":

For me its an honest realization that the game today has changed so much and I have not adapted to it. My betting records showed winning years changing to break even and then losing for the last couple of years.

So I have stopped betting (outside of the occasional small wagers like this weekend when I'm heading to the Spa to meet some friends coming down from Canada).


La Vita si mouve su :)

You aren’t by chance “the RichieP” that works with “the Sarge” are you...?

I didn't think I was alone on this issue. No matter how proper it is worded!

Not me VTG

Nitro, at which betting interval was this taken, 15 min, 12 min, 8 min, 5 min? Or which one was closest? No,they all don't jump off the page as this one did.