When do you handicap and how long does it take you?
 

Do you handicap the day before? The morning of? Place your horses in your order and then check for SCR an hour or two before post? Just curious. I'm starting out, and find I can't do this in ten minutes before post time. I need a half hour per race but I also am trying to learn the ropes. Also, do you HC a full card, or multiple tracks and do select races to HC? Perhaps only stakes or allowance or optional claiming, turf? Based on your "specialty?"

I have a virtual stable (you can get one at DRF), and I get alerts to when they work, are entered, etc...that starts my log for the day.

-I find them first (the morning of the race). Handicap those races first.
-Then go over every race from the tracks I wish to play that day.
- I rank my best bets for the day and devise a Pick 4 strategy for the tracks that are offering the most value for a P4 that day.
- At Race time, I handicap the race again, to make sure I didn't miss anything. I make sure to catch the post parade.
- If I am convinced and the odds will be acceptable, bet gets placed.
- If not, I wait till 1 MTP to put my bet in at the acceptable odds.

I try to scan the PP's for one or two angles at just one track. Sometimes I do this the night before, but today I did it the morning of. 30 minutes scan time for 9 races.

Today's angle was second-time starters in maiden races (Belmont), and it worked for me in races 2 and 4. Got beat in the last with PSYCHIATRY which I failed to back up in the place hole. Made up for it big-time in the earlier races as I caught the early double on a back wheel, and the 4th exacta (2 second-timers).

I generally look at entry cards for all tracks I play 2 days in advance so long as ML is posted. I narrow things down by seeing which track has the most races carded for my specialty/s. I usually only play one card at a time. I cap ALL races on the card, but may only play those conditions at which I am currently hitting a high rate and posting nice profits. After changes are posted I go through all my race figures to make certain everything is right, note any variance in potential race shape, mark my potential plays, then sit back to watch what the tote does. I generally make my play at 0, maybe later if I'm watching pre-race on TV.

I find I do best if I handicap the next race just after the last one has run. Sometimes I glace over the PPs ahead of time, but do not try to pick a winner ahead of time. It is what works for me.

just basic selections AND value for today....
 

Friday I had a bad day and fell behind for the year. we're not talking about a lot of $$ but that night I couldn't sleep (again) and I was laying awake thinking about compound pace ratings until the sun came up. this is a sickness I've had for years.

finally after a couple more days of this I decided that enough was enough and I was just going to read the pps for the pure joy of it. I mostly looked at your boring and vanilla non-maiden main track races. I think I studied every track but Belmont, Charles town, and les bois?

I tried to look for horses who (1) I thought would almost definitely win the race. (2) who would almost definitely improve to do it, and (3) were not morning line favorites (and probably wouldn't be crushed in the betting).

I found like three of these horses and another race where I liked three horses for an exacta box. unfortunately one of the horses and the exacta box were at Indiana..... which I forgot that my adw didn't take. :bang:

i put the bets in in the morning and tonight was pleased to see that both horses won and that i'm a "winner" again for the year.

maybe tonight i'll get some sleep, but soon enough again i'll be up all night and dreaming about compound pace ratings and the elusive perfect computer program to use them in. it is a sickness. :)

I prefer graded turf stakes and maiden special weights going long. I am an angle-player, so it doesn't take me long to handicap. If I don't find anything, then I go with my favorite trainer and/or rider.

My software allows me to complete the handicapping process in about 3 minutes.

I never look at a race until it comes up on the tote board, because the first thing is to scrape the tote for scratches.

Angle bets-- I look through the entries for the type of race that may have the angle. If I see the type of race, I'll look for a single about 4 days in advance through the Equibase site for free.I do this for logistics-- trying to make sure I can get a bet through a window with no paper trail. I have to plan these a few days in advance.

Pace-- When I look through all the US entries, If I see the type of race, I'll make a note, and download an equibase program and take a look at their early pace number for free the day before. If there is a singe in the race I'll bet.

The front end only takes a few minutes. It's the after the race record keeping that take the time. I usually bet at 5:00 am for the pace races. I try to use conditional betting features and the cancel button if the horse gets slammed.. But that's getting more difficult

I should add my volume of races is low. I'll have on average about 10 good bets on days when the big pools are running. On a off day, I might have a smaller bet at Finger Lakes or Sam Houston. But those don't happen everyday.

I would love to wake up in the morning and have my bet sitting on a piece of paper. But that would cost some money. I'm taking the miser way out.

Proximity, please, don't continue on this path. Lack of sleep, and interrupted sleep will lead to jeopardizing your immune system, your total health, at some point, may well be in shambles. In the greater scheme of life, no amount of handicapping or betting on horseracing is worth this. Life is short. :kiss:

Well, my handicapping process consists the following:

• Back end jobs that are completed during after hours, a process that is going to last approximately one hour or a little longer...
  During this process my cron jobs, will discover and download new comprehensive and drf files, they will bounce all the data bases recreating them directly from raw data, rebuilding the track variant curves I am using, the various figures I need (like pace and closing) and also go through the complete universe of available races recalculating all the handicapping factors I am using in my systems.
  Also, the crons are going to recalculate jockey - trainer stats, post position stats and retrain all of my race track profiles and clusterization groupings...
  
• During a racing day, I will usually wait until the final scratches are in and then I will start a process that will automatically process each race (given the scratches) spawing several agents each of them is looking for certain kind of different profiles of candidate bets... This process will take a few minutes..
  
• Before the post time of the first race, I will manually go through each prime bet that was suggested by the automatic clients, paying closing attention to the details of the race and if needed I might do some additional hand coded data base research, if I think there is an angle that is not covered by the automated process..
  Usually this will require something in the range of 1 to 2 hours. Of course during this stage I will go through race replays where needed and possibly also update my bias and trip notes if I see something new.
  
• At this point I am ready to construct an excel spreadsheet sorted by the time of each race, where I can see my prime bets and also the higher risk bets that I might decide to take a shot trying a long shot bet.
  From now on, my attention will mainly be on track changes, tote board movement, late scratches and any thing in general that I did not anticipated in the beginning.. My decision about any bet that I will make, will be assisted by my software and it will not take more than a minute or two to decide whether I will bet or not..
  
• After each bet, I spend a few seconds, updating my running balance to a spreadsheet that after the end of the day will be imported into a sql data base..

From what you can see, my handicapping day is pretty busy and occupies a good portion of the day (and night in some times!)

Day of during the card, approx. 3 to 5 mins. per race. if I am interested in the race. It takes me probably less than 60 seconds to determine if the race is playable or not for me.

thank you, grits. if you read the poker section at all, I was actually real sick recently from a tick bite. fortunately I've pretty much recovered but in the process my sleep got all twisted around. last night was one of my better nights though as I actually got tired and fell asleep shortly after my 2:30 post.

before that I looked at four tracks in probably about an hour and a half. out of those tracks I came up with one play and since the horse lost I will tell you that it was Edson's pride in the 4th at belterra.

Uh...I have a DRF and Bris PP. Printed. And markers. And highlighters. And I just lose. I think I'm way out of your league since now I'm completely intimidated!

Based on what your saying, you are still in the beginning of your handicapping career and even more you view it as an intellectual challenge rather than an serious activity. Having said this, you cannot expect to have the same approach as somebody who is doing this for all of his adult life.

If you want my opinion, if you want to accelerate your learning curve and improve your understanding of the game, you should start building your databases, data mine them and learn how to create figures. Any other approach will be proven an extremely lengthy and frustrating journey..