new harness handicapper
 

i can't pick one winner in harness to save my life. michelle u of tvg just gave out 3 in a row including a $60 winner @ mohawk.

just a week ago, she said she had no idea about harness racing. today she picks 3 in a row. she is great. not only did she pick those winners, she gave the reasons and told us how great they looked on the track.

since this last post she just picked another winner at yonkers. i will keep you guys posted on these phonomonal picks. she jsut said she is neglecting flat racing for harness.


she is making me look like a fool

in the fifth race at mohawk she can't make her mind up between the 1+3. she likes them equally. i guess she is undecisive here!

she just picked another winner in mohawk the 1 horse. it was an $8.00 winner, but she did miss the trick. she did say that was her top pick. she reminds me of christina oliveres, it only took her a week to learn harness. i have been trying to figure out harness my whole life and these gals learn in 1 week.

another winner at yonkers, small one though $2.80. she claims she is a quick learner.

Is she married?

What a catch!

Let us know when the brakes are applied...suspect soon.
Footnote: If she is pickin a bunch of races, like all of them, then her percentages are average at best right now. If she doesn't know wich end to feed a horse, then its gonna be awhile before she qualifies for rebates......

another winner inbetwen her harnss, she picked an 8-5 shot in the sixth at the mountain, just to prove she is multi faseted.

if i had half a brain i would be playing her picks along with all the experts at the TVG

in the 6th at mohawk her pick ran 2nd to the second choice, and she just complained that mohawk is tough tonight after she was singing sexy lady


she just picked the 8 horse in yonkers 7 going against the best bet of the night there

:D

Who was it that said they read their picks off a sheet of paper? Especially harness.

She's shaping up to be a chalk player :eek:

i swear she is giving her reasons, like first time hobbles and last race parked the whole mile, hobbles on. she knows more about harness in one week than what i have learned in 60 years. tonight she is handicapping 2 harness tracks and mountaineer. she had a few picks at harrington as well. i can't do one track properly and come up with one winner. and she makes a joke of this game. and then she laughs after the horse wins. what a great host

she is now on to another track northfield. she claims that northfield is not her cup of tea. i understand what she means, its not mine either. to me though, it makes no difference, i suffer from a deficiency of picking winners!

she just said that she misses the guys from the louisville depot a place that she worked

she ran second in the northfield race.

Try Tom Ansilie's New Complete Guide to Harness Racing. Published in 1987 and still relevant.

not only can she handicap mountaineer, mohawk, harrington, yonkers, norhtfield, but she got a little to ambicious and took on hawksbury australian b this evening.

i would love to know where she finds all that time during the day to travel back and forth to the tvg studio's, get her nails and hair done, and her makeup and then find time to handicap. of course all the other tvg personalities have to do the same thing. yet supposedly they all do their own handicapping.

i have to admit, wheather they do it themselves which i highly doubt, or they read it off a piece of paper which is highly likely, the picks are pretty darn good to say the least. whomever they have that is reading those pace figures are superb.

i have to come clean, on sunday i was listening to tvg because i was interested in a maiden race, they interviewed a trainer in the last race at del mar on a first time starter. the guy said everything right and i liked what he said, his horse had lots of speed and acted like a horse that had experience and had a good mind. i wound up betting $20 on it and the horse paid $28.

Funny you mention this book which is the bible of harness racing and still a book worth reading if your into harness.

This book really came out way before 1987. I just pulled my copy down from the bookshelf and see that the original copyright date of this book was 1970, the book was expanded and fully revised in 1980 because of The Meadowlands and it came back again in 1987.

Tom Ainslie real name was Richard Carter. He died 3 years ago at the age of 89.

Carter's best known handicapping book was published in 1968 and called "Ainslie's Complete Guide to Thoroughbred Racing. Ainslie's horseracing books included "Ainslie's Complete Guide to Harness Racing," "Ainslie's Encyclopedia of Thoroughbred Handicapping," "The Compleat Horseplayer," and "The Body Language of Horses," written in collaboration with Bonnie Ledbetter. He often wrote columns for the Daily Racing Form and The Racing Times.

__________
David-LV

Tom Ainslie's worst book by far, IMO.

The rating system that he offers in this book is completely erroneous, and has been vilified by every knowledgeable harness handicapper in the game.

I would recommend Steve Chaplin's works instead...and for the more serious player...Barry Meadow's "Professional Harness Betting".

PS...

It was not published in 1987, it was published in 1971...with slight revisions in latter years.

Tom Ansilie's New Complete Guide to Harness Racing. Published circa 1987
Tom Ansilie's Complete Guide to Harness Racing. Published circa 1971

I bought that book in 1972 after seeing Albatross destroy an invitational field at Hollywood park I believe he was parked 4 or 5 wide in a blazing first quarter and drew off in the stretch to win by open lengths.

At one time I had both editions of his book and the Meadows book which was pretty funny.
__________

Let me get this straight if I can.

Every so called "expert" at TVG uses printed out picks from whoever but her? :bang: :bang: :bang:

So she gives reasons almost all the hosts do also.

I guess it would ok for her to take a stand against bridgejumpers because she wears a skirt. :lol:

she either reads picks from a piece of paper, or she is a pure genious and has got the harness game figured out in less than a week. i appreciate tallent, maybe i am wrong about the experts reading from a piece of paper.

lambo - that was the funniest monologue i've read in a long time...laughed my a** off....great job!

Well now were talking. :ThmbUp:

I think they all make their own picks I'll give her credit for admitting she doesn't know the game well yet. My hunch on that nice priced horse at Mohawk is that it was an out of town shipper from a smaller track. Good for her if that's how she picked it because I thrown them out 90% of the time not ashamed to admit it. Right now she's going on almost raw TM ratings which is a good way to start. She also said she's keeping a log book of all the info given to her that show me a lot.

I think her biggest talent is looking at horses and saying which one looks best. When Quigley and her agree sometimes I throw a few bucks on that horse.


I wish her well seems like a nice lady not full of herself.

Interesting that you mention Chaplin's book, because just yesterday I was thinking about it. The occasion was my very infrequent delving in playing at Harrington.

The key theory in his book (at least the one I'm thinking of; I don't know if he has written others) is that we have a tendency to over-think in our play, devising trip scenarios in our mind, calculating class changes, depending on teletimer readings, etc. Instead, Chaplin proposes a very simplistic way of viewing a race, which is the horse is either in form or out of form.

He extends this in two logical ways. First, he describes what to look for in the past performances to indicate in-form, out-of-form, or unknown status. Second, he advises that you play the highest priced of the in-form animals. There are some other restrictions, but that is the basic thrust.

I used this approach yesterday at Harrington playing gimmicks and even though I only played a portion of the card, I had a good day. This leads me to wonder if we sometimes don't get bogged down in the small details too much. Maybe this throw-back idea still has some merit.

As far as Ainsle, I read his original book on harness racing soon after it was initially published. Heven't read it since and I have long since lost my copy of it. I don't remember specifics, but I do remember that it seemed to me to be written by a thoroughbred guy who knew very little about harness racing. He seemed like a fish out of water, trading on his famous name to make a few extra bucks. But I remeber finding no value in it at all.

As far as the girl on TVG, I caught a portion of the show and she was the recipient of blind luck. Now. That being said, we understand that the analysis on TVG is meant for the average player whom they are targeting to coax money from. But there is nothing, and I mean nothing ever said relative to harness handicapping that would appeal to a world-class player.

:15: How about the "THE THIRD LETTER R SYSTEM"?:p

you are one of the best handicappers on this board. there is no way in life that that girl can pick 3 stragiht winners at mohawk no matter how luckky one can be, and top it off with 2 of them at yonkers allthough those were dead bang chalk. i am gullible too, i have listened to all these pickers and if they were sitting in a room with no communication i wouldn't invest 16 cents on their own handicapping abilities luck or skill

Lambo, I guess you have sparked my interest, even though just a small spark to tune in and at least see what this girl looks like...hehehe.

Seriously, lets see what she can do in a months time, or lets say fifty pix.You can keeep track on her w/p/s ROI.I would be willing to bet that she would be in the negative,BUT I could be wrong,LORD knows I have been before.

life is all about being wrong. we all try to beat the system.

i have nothing against that girl, she seems to have a nice personality, and there is no one alive that is going to handicap horses with only a pad of paper and a pencil that is going to show a profit with those takeouts going against them. i guess it just humbles me when someone that is at the game for a week bangs out $60 winners and i can't find my way to an even money shot. i am a jealous guy i guess or probably more ignorant than the format at television games.

i used to know a guy that was a greyhound handicapper. he spent hours and hours studying tapes of racecards and he could never find his way to do more than 1 track. he was the most amazing cold-conker that i have ever met in my life when he was hot. the guys nickname was and still is "the rookie". when it came to dog racing boy does that guy have tallent

Lambo:

Don't get carried away. I like the girl too on the basis of what seems to be a very nice, unassuming personality. But frankly, I don't know what you're trying to say. She doesn't seem to have a fraction of the analytical ability and experience to be successful over a longer term.

The harness portion of the program looks to me like a shill for Trackmaster. But as I have pointed out before on this forum, Trackmaster suffers from some glaring shortcomings which should be an embarrassment to any company which was serious about what they do. To reiterate briefly, the BMLP/MAY circuit shows a routine difference in numbers from track to track of at least 5 points, with Maywood sporting the higher numbers. There are similar differences track-to-track elsewhere, but this inconsistency is truly unforgivable because these are the same horses, trainers, and drivers that routinely go back and forth between these two venues.

Now. Our TVG girl is listening to the analysis of the Trackmaster employee who is explaining the finer points of fig handicapping using TM to her. She purports to be interested in learning from this guy. My point is that even if she knew what this guy believes he knows, she'd still be light years away from being a profitable harness bettor.

So try to get over what you saw last night. It is a random-distribution mirage and it won't hold up.

Come on guys, we’ve all seen this dozens of times: hot chick comes to the track/otb, uses wtf system and picks winner after winner, we love how great she looks but hate how more often she’s cashing tix than we are.

jb

Hi Mark,

Chaplin has written 2 books...THE BETTOR'S GUIDE TO HARNESS RACING, and ADVANCED HARNESS RACING, both based on the same "methodology".

Yes...he is primarily interested in the horse's shape...but the manner thru which he determines it, can hardly be called "very simplistic" IMO. In fact...his methods are so well thought out, that they render OTHER methods simplistic - by comparison.

He equates SHAPE with STRETCH SPEED...theorizing that a horse in top shape, should show better stretch indurance than a horse in lesser shape...but he also supplies the reader with a comprehensive way of assessing the energy that the horses have expended PRE-STRETCH, using pace(fractional times), and trips.

Shape is determined, then, by comparing a horse's stretch speed with its pre-stretch energy...judging approximately how much better or worse the stretch speed was, compared to what it should have been, based on the pre-stretch energy expenditure.

Very advanced for his time...IMO.

If there is a glaring weakness in his books, it is in betting advice...but that is hardly surprising, given that the books were published in the 70s, when the betting menu was very limited.

the problem that i have with harness handicapping is trying to figure the strengths of the races that the horses come out of. i truly believe that one $10k claimer is weaker or stronger than the other, and i have no way of figureing it out.

i have been looking for a report suchas turfday stats in thoroghbreds that lists the trainers next to their horses with their percentages. i can't find them.

Now that you bring it up, I remember all of that. The relevence of stretch energy, however, has not passed the test of time in the new age of the game. Early speed is where the game is played these days and the late closers are like thoroughbred plodders who only win when the front speed horses totally collapse. If you want to do a little experiment along those lines, look at any program pps for a harness card. Go through all the horses and first write down one of the following designations for each horse:

"E" which means that the horse nearly always tries for the front in each of his races.

"E/C" which mean that the horse has shown the ability to go to the front early, or can be taken off the gate and raced from behind. And,

"C" which means that the horse is a dead closer, that is, never leaves for the lead.

Once you've done that for all horses, go back to their running-line record for the year where it shows number of starts and number of win, place, and shows. Calculate the win percentage for each horse and then record it next to his running style.

What will you find? That as a group, over a reasonable sample, the E horses will have the highest win percentage, followed by the E/C, and the C horses will always bring up the rear.

This is simply another way of saying that if a horse does not possess early speed, his chances of winning a given event are low.

This is also the reason I've said on the forum that guys who are using final 3/4 times, final 1/2 times, and/or final 1/4 times in their handicapping are wasting their valuable time.

Something I've never said here before is this: Uncovered forward movement is the only type of speed that is at all significant. What does that mean? It means that any covered-up, chasing speed is totally and completely bogus. It means nothing. So those :25.4 closing quarters that you see at Meadowlands are meaningless, unless the horse was peeled off cover and moving wide. Even then it's pretty meaningless unless the horse shows the concurrent ability to leave when necessary.

One of the reasons that I focus on early speed so much is that generally it falls into the category of uncovered and forward. Much of the remainder of speed in the race does not fill the bill. When it does, take note. That means that early launching of high speed off of cover is significant.

Also, horses possessed of high uncovered forward speed are ALWAYS dangerous in virtually any event. This means you leave them out of your play at your own risk, whatever the odds.

Chaplin was writing about New York metro HMT racing back in the day. I agree that his insights were excellent for the time and venue in which he wrote. But if he is still actively playing today, I think he has gotten far past his original directives.

On the other hand, what I was saying is that the idea of being in or out of form is still relevant. In that sense, what I distilled from Chaplin was more his emphasis on form than anything else. For example, here is a great betting strategy: Bet a horse moving up off of winning into a higher class that generally produces faster raw final times, but in which the supposed "higher-class" animals are out of good current form. Often, the stepping-up invader goes off at a high price under the assumption that he is "over his head" in this class. Another way of putting it might be that form trumps class.

My recent "remembering" of Chaplin is something for which none of us should have to be reminded. The public's odds are set based on times, class, form, trip prediction, driver (changes in particular), and to some extent trainer. We can probably show significant deficiencies in using any one of these single criteria, except one- form. Good form is the one variable that is never wrong or misleading. And so if we concentrate on playing this factor alone, we should be getting long-term value.

Goldie

A wonderful post.
Months ago there was a question about your favorite handicapping books.
I was the only one to mention Chaplin.

Of course, I was much more profitable with his way of thinking in the pre Meadowlands days. Not sure if his way of thinking is obsolete or I just overhandicap these days.

Your uncovered foward moivement is something I always look at.
Matter of fact first thing I look at in the program are any horses who have raced uncovered last out and have the fastest last quarter of the entrants.

It was a profit maker years ago but as you say early speed now is the way to go now.
Has the game changed due to the bikes?
Ask Pandy!

In TBreds my influence has been Huey Mahl who has stood the test of time.
His way of thinking and CJs figures are what I use.

Late Power
 

Mark, I agree with your post, early speed rules today. Except one thing, if a horse shows strong closing power recently, such as a fast last quarter, and in the past has shown the ability to leave the gate, that is a good sign and the driver is probably going to send the horse as soon as he gets a spot where he thinks he can get the lead. A lot of standardbreds are not one dimensional, they can leave or finish and those are actually the best horses to bet on.

So basically what I'm saying is, just because the horse hasn't been leaving lately doesn't mean it isn't leaving tonight.

:ThmbUp: Like

Are you talking about being sucked along here?

Interesting post, btw....

Interesting read here and that is what makes this forum here at PA the best in my opinion.I hope all of you that have been contributing lately continue to do so in the future.

One thing that I have noticed over the years is when my horse is not nearly closest to his best he or she will not race well when hustled out of the gate.A horse NEEDS to be near his best to compete when being used early.An occasional pocket sitter may prevail from time to time, but most of them win drafting in from an inside post.Uncovered is so hard on a horse and as Mark noted those who ride the cover are so greatly benefited.Class should be brought up here and how important it really has always been.Today especially to compete with the bigger claiming barns and their dominance of the winning percentage of purses, I will ONLY BUY OR CLAIM those horses that have shown their class at sometime during their career.The smaller operations will take their chances on the chronic sore one's, if they have that backclass. A horses heart to compete and try hard will always be there even when they hit nine or ten.They would have lossed their peak class by then, but many times will be in the top of their group in whatever class they may be in at that present time.

Many times the bigger operations will cast these off, because they delay their business of "turn and burn" them.These are the one's I look for primarily and I have seen many good trainers have good success with them.