“Playing the Horses”: Handicapping Approaches
 

As I look back at my over 60 years of pari-mutuel gambling (I played cards before that), a lot of water has passed under bridge.

I can still remember that warm August evening in 1958 at Foxboro Raceway, south of Boston, when I made and cashed my first pari-mutuel wager, a $2 show-bet on an aged mare named Adios Lucy. The reason I bet her was because a friend’s father had told me that the harness horse named Adios was a prolific sire.

Oh, I’ve come a long way from my neophyte handicapping days when I could hardly read, let alone understand the nuances of a harness program or DRF racing form. In those days, I hadn’t even graduated from high school.

I have to chuckle, almost out of embarrassment, the approaches I used, especially when I was younger, to scrounge out a buck. In those days… Those “Boston days… I was, what might have been called a “street urchin.” I lived, except to sleep and eat, on the streets. My friends and I played ball in the streets, or in area schoolyards. And, we spent numerous hours in pool halls. The characters we found there came right out of a Damon Runyan novel, i.e., “Bobby the Horse.” In fact, when I first saw the musical, “Guys and Dolls,” I thought I was again livin’ in my old Boston neighborhood with its bookies, touts, panhandlers, “moochers,” etc. Realistically, as I look back, I didn’t get my education in school, I got it on the streets. That was “the real world”.

As for the track, my friends and I, in those early days, relied on a method that you won’t find in any book on how to handicap the races. We called it “drafting” (I believe, years ago, I wrote a post on this). I learned, early on, from my pool hall days (I once said to a friend that the walls seem “to sweat” at “Mickey’s” on Blue Hill Ave. I can, to do this day, still “hear” the clacking of the billiard pools bouncing off each other, especially “on the break”), that knowledge was power. Information. Information was the key.

When I went to the track, in that time-period of the late 1950s, my friends and I would slip in behind in the wagering line (in those days, you bet in the front, cashed in the back), what we called “rollers,” as in “high-rollers”. We sometimes called them “pigeons”. We even had names for them, i.e., “Bet-A-Billion”. We felt they knew; we certainly didn’t. The refrain was: “Who did “Bet” bet on?” Or, “Who does ‘The Beard’ like?” As I reflect back on all this, it was a short-lived attempt to make some “luchi” that was more work than it was worth. I know none of us kept track; yet, I also know that none of us made anything close to getting us a room in Boston’s Copley Plaza Hotel.

The years go by. I graduate from college (I do not, to this day, know how I ever got my diploma. I had a job “paging” books in the college library. I was, instead, reading the DRF in one of the many alcoves in “the stacks”).

In the mid-1960s, I’m teachin’ history in a school system on Long Island (I chose the place because it was equi-distant between Roosevelt and Yonkers). One summer night, at Yonkers, I first experimented with one of my many handicapping “methods”. I would “chart the tote”.

In this method, I would, at first, with a ruler, later just by hand, create on a piece of paper, a grid. At the top, I would write, in the grid-blocks, the numbers #s 1 through 8. Then, I watch the tote. The win pool. Numbers. Changing numbers. I’m recording these numbers on my grid. Down the page I go as more tote-board changes occur. I’m looking for aberrations, especially on longshots. Unusual betting patterns. For example, I remember a longshot, on the first flash, catching an unusual amount of money, especially coming from the #8 post (that’s “bacio della morte” at Yonkers). Long story short, he “drifts” back up, but he wins. I had him, but just for a deuce. Ouch!

Oh, I wish I could recount every dam approach I’ve used. But let me conclude with one that I occasionally use this day. Yes it’s “out of left-field,” but, when it comes to racing, even in life, I do not preclude, anything.

This all got started, one day, years ago, when I had a conversation with one of my friends – now living in Florida – a guy we called “Bucko”. “Bucko’s” thesis: “We are not attuned to the subtleties of life.” Now, before I get into this, and before you call me “abuelo loco,” I can’t quantify this. This is more theoretical than empirical.

In a nutshell, “Bucko” believed that we, if we’re aware of it, get, what he called “signs”. Most people don’t recognize them because we’re too wrapped up in our own lives. We’re, as he put it, “on different wave-lengths”. “Bucko” told me a story that one day he was doing some errands. As he returned home, he spotted a rainbow directly over his house (his parents had both passed on). “Bucko,” who loves to play “the daily number,” loaded up on anything to do with his parents, e.g., their birthdays, house number, etc. As he told me, he played those numbers for a week. He “hit” twice, not all four exactly, but enough to make for a very profitable week. Coincidence? You can call this the occult. Numerology. Para-psychology. Etc.

Finally, I use something akin to this, on occasion, when I bet the horses on my computer. I have met with a degree of success. Was it luck? Was it chance?

Here goes. I divide numbers into two categories: “rounds” and “angles”. The “rounds” are: #s 2, 3, 6, 8 and 9. The “angles” are: #s 1, 4, and 7; the number #5 is a “hybrid”; it can be used as either a “round” or an “angle”.

I frequently play superfectas. I write numbers down on a piece of paper: say 1-0-0-1. I look at those numbers. I juxtaposition them in my mind (I realize your immediate reaction is that this is preposterous). Yes, the track, say Aqueduct, is more than 100 miles away. I’m going to get “vibes” through a computer monitor. Yet, I believe in clairvoyance and precognition. Admittedly, nothing scientific.

In conclusion, in this “off-the-wall” approach I’ve had some good “hits,” yet more often than not, I’ve lost. However, some of my losses were because I had the right “shape,” in the right place, but I failed to insert a longshot who surprisingly filled it. As I finish up, in the world of handicapping, I don’t leave any stone unturned.

"Abuelo loco", says it all...IMO. :ThmbUp:

When I started betting horses it was also over 60 yrs ago and I bet a sysem by Hal Dunn right out of American Turf Monthly but soon graduated to Ray Taulbot's Pace calculater. In the 80's I answered a Sartin ad in DRF and been mostly using his prgms ever since. Where did the time go?

my perception of horseracing looking over the past 35 or so years, is that it is dictated by a few people, like every other aspect of today's american reality. the bafferts, brobergs, pletchers, and a few others. of course the majority of the time these people's horses are overbet. which for the bettor devolves the game into looking for that proverbial needle in a haystack.
simply put, horses underbet SIGNIFICANTLY enough for the small bettor to show a respectable profit are rare. this consequently puts the money sport of horserace gambling into the category of recreation for most little folk.
i avoid the gimmick bets such as the pick 6 since it heavily favors those folk with money, despite the promotion of such bet types by the talking heads of the t.v. personalities.

I grew up close enough to Saratoga that it was impossible to avoid the racing talk in August. In that month usually the answer to the question, "Where's so-and-so," was, "at the track."

I was a fan of Ray Taulbot pretty much from the first time I read American Turf Month (Ultimately I became a regular contributor to that magazine). I was a hard worker when it came to looking at the winners of previous races. I tried a couple of things on my own, mainly related to weighing individual factors, sort of like regressions. I'd also follow certain trainers who didn't have big stables but seemed live when they had a horse in.

My racing life took a huge turn when I uncovered something that we ultimately called The Condition Sign. Fort Erie, Canada was where I went as soon as classes were over for the day. Just a quick trip from Buffalo, where I was going to school. across the Peace Bridge and there it was. One day I was looking at a horse named Hoosier Rob. Really good looking chestnut. His first 4 or 5 starts I don't think he beat a horse. Close to last from gate to wire. In his two most recent starts he did something different. In his penultimate start he had the lead at the quarter call before dropping back. In his last race he held his speed before fading in the stretch. The horses came out and he really looked great. His odds on the board were 80-1.

It would have been a cool ending if he won, but he got caught near the sixteenth pole. Anyway, I had six bucks across on him (I haven't bet to show in 40 years, but across the board was popular at that time). I think I collected about $75, and had a new method to perfect. I made a lot of money using The Condition Sign and eventually wrote a book about it (1988 or so).

It's become harder and harder to find big long shots that have a good chance to win, primarily because the statistical information now available in the DRF, Timeform, etc. became far more available. In the "old" days if you wanted to know how successful a particular jockey/trainer combo was, you researched it.

That is my conclusion. The older we get the harder it is to adjust to new ways of thinking, and I think that has as much to do with declining attendance as some other factors. When I look at a Form and realize nothing I like is going to pay more than $11, it's a lot harder to get excited. But it's in my blood and I just have to keep working at it.

I was visiting with my brother today and he reminded me about what he used to think about horse racing:

Flat racing is stupid and only harness racing should be played.

Then it became a point (for him) to only play eastern tracks like Belmont or Saratoga.

Turf racing also made no sense, not to mention European Racing.

Finally, west coast jockeys and racetracks were unintelligible.

I used to think he knew next to nothing!

but Bucko's thesis is undeniable!
 

Gotta love Bucko's thesis-- “We are not attuned to the subtleties of life.”

That sort of philosophy could lead to all sorts of trouble and fun

Hey man, there is a zen to handicapping.