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[biggestal99]

Originally Posted by pandy

The wealth of stats in the book, which as you say are from Ken Massa, are impressive. In my opinion, I think readers have to be cautious of taking all of the statistics as gospel. They have to be viewed in the right context. As an example, generally speaking, Massa's stats show that blinkers off did better in both ROI and Impact Values than blinkers on. But I personally much prefer blinkers on. I've have quite a few scores over the years where I felt that the reason the horse won the race was mainly because it improved sharply in blinkers. And often the horse was a longshot.

Taking blinkers of a horse can certainly be beneficial in certain situations. Trainers sometimes like to stretch a horse out, for instance, and they'll take the blinkers off to try to get the horse to relax because they want to take it back off the pace. Or, they may be trying to wake the horse up in a future race by putting the blinkers back on.

But my point is, if you know how to use blinkers on, it can be a potent longshot angle. I learned a lot about thoroughbred handicapping from hanging out and working alongside sharp handicappers like Brad Thomas and Paul Cornman, who are both excellent trip handicappers. Brad, for instance, closely watches how young horses run in their first few starts: how green they are, how long their stride is, whether they shy from horses, whether they seem to get nervous running inside of horses, how they handle kick back, etc. Consequently, he has a good feel for which horses will benefit from adding blinkers.

For me it’s always been blinkers on for young inexperienced horses, blinkers off for older more experienced types. The book didn’t break it down by age of horse

Allan