Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave Schwartz
While there are probably some artful handicappers who have beaten the game for decades or more, and are still winning today, my belief is that the level of skill necessary to win with "art" is somewhere along the lines of a Da Vinci or Picasso.
The make-an-oddsline-and-bet-into-the-tote is simply dead. The tote is a moving target.
So, how do we win?
Well, we must do something different for starters. But that isn't the end of it. Somebody has to do serious studying to figure it out.
Waking up on a Monday morning and deciding that you're going to have it figured out by the following weekend is just completely without merit. Same with thinking that running through about 40 races will provide a meaningful answer.
But I firmly believe it can still be done, even by a PPC player. (i.e. pencil, paper, calculator)
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When online poker was in full swing in this country, I kept hearing about how lucky the young poker players were to be coming up during the online poker era...because they could play hundreds of hands an hour while the "live" poker player had been severely limited in that regard. The online poker player could accumulate a "decade's worth of poker experience in a mere 6 months", the saying went...and it was true. But...what sort of "experience" would that be? Would the online players be able to concentrate on those hundreds of hands an hour with the same focus that the studious live poker players had been plying their trade up 'til that time? Could quantity ever trump QUALITY...when serious money is at stake?
I think the same thing has happened with horse racing now that full-card simulcasting has merged with computer handicapping software, and databases. Today's horseplayer has access to more races in a day than the horseplayers of old had in a week...and the "hi-tech" handicapping tools give the impression that such a monumental task could be manageable even for the part-time player...because the computer software does all the grunt work. And quality again suffers at the hands of quantity.
I think progress is a beautiful thing...and I have tried to embrace it myself, as much as my mental capacity will allow. But I also think that the handicapping technology that we now hold in our hands must be recognized as the "tool" that it really is...and that the real "skill" is the property of the craftsman, and not of the tool that he happens to wield. As the computer software mines the past performances looking for clues, the handicapper must perform his due diligence too...because the most important clues are often found BETWEEN the lines.
