This is a re-post from an article I wrote in July. Seemed appropriate since Willet and La Verdad hooked up again last weekend.

Anyone who says, I’m going to try to beat Horse A with Horse B because Horse A’s odds are “too low” doesn’t understand value. It’s one thing to say, Horse B has a higher probability of winning, or Horse B has a 20% chance of winning but his odds will be 10-1, but it is misleading to suggest you should pass Horse A just because Horse B has higher odds, and you’ll see exactly what I mean in one of my examples below.

This is one of the great fallacies of horseracing – that you can’t make money at 8-5. You may not be able to make a lot of money in one fell swoop, but if you think that a horse at 8-5 (39% chance) has a 60% chance of winning, 8-5 represents a pretty nice overlay. And even if your “second choice” is at 5-1 (17% chance), unless you think that horse really should be 2-1, your only legitimate win bet is to bet the 8-5 horse.

Look, every horseplayer has an unshakable opinion on a race he is interested in. Just because I think one horse is better than another and you think exactly the opposite, doesn’t make me right or wrong. Only the running of the race can do that. There is only one way to bet to win, and that is to FIND SOLID OVERLAYS. Period.

The mathematics of betting are very simple. If you are a good handicapper and you can assess a horse’s probability of winning (or finishing second or third) and you limit your bets to those races where the difference between the tote odds and your odds reaches a certain threshold value, you will make money.

The outfits that say, I’ll only bet this horse at 4-1 or greater without telling you what they think the horse’s probabilities are, simply cannot understand the mathematics of winning. A horse that is 40% in your opinion is a great bet at 5-2 or higher. He is at least a reasonable bet at 2-1.

Believe me, the good public handicappers either do that overtly or in general. When they try to steer you to a 20-1 horse, they better say, this horse has at least a 15% chance of winning the race, because in my opinion at less than 15%, you just aren’t picking reliable animals.

Let me use some races from the Thursday July 3 card at Belmont to illustrate some points.

The third race wound up as a 4 horse field. The favorite, La Verdad, was 1-9, a 90% probability according to the crowd. He was an impossible and foolish win bet, even at those odds because HE WAS NOT AN OVERLAY. And if someone said, we’re going to try to beat La Verdad with Willet, Willet would have only been a legitimate win bet if you honestly believed that he had a higher probability of winning than his tote board odds. If you hear something like, if La Verdad doesn’t win, Willet probably will, and you don’t hear what they think the probabilities are, they aren’t doing the right amount of work. Willet in that race went off at a little over 7-2 (22%). Now if you believed La Verdad was 60% and Willet was 33% (2-1), by all means you should have bet Willet. Otherwise, maybe you could have looked at a cold exacta which turned a 1-9 shot into even money, actually a pretty substantial overlay. If La Verdad was 90% to win, Willet might have been 90% to place, meaning any exacta that paid more than $3.00 was a good parimutuel play. Whether or not Willet was a win bet was wholly dependent on what you thought his odds of winning the race were, not only that he was the only horse with a chance of upsetting La Verdad.

Let’s look at one other race from that day, the 6th. Here was my line.

Horse               Track Odds          My Odds

• 1                            9-1                       50-1
• 2                            9-5                          5-2
• 3     SCR
• 4                            4-1                          6-1
• 5                           12-1                     20-1
• 6                            3-1                          7-5
• 7                            2-1                          3-1

What’s the play here? A win bet on the 6 horse and a reasonably healthy exacta, 6/2. The 6 was at least a 100% overlay for me. If you wanted to bet a trifecta, it would have been 6/2/4,7. The 6 won the race by a comfortable length and a half, the 2 gave me some nervous moments but closed to grab second by a head, and the 4 finished third. (When you read my blog post entitled Risk Intelligence, you’ll understand why you should use the 4 and the 7.) The winner paid $8.20, the exacta was $35, and the trifecta was $95. This was a six horse race with a winner at 3-1 and the favorite second, and it was a prime bet for me.

Now your line could have been different, and I am certainly not right every time (or even most of the time), but you will never hear me say, I’m going to try to beat the 2 with the 6. I’m going to say, the 6 is the value. And on my line, no other horse was.

This was the follow up to the Magic Number.

It was in the last issue of Horseplayer that never got published.

An Englishman named Dylan Evans has written recently about something he calls risk intelligence (RI). It refers to a special kind of “intelligence” we all have (to varying degrees) that we use to define risk and uncertainty in our lives. Evans describes it as, “the ability to estimate probabilities accurately, it’s about having the right amount of certainty to make educated guesses.” In horse racing terms, it means that if you have enough information and enough skill at processing it to recognize when an investment is justified, you have a much greater likelihood of making money in the long run. To put it in more practical terms, if you bet a horse at 10-1 that you think should be 3-1, and you are good at calculating probabilities, in the long run you should make a healthy profit.

Unfortunately, estimating probability is far easier said than done and ultimately rests on an individual’s ability to take limited information and a whole lot of uncertainty and come up with the right decisions. Above all, it depends on having a clear and unbiased ability to know yourself and recognize your limitations. As Evans started doing research, he found that most people are not particularly good at estimating probabilities. In fact his first thought was that just about everyone must be terrible at it. As he did more research, to his surprise, Evans found that a small group of people consistently had very high levels of risk intelligence – horse players. (To be fair, the other high RI groups are sports bettors, blackjack, poker and bridge players, and surprisingly weather forecasters.) I don’t imagine his finding is surprising to the vast majority of serious handicappers, and it underscores what many of us instinctively know: if you are betting without an edge you are just gambling. Or as Evans might suggest, if you are playing the horses and you have a low RI, it might be time to think about taking up tennis. (You can go to this website to take an online RI test at no cost http://www.projectionpoint.com)

What Evans critically points out is that people with very high RI’s are neither underconfident nor overconfident to an excessive degree. (But let’s be frank – we’ve all had a sure thing that we’d have bet the farm on given the chance, and that sort of makes Evans’ point. We don’t see it as overconfidence, but great handicapping.) In fact, once Evans started testing RI, he learned that most people tend to overestimate just how much they actually do know, which once you’ve been to the track also is not very surprising. There is always one person in the group who is absolutely, positively sure he is on the winner, often to the point where when his horse trudges across the finish line mid-pack he can thoroughly explain why the winner shouldn’t have won and he should have. The good news is that even if you don’t have a very high RI, it can be acquired.

Whether Evans knew it or not, he was building on the work of the well-known (at least in horse racing circles) psychologist Howard Sartin. Sartin treated compulsive gamblers based on the basic idea that if you wanted to cure losing, you had to teach someone how to win. In Sartin’s case he did it by developing an eponymous methodology based on pace principles and energy distribution, and for a number of years the so-called Sartinites were in great vogue in the handicapping world, with the height of the Sartin craze coming from the publications of Pace Makes the Race in 1991 and Tom Brohammer’s well-known book, Modern Pace Handicapping in 2000.

Sartin’s simple idea that learning how to be a winner was the answer to being a complusive loser certainly sounds logical enough. But, if you dig a little deeper, it is clear that there are emotional differences between expert and compulsive gamblers. First, skilled handicappers know when not to bet because of their ability to more accurately calculate probabilities. Second, while problem gamblers get a huge high from winning, losing doesn’t really bother them that much. On the other hand, expert handicappers do not get as big a rush from winning, but more importantly they thoroughly detest losing. This makes them constantly trying to improve their decision making process. To finish the thought, being armed with a good handicapping tool won’t be a lot of help if it doesn’t help you discern between a good bet and a bad one. And as many a great handicapper has lamented, if only I was a more skillful bettor, my profits would skyrocket. I can tell you the greatest bettor I have ever known was at best an average handicapper. In fact, it is an absolute fact that every successful horseplayer is a highly proficient bettor. Most of us spend inestimable time learning how to discern racing data, and figure out betting almost as an afterthought.

So, how do you improve your risk intelligence? The answer is pretty obvious. Keep detailed records of wins and losses. The wonderful thing about betting horses is that the results are not ambiguous. Either you win or you don’t. Either you make money or you don’t. You have to do the one thing that regular losers don’t do – constantly figure out which bets you lose and why. And most of the time the answer is less about your handicapping than your betting.

In my blog post “The Magic Number”, I described how to make and use an odds line for win bets. In this article we’ll apply similar reasoning to combination bets – exactas, trifectas, and superfectas. So while it wouldn’t be valuable spending any time discussing record keeping (you can figure that out on your own), it would be useful to get a little deeper into the topic of probabilities and betting the combinations.

I happened to be in Vegas recently having dinner with one of my brothers, when he said something I found illuminating. Handicappers are most proficient at assigning win odds, but almost completely untrained to assign place, show or fourth place odds. This is true whether you are trying to decide the chances one of the favorites will finish behind the actual winner, or if you are trying to assess one of the lesser runners. What does this mean? It means most bettors are at least initially going to be lousy at making combination bets such as exactas, trifectas and superfectas, and often when they hit them the return on investment (ROI) is something that should be unacceptable. Have you ever put $60 into a trifecta to collect only $120, and then wondered what you were thinking? Even money on a risky combination bet is not the road to riches.

Let’s start by examining some generalized race types. The example below shows the respective probabilities of finish for a hypothetical 2-1 horse (33% winning chance – and remember these are your odds, not tote board odds) in a 10-horse field. Assume this horse is in good form, was placed at the right level and has a good running style for the race. The table shows that this particular runner has an additional 25% chance of running second and an additional 15% chance of running third. Thus, its total prospect for finishing in the money is 73%. For those of you wondering, the best horse in the race should have its highest percentage number in the win category. Does this mean the horse has less of a chance of finishing second? Technically yes, although if you were making a straight place bet you could say the probability of getting a payoff in this example is 58%. Finally, take note that the percentages are not based on an exhaustive study but are used as an illustrative hypothetical. In this case, the point is that not only does the horse have a great chance of winning the race, it also has a high probability of being part of the exacta and trifecta, and a fairly small probability of finishing in the back of the pack. As you’ll see later on, you actually won’t have to create percentages for other than the win position, so don’t get panicky. We’ll call this runner the high-win type (HW).

High-Win Type

Finish Pos     % Probability

1.                          33
2.                          25
3.                         15
4.                           9
5.                           6
6.                           5
7.                           5
8.                           2
9.                           0
10.                           0*

*Percentages may not add up exactly to 100% due to rounding

The second type is the opposite of the first – the low-win type (LW). This horse has a much higher probability of finishing in the back of the pack as opposed to in the money. The first two types represent the two extremes. Horses with high probabilities of winning conversely have low probabilities of finishing well back, and horses with low probabilities of winning have much higher probabilities of finishing near the end of the pack. But, from the way the second type is constructed, it is also clear that the chances of the high-odds horse finishing third or fourth is not insignificant, and this will be useful when we start discussing betting. In fact, the probability of this type of horse finishing fourth is about the same as for lower-priced horses.

Low-Win Type

Finish Pos         % Probability

1.                               2
2.                               3
3.                               6
4.                               9
5.                            11
6.                            14
7.                            15
8.                            16
9.                            12
10.                            12

Before we get into talking about how to better make combination bets, let’s add three other types. This represents the mid-priced type (MP), in this case a horse about 5-1 on your line. These horses have far lower win probabilities than the high-win types but are almost as likely when it comes to an in-the-money finish.

Mid-Price Type

Finish Pos              % Probability

1.                                     17
2.                                     20
3.                                    17
4.                                    15
5.                                    11
6.                                      8
7.                                      6
8.                                      3
9.                                      2
10.                                      2

This next type applies to horse with a low probability of winning, but a high probability of finishing in the money. We’ll call it the in-the-money (ITM) type. It looks similar to the normal high-win type from the place position on, with the win percentage near zero. You often see this pattern in “professional maidens” (horses with 10 or more starts and a high number of place or show finishes) or horses with some version of “seconditis” (the horse that looks like 35-1-11-13). The term we used for that type of runner was the “sucker horse,” and the only time these horses seem to win is when they are battling in the stretch with a similar sucker horse. However, these horses often represent great opportunity, because the crowd will confuse their chances of winning with their chances of finishing in the money, often sending them off as severe underlays. You can feel safe putting them in the back holes, and save money by leaving them out of the win slot.

In-The-Money Type

Finish Pos            % Probability

1.                                      2
2.                                   25
3.                                   24
4.                                   15
5.                                   10
6.                                     8
7.                                     7
8.                                    6
9.                                    2
10.                                    2

The final type is the All-or-Nothing (AON) sort, meaning either the horse wins or finishes somewhere in the pack. This pattern would be most common among “need the lead” types, where if they face a stressful challenge, they fold badly.

All-or-Nothing Type

Finish Pos         % Probability

1.                              33
2.                                 7
3.                                 6
4.                                 9
5.                              11
6.                              11
7.                              10
8.                                5
9.                                4
10.                                3

As I said above, most of us, and especially the crowd as a whole, are far more effective at assigning win percentages, and until someone writes the definitive piece on “How to Pick a Horse to Finish Second,” it will probably remain that way. We’ve all been conditioned to “pick winners,” but with the best payoffs available in the combination pools, it becomes critical to figure out which horses to use and how. Unfortunately, it isn’t as simple as saying the horse with the second highest win probability has the highest place probability and so on. I don’t know exactly how often in a full field the first three choices finish in exactly that order, but I suspect it is a fairly rare occurrence. In the same respect, having a longshot fill the show spot happens far more often than you would expect given its low probability of winning.

It’s not the case that there are only five types of runners, but in general, any other type is just a slight variation on one of these five. So, armed with this knowledge, how do you become a better combination bettor?

We’ll start with the exactas and I’ll make it easy for you. The table below shows the payoffs you would need to realize 50% profit from any respective $2 exacta combination using YOUR pre-race win odds line (it’s not perfect but remember, I promised you wouldn’t have to calculate place probabilities and it’s better than guessing). In general, if the exacta is paying less than the amount shown, it is not a worthwhile bet, but as always, use your discretion.

Place Horse

Finally, some DOs and DON’Ts with regard to the running types described above.

• DO turn any low or medium priced horse into much longer shot. If you bet an exacta with our hypothetical 2-1 horse on top, demand payoffs at least in line with the exacta table.
• On the other hand, DON’T turn your 2-1 shot into an 8-5 shot. Say you put the 2-1 horse on top of four other horses in a $2 exacta. That would be the same as making an $8 win bet, and if the 2-1 horse pays the minimum $6, that $8 win bet would return $24. So any of the four exactas that pays less than $24 is a bad bet. You can overcome this by varying your bet based on the payoffs, betting more on the lower priced combinations, and thus keeping any respective exacta payoff ahead of the total win bet. Still, you may often be better off dropping the low paying combinations and shifting your bets to the win pool.
• DO make sure to have win money on a HW or MP overlay (when comparing your odds line with the tote board odds).
• With the HW type, DO use the horse heaviest on top in either exactas, trifectas or superfectas, slightly less in the place position, and slightly less than that in the show position. DON’T use the high win type in the fourth spot in a superfecta bet.
• With the HW type, DON’T bet trifecta tickets with the crowd favorite on top and the next two choices in the second and third spots. Same with the superfecta. If you really think the choices will finish 1-2-3, look to work out an exacta bet. It will probably be a better value.
• With the MP horse, DO use the horse aggressively in the place and show spots for exactas, trifectas and superfectas. DON’T use the mid-priced horses on top in exactas, trifectas and superfectas equivalently to the high-win types. I know I’m often guilty of hitting the “box” button in the exacta, mostly because it is easy, but if you really believe one horse has a higher probability of winning than another, you should back that opinion with your action.
• DO use the LW type in the third spot in trifectas and the fourth spot in superfectas. When it comes to the trifecta, the “all” button in the third position can reap big benefits. Remember the basic principle. The crowd is not nearly as efficient at assigning probabilities to the place and show positions.
• When it comes to the AON horse, DO play the horse only on top in your combinations. As hard as it may be, unless the field is short, assume that if the horse doesn’t win, it’s likely to not even finish in the money.
• When it comes to the ITM horse, DO single them underneath the higher win probability horses in the exacta, and in the place and show spots in the trifecta and superfecta. When you feel comfortable not having to reverse the exacta, you can more easily turn the winner into a higher priced horse. Remember as well, any time you have a single in one of the spots in a trifecta, you conceptually turn it into an exacta box. A single with three horses in the trifecta is six combinations, same as a three horse exacta box. Similarly, you can do the same thing in a superfecta.

It happened again today. A horse with a low probability of finishing first went off as the favorite in the 10th race, a low-level claimer on the turf. One of the folks on Twitter singled the horse, and I just wanted to scream, NOOOOO!

I’ve said it before, and a lot of people get this, but the crowd often conflates the probability of finishing in the money with the probability of winning. I don’t care how fast the horse looks on paper, horses with double digit starts and no wins inevitably seem to find a way to lose.

The specific horse in question today was Malibu Queen. She went off at 9-5. She was 1 for 19, including 0 for 8 on a fast dirt track and 0 for 9 on the turf. Her best figure was faster than any other horse and as far as I was concerned she could have been 9-1 and she wouldn’t have been a good win bet. She finished second, almost 6 lengths behind the winner and only a nose in front of the show horse.

This phenomenon is mainly applicable to maiden and NW2L races. In higher class races, horses that show they can’t win are quickly dropped down the class ladder until they find a level that allows them to succeed. Why do some horses run fast enough to get a good rating but not fast enough to win? I believe it relates back to behavior in the wild. Only one horse gets to lead the herd, and many other horses recognize they are perfectly comfortable following the leader or placing themselves in the relative safety of the herd.

Do they ever win? Sure they do. Usually when they are battling in the stretch with another 1 for 19 horse, or when they are able to make a perfectly timed sustained move.

It would be one thing if today’s 10th was an isolated incident, but it happens with ridiculous regularity. This is a sampling from last week at Saratoga.

• Date     Race         Horse                              Record          Odds   Finish
• 8/3        10             2 Shaikha                       14-0-6-1      6-1        4th
• 8/7         6               5 Navajo Ca Lo           26-1-3-3      5-2        5th
• 8/7         7              10 Kevin’s Steel          13-0-3-0      4-1        6th
• 8/7        10             3 Jenny’s Creek         17-0-5-5       9-5       7th
• 8/8        7               9 Dominate                   23-1-6-6       7-2       8th
• 8/11     4               1 Downgoesfrazier  13-0-5-5       8-5       2nd
• 8/11     6               6 Forest Boy                 12-0-4-1      5-2       5th

I’m not sure I got all the horses that had low probabilities of winning but got bet, but in a week there were 7 horses, 4 of which were favorites, and only 1 of which finished in the money.

It’s a difficult thing to toss-out the horse with the highest number, but that is precisely what you have to do if you are betting horizontals. My general rule of thumb is any maiden with more than 10 starts gets pitched unless something dramatic changes – move to a lesser circuit, change in barns, change in distance or change in surface. For horses that are in NW2L, any horse with more than 15 starts is a similar pitch.

These sorts of races represent excellent money making opportunities, especially in the multi-race bets. You just need the fortitude and the sense to ignore these sucker type horses.

The Whitney on Saturday was supposed to be a small speed bump in the road to horse of the year for Palace Malice. It turned out to be a large boulder.

The race was won by  Moreno at 10-1. Naturally there were a lot of very disappointed Palace Malice followers, some even pointing out that the race wasn’t won by the best horse in the race.

This is where the rub is. Moreno was the best horse in the race if the scenario was for an easy lead with a pace that wasn’t killing. If the pace had been faster, he wasn’t a very likely winner.

This is a critical mistake that handicappers often make. It is easy to identify the fastest or most accomplished horse. But remember I wrote about the four questions you need to answer before you make a selection.

• What kind of style has been winning that type of race? Early speed? Plodders? There hadn’t been a comparable dirt route run on that day, but dirt races had been won wire to wire and come from behind. So the track looked like it was playing fairly.
• Which race do we choose to evaluate the horse? Moreno had just tried to wire a field in the Suburban and fell a little short. That race was a quarter mile longer, so the idea of Moreno wiring a field in the Whitney was not out of the question. Any of his races where he had the lead and finished well would give us a good idea of ability.
• How fast can he run? If he is too slow on his best day, you can eliminate the horse.
• Can he run a winning race today. This was the key question. If you believed Moreno would jump out to the lead (a reasonable scenario), would not be pushed hard  up front, and would be on reasonable fractions, then you had to use him on top.

The lesson of the Whitney is

HANDICAP THE HORSE AND THE RACE.

Palice Malice looked incredibly strong on paper. His connections spared no expense trying to figure out why he ran a complete clunker. So far they haven’t found a physical explanation, but I’m betting sooner or later they come up with a reason. Even with Moreno’s comfortable fractions, had Palace Malice been in top form he may have won. But that doesn’t change the strategy. You can bet both scenarios.

I’ll add one thing about the “loose on the lead” concept. Horses instinctively want to run to the front. It takes a combination of training and jockey ability to get a horse to relax and explode to the front late, just as it takes jockey ability to get a front runner to relax and not blow all his energy on the lead. There were plenty of pressing type horses in the race. The jockeys could have read the relatively slow pace and been closer to Moreno throughout, probably giving them a better chance to win. If you watch the great ones, they all had speed to spare – they just chose to use it in different ways.

So Moreno probably isn’t going to get any votes for horse of the year, but he was the horse of the Whitney at $22.

If you don’t want to read any farther, the answer is the trainer is critical to the success of a horse.

In my blog piece about jockeys a few days ago, I mentioned my bias in favor of the horse. If a jockey has the best horse in a race and basically allows that horse to run its race, the vast majority of the time that horse will win.

On the other hand, everything about the horse is in the hands of the trainer. The list of jobs the trainer has is enormous. He has to figure out everything from diet to how to keep a genetically high strung animal from being a head case. The trainer is father, mother, coach, babysitter, amateur doctor, and the best friend a horse has. The horse may have an inherent ability, but only a first-rate trainer can get the maximum results.

If you read some of the reports from the recently completed Welfare and Safety Summit, you realize just how critical the trainer is. How often and how hard he works the horse is incredibly important to the horse’s long term health. The most important thing that I saw come out of that conference is that you have to have the perfect combination of races and gallops to properly strengthen and remodel bone.

The best trainers not only know this, but they know exactly how to accomplish it. Just like jockeys,

The best trainers get the best horses.

There are a bevy of statistics available through TimeformUS and Formulator. If you want to know how a trainer does on a Thursday in September when the temperature is 83 degrees and the horses is coming out of the six post, I’m betting someone has that information.

The problem with handicapping trainers is that we don’t really have interior access to the less public information. Oh, we knew that Alan Jerkens was “the giant killer” because he had a career full of victories over odds-on horses. But we weren’t exactly sure what he did that brought out the best in horses. Was it diet? Some special training technique that he stumbled into? His farrier?  Some concoction of vitamins and herbs he got from a shaman? No, we just took it on faith that every time Jerkens started a horse he was dangerous.

Remember Oscar Barrera, great claiming trainer, a man the Daily News referred to as “the miracle man?” Ray Paulick wrote this about Barrera

“Barrera would claim a horse from an early race on a Wednesday and, if the entry box for Friday was still open, might run it back two days later for a higher claiming price – often winning. He would run that same horse again in another three or four days. And again. And again. Barrera once won six races in a single month with the same horse.”

We never knew for sure whether he had mastered some secret of training, or he was the Linus Pauling of horse medication, but we knew that if he entered a horse three days after claiming him or moved a $40000 plater up to a Grade 1, we bet the horse on faith.

One piece of advice. Even with trainers like Alan Jerkens, you can’t just bet blindly. When you hear someone crow, of course I won – it was Jonathan Sheppard on the turf, take it with a grain of salt. Sheppard may help, but you still have to dig farther than that.

What are the key things to know about trainers?

• Winning percentage is one thing, but what we really want to know are the sub-statistics. Sprints or routes? Turf or Dirt? Sprints on the turf? Claimers or allowance horses? Two year olds or older?
• How does a trainer do when he raises/drops a horse in claiming price?
• Does the trainer select the right spots for his horse? How many times have you seen a horse break his maiden in a $20000 claimer, move up to allowance company and have five miserable races in a row. The trainer needs to place his horse in a spot that will allow him to succeed if he runs his best race.
• A trainer who is a “big fish in a small pond” moving up to a major track is always dangerous, especially if he has a record of successfully making that move. Check out the 9th race at Saratoga from July 21. You familiar with Brad Cox? He is a 27% trainer from the midwest who came into Saratoga and won with the 22-1 Overton Square. I think these sorts of examples abound. The point is that sometimes small trainers just want to be part of the pageantry of big league racing, but sometimes they have a live runner and they want to pick up the largest part of a $47,000 purse. That buys a lot of oats.
• Trainers like Todd Pletcher race their horses lightly. They can do that because they are expert at training a horse up to a race. But not every trainer can replace the experience of a race with training. Many modern trainers feel tremendous pressure to show a high winning percentage, so they only try to run race-ready horses. Other trainers believe they must stress a horse gradually. You hear a lot of handicappers talk about “third off a layoff.” Pay close attention to those trainers that race their horses into top condition, and pay attention to whether it is first, second or third off a layoff.
• Look at the workout pattern for certain trainers. Bob Baffert likes to work his horses quickly, often to the point where he is criticized for leaving a horse’s race on the training track if he loses. Every trainer has a preference for how hard or long to work horses. Know what it is and use it to your advantage.
• While we are talking about that, how in the world are you supposed to know how well meant a first-time starter is off three ordinary four furlong workouts and a five furlong workout? You’re supposed to know whether the trainer has a documented history of success with that training pattern.
• Look at horses in the paddock. Do they have healthy coats? Are the horses so keyed up they’ll use up most of their energy before the race?
• Look at the medications the trainer uses. Trust me, it is a much longer list than Lasix and Bute. Do you know the medication rules for your state? They are readily available on line. The New York State Gaming Commission actually has an equine steroid administration log. If your state doesn’t make medication logs available, then you need to make a stink with your local racing commission.
• Does the trainer have a specific go-to jockey in a specific type of race? Everyone knows Pletcher-Velasquez or Baffert-Garcia. But will the trainer go elsewhere when he has a horse he needs ridden in a specific way?
• The Racing Form and TimeformUS publish statistics on how well a trainer does first after a claim. But can we break that statistic down farther? What happens if the trainer moves a horse up or down after a claim? How about if he runs the horse back in a week? How about if he waits two or three months? The micro statistics are just as important as the macro statistics.
• How does a trainer do early in a meet? Inevitably some trainers bring their horses ready to run and others need time to get into the swing of the meet. Look at previous meet statistics and use that information to your best advantage. It is one of the few statistics you actually have to do some legwork to find out.

I’ll say something I say a lot. If the only information you use is the information everybody has, you are less likely to get a price on your horse. Either you need to put information together in unique ways, or you need to put together unique information.

Tell me what I missed? The great thing about a blog is it can always be edited!

My blog is a combination of thoughtful, researched articles on betting and handicapping and more off the top opinion pieces. This is the latter.

Last Sunday, I did a stint as a public handicapper at Arapahoe Park in Colorado. I’ve done public stuff before, but this was a little more intense. Before each race the announcer, Jonathan Horowitz, would throw it down to me in the paddock and I would give out three horses.

I mentioned the winner in 6 of 9 races, and I swept the trifecta in two. I thought is was at best a fair day, but the track folks seemed to be really excited and asked me back next week. So, if everything works out, I’ll be back in the paddock on Sunday.

The reports I got from my support section were pretty positive. As expected I stumbled through a couple of races, but eventually I smoothed out. Jonathan and the Arapahoe Park staff were incredibly welcoming and helpful and I really gained a lot of respect for how hard their job is.

I actually had a couple of stumbles. The 6 horse in a race I was doing was the third horse I mentioned and I kept calling him the 3. I got the name right though. In an funny follow up, the 6 finished second and the 3, whom I didn’t actually mention, finished 3rd. There were three scratches on the day, and incredibly enough all three of them were horses I was selecting. That was a scramble.

Here is the best story of the day. I gave out the 7 horse in one race. Now from where they had me on camera, I can only see the first part of the stretch. I see the 7 start to seriously back out of the race, but I can’t really tell more than that.

The cameraman comes back from filming in the winner’s enclosure and says, “the 7 died.” I said, “I know, he backed up big time in the stretch.” The cameraman said, “No, he really died.”

Strangely, I’ve been going to the races long enough that it’s the third time I’ve have a horse pass away during a race.