Only four, you say? Well of course there is a lot more to handicapping than what I’m going to say below, but if you don’t know these four things, you’ll be starting in a hole.

At today’s distance and surface, what style is winning? Most of us have a way of assigning running style to a horse. I use early, presser, sustained in the following way.

• E – normally runs on the lead
• EP – will run on or very near the lead
• PE – usually won’t take the lead but will be within a length or two of the frontrunner
• P – prefers running just off the pace
• PS – will be midpack but prefers running on from off the pace
• SP – prefers running from the back with a closing style
• S – a plodder early, will make up ground in the stretch

Let’s look at the last week of the Belmont meeting.

• Dirt Sprints – E=2, P=7, S=3
• Dirt Routes – E=4, P=5, S=2
• Turf Sprints – E=7, P=4, S=0
• Turf Routes – E=4, P=5, S=3

This gives us a recent track profile (for all the good it will do considering the meet ended Sunday). In dirt sprint races, horses just off the pace do best. In dirt routes, generally the same, although speed holds up a bit better. In turf sprints the sustained runners could not crack the win column, with the early speed and pressing types dominating. In turf routes the pattern seems to be more even, so any style has a chance to win.

Next we want to look at the placement of the horse in relation to the rail. On Sunday July 13 the track seemed to play fair for dirt runners, neither favoring the rail or mid-track runners. Usually when biases develop they are short-lived, often related to weather incidents. When I look at biases, I generally will look at two things: how does the track play in off-weather conditions and how does the track play immediately after a weather incident? So if we were playing Belmont today, we’d be most interested in early speed/presser types in sprints, pressers in dirt routes and presser/sustained in turf routes and generally we aren’t going to be concerned about post position as long as our choice can get an attacking position.

Which race do I use to evaluate my horse? Most people look at a horse’s last race, and it is important to look at the last race. But if it is not at today’s distance or surface, we may want to use another race for our evaluation. When we get to questions three and four, this will become clearer.

Generally I want to look for a recent race that is at (or within a half furlong of) today’s distance, on today’s surface, where the horse won or finished within a couple of lengths of the winner. It is usually the case that the shorter the race, the higher the number, so I want to know how well a horse runs at today’s distance. Does that mean I use a race from a year ago, or even two months ago? Only if I think it is really representative. At the end of the day, the condition a horse is currently in trumps all else.

Now if you are evaluating a horse who has been off for a while, you should look at any similar comeback races on the past performance in addition to other competitive races. The Racing Form and Timeform U.S.can give you lifetime past performances. The Racing Form and Timeform U.S. also give you statistical information on trainer success with layoff horses.

Races where the horse gets a good number but where the horse was far back are generally not going to be as useful as races where the horse was competitive. It is often the case that the better horses “pull” a runner along with them, and you often see this in horse coming from higher classes into lower class races. I just don’t trust a figure earned from a race where a horse ran eighth by 10 lengths.

Finally, you have to make an overall evaluation of the horse’s interest in winning. When you see a maiden with the lifetime record of 17-0-6-6, no matter what the horse’s figure, you have to steeply discount the winning probability, even if the horse has a top figure.

How fast can my horse run? I want to know what my horse is capable of running when he is at his best. If my horse ran his best race today, would he be competitive? Which begs the last question

Can my horse run a winning race today? At this point you have most of the basic information you need to answer the important questions. Does my horse have the right running style? Do I think he is fast enough to win? Is he in good enough condition to win?

There are other factors, of course. Trainer or jockey may influence your handicapping. Moving up or down the class ladder (negative or positive class drops, e.g.) can be worth evaluating. Track condition could be critical. Changes in equipment or medication or a move to a new barn have to be considered. But the essential task of handicapping is to find the horse you believe will run fastest today.

In 1987 I published a book called The Condition Sign in which I was the first person to write about how to identify a unique and uncommon longshot form cycle. I may not have been the first person to think of the concept and use it, but I was the first person to ever give it a name and publish it.

Since publication of The Condition Sign other writers have talked about the same concept using terms like “wake-up” and “sign of life” horses, and despite the concept having been out there for 25 years (and regularly providing double digit payoffs), it is still poorly understood and underutilized. The Condition Sign (now sadly out of print) identified horses that show sudden, dramatic, and positive changes in running style sufficient to conclude they are ready to run their best race. Why it happens – maybe the horse fully recovered from a slight injury, maybe a change in feed or medication, maybe he finally got his horseshoes fitting properly – is not as important as accurately recognizing the pattern.

Here is an abbreviated version of The Condition Sign.

• All horses go through form cycles. Cheaper horses will gain and lose their form very quickly while classier animals will retain their form for longer periods. So, for the most part we are looking for condition sign horses in cheaper claiming and maiden events where it is easier to spot improving and declining form cycles.
• The condition sign play is strongest when combined with other factors, including requiring horses to come back within 30 days of their qualifying effort and having the horse return at its best distance (or within a half furlong of it). Because cheap horses do not hold their form as long, recency is critical. In fact, a relatively quick return for these horses is a positive signal.
• A condition sign horse can be excused for one race after running the qualifying race if it is entered at the wrong surface, wrong distance, wrong class, or wrong track condition. This is known as deferred condition.
• The condition sign is most applicable to early speed types. Speed horses almost always show early foot, but the less in condition they are the sooner they back up, and vice versa – the closer they are to peak form, the longer they hold their speed. This is not to say you can’t have a closing condition sign horse. The same concept holds true – a horse that suddenly closes after not being able to pass anything may also be exhibiting the condition sign.
• Look for horses that have had success beating horses of equal or greater value in the past. Exercise caution though when looking at class droppers. Horses dropping from a slightly higher class to a more appropriate one may still be backed. But just as the double class jump is a positive move, the double class drop with a horse that seems ready to win is more likely a red flag. The most reliable plays are horses returning at the same class as their condition race.
• While the finish time is always an important factor, with condition sign horses fast intermediate times are far more important. When betting a speed horse, you need to feel confident it can run a fast fraction and not fold in the stretch. Horses that show early speed in slow fractions in poor fields may not be the condition sign horses we are looking for. Look for horses with superior interior speed.
• The best races are always going to be where you have an improving condition sign horse being underbet against animals that are either deteriorating or unlikely to improve.

Let’s look at the 6^th race at Belmont Park on June 10, 2011. The race was a six furlong affair on the inner turf for state bred maidens. The field, to say the least, was poor. In a nine horse field there were two first-time starters, one horse with five starts and no other horse with less than 10 starts. The crowd volleyed favoritism between the number three, Lucy Stragmore by virtue of having finished third twice and fourth three times in her five starts, the last of which was in a seven furlong race on the yielding turf, and the six horse, Juliann’s Approval, a 14-start maiden that finished second last out in that same seven furlong turf event.

Also coming out of that race was the seven, Persky’s Heart. While I have often opined that any maiden with more than 10 starts is a risky proposition, the one exception to that guideline is a maiden that reverses bad form because of some obvious change – a move to a lesser circuit, change in surface, change in distance or change in running style. In her opening six starts on the inner dirt at Aqueduct, Persky’s Heart never finished closer than 12½ lengths. The trainer then put her on the Belmont turf and she showed something she hadn’t showed before – speed and interest in running. This is the sort of dramatic change we are looking for, and it appeared to be a result of moving to the turf. The race on April 30 was obviously not her best distance, but for six furlongs she held the lead in a respectable time for state-bred maidens. Two weeks later she was back on the turf at six furlongs and ran a perfect condition race – early speed and heart in the stretch. She returned eight days later and although the distance was a furlong more and the track yielding (she had previously shown a distaste for the moist going), she was deserving of a condition sign play. The combination of negative factors kept her out of the money (at 44-1) but still made her a prime bet as a deferred condition sign IF she returned quickly and at the right distance. Look at that race on May 22 closely. She broke on top from the 11 post, held her speed to the six furlong marker, and only lost two lengths in the stretch. Surely this horse was primed for her best effort next out. Sure enough, 19 days later she appeared in the aforementioned state-bred maiden, going off at a juicy 26-1 (the lowest odds of her career) and returning $55.50 to win, triggering an $839 exacta with one of the first time starters, and heading a $5,562 trifecta. You don’t need many of these races every year to stay healthy.

Let’s look at the condition sign angles applicable to the June 10 race:

• The race for was cheap state-bred maidens, horses that cycle in and out of form.
• Persky’s Heart had a sudden, dramatic form reversal.
• Returned in 19 days.
• Was racing at her best distance, six furlongs.
• Was totally deferred condition.
• Was an early speed type in turf sprints.
• Whereas on the dirt she was faint-hearted, she held her speed well in the stretch in the turf sprints.
• Was in the exact right class.
• Had excellent interior times for the class.
• Was underbet against clearly overbet favorites that were unlikely to improve.

 

Although history often gives one person all the credit for some thought or invention (have you ever heard of Antonio Meucci, the man who if he could have afforded to pay a $10 patent caveat might have kept Alexander Graham Bell from getting credit for inventing the telephone?) it’s mostly the case that there are almost no uniquely original ideas – someone else out there independently has the same thought.

When I was cutting my handicapping teeth, information in the Daily Racing Form (and Morning Telegraph in the eastern broadsheet edition) was far more limited than it is now. Given the paucity of specialized information – the current form has statistics it took me months of research to assemble every year – there was a much heavier reliance on “angles,” some of which are still in fashion. Speed dropping in class, turf to dirt or vice versa, straight maiden to maiden claimers, blinkers on or off, front wraps on, earnings per start and others are regularly considered in the selection process. The difference, of course, is that in the absence of Byers Figures or Tomlinson ratings or Jockey/Trainer statistics, the use of an angle years ago might often have been most of the reason for betting a horse.

Here are 10 lesser used angles that still have applicability today and generally stand on their own.

Two-year old, fastest half. Horses, much like humans, develop at different rates. Some two-year olds look practically full grown, with advanced athleticism and coordination. Still, it takes a race or two for horses to learn their racing lessons (as the comment “raced greenly” indicates) and more often than not young horses want to revert to instinct and race as fast as they can as far as they can. In the wild, the fastest, strongest horses escape the predators (closers do notoriously bad against mountain lions). Given that young horses will almost always race as maidens in 4-6 furlong sprints, the fastest half mile is a good indicator of development and talent, and having a learning experience gives the horse a substantial advantage. One caveat – be sure to make adjustments for track conditions.

Low percentage trainer, high percentage jockey. Not every trainer has the advantages afforded to Todd Pletcher or Bob Baffert. Their third string horses are good enough to capture graded stakes, and they inevitably have a top three rider on their horse. Granted there are low percentage trainers who are simply bad horsemen, but there are also lower percentage trainers who are knowledgeable but relegated to managing horses from lesser stables. These trainers can wind up with horses of reasonable health and talent, and when they have a horse ready to pop they want to engage the best rider possible. In the same respect, riders at the top of the meet standings will often have their pick of runners, so when you see a top-jock contract to ride a lower level trainer’s horse, assume it is because the jockey believes it has a high probability of winning.

Lone speed. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a foolproof explanation, but it is a fact that horses able to establish an unpressured lead will run farther than speed runners that are challenged. The strange thing is that a front runner can actually run slower fractions while being pressured and still fold like an accordion. The key is to look for races where one horse not only likes running to the front, but where none of the other horses have an interest in challenging the leader. Let’s look at the first race from Del Mar on September 2, a $12,500 claimer for three-year old fillies at six furlongs. The table below shows the running style (E=early speed, P=pace presser, S= sustained/closer) along with a speed rating (0 through 8, with 0 indicating no speed and 8 indicating high speed) for each horse.

Horse	PP	RS
1 Vegas Rules	1	EP5
2 Here Comes Bonnie	2	PS0
3 Warren’s Samantha	3	PS0
4 Dynamic Diva	4	PS1
5 Star Vesta	5	EP1
6 Unusual Jewel	6	PS0
7 Hidden Passion	7	EP5
8 Pumpkin Pie	8	EP2
9 Babyneedsnewshoes	9	P5

 

Two horses in the race had the style to be front-runners – the 1, Vegas Rules and the 7, Hidden Passion, with the 7 clearly the superior runner once race figures were taken into account. The 9, Babyneedsnewshoes looked like a good prospect to be sitting just behind the leaders. Of the remaining six runners, only the 5, Star Vesta had ever shown any early foot in a sprint, but Star Vesta’s last four races, although at a higher class, had been turf routes. No reason to expect Star Vesta to prompt the pace. Every other horse preferred the closing trip. In an act of what must have been divine intervention, on race day, the 7 and 9 scratched, leaving Vegas Rules as the total lone speed, and totally changing my betting strategy. Vegas Rules broke right on top, held a four length lead in a sensible :45¹, and won easily in sharp 1:10, paying $18.40 in the process.

Debuting three-year old has higher two-year old figure. This angle works best early in the year when horses are coming back from a winter break. Look for horses with two-year old figures higher (or almost as high) as the other three-year olds that already have been racing. One thing to consider is the class level of the returnee. Horses with straight maiden races as two-year olds returning as lower level maiden claimers, or allowance runners coming back in a cheaper claiming race might indicate a desire on the part of the trainer to move the horse out of his stable. It can signal a two-year old that didn’t develop much over the winter, so be wary of these horses. Look for horses coming back at a level where it appears the trainer has future plans for the horse.

Double class jump (either first off the claim or after a strong performance). Back in the ancient days of racing, horses that were claimed had to spend 30 days in “claiming jail,” meaning they had to race for a price higher than the claiming price if they were entered within that timeframe. Trainers looking for a quick return on investment would often race them up one level before the 30 days expired, but jumping a horse two or more levels up was usually a sign that the trainer expected a big effort. Today, when horses no longer have to serve the 30 day sentence, the move is even more powerful. Similarly, when a trainer double jumps a horse that wins or runs strongly, take it as a sign the horse is well intentioned.

The big hit in the win pool. Ever see a horse listed at 5-1 on the morning line open up at 8-5, only to see him drift up to close to the morning line odds and win? Often when a horse gets hit early the money is coming from the owner, the trainer, or a betting whale, and it can usually be taken as a sign someone knowledgeable thinks highly of the animal. Seeing a horse drift up or down gradually is usually more of an indication of crowd action. Why would you bet a large sum early instead of feeding it in a little at a time? Simple. The opening low odds will often induce the value bettors to look elsewhere for action, allowing the horse to finish at a more expected price. Similarly, when a horse gets one substantial injection of win money during the countdown to the post (especially when the injection comes after the horses step onto the track for the post parade) it is indicative of the same thing – someone is taken with the horse’s winning chances – and there may already be enough money in the pool to keep many in the crowd from noticing the large bet.

Unusual action in the exotic pools. Serious handicappers prefer doing their own work and making their own selections, but many in the crowd have neither the skill nor the time to effectively handicap a full card. Some people buy tip sheets, but I actually knew people who “charted” daily doubles and exactas – letting the so-called “smart money” do the work for them – and made money. Charting is simply the process of finding horses receiving heavier action in the combination pools than their odds would merit. Betting into the combination pools makes it easier for large bettors to muffle their action, and they have the potential of much higher return on their investment. After all, it’s a lot of effort (not to mention monotony) to watch the exacta payoffs rotate for 10 minutes, so there is a low expectation that many people would pay that close attention to prices. Some people I knew would bring stacks of printed matrices so they could enter every price for every daily double or exacta combination. Others would just focus on the first two or three favorites and look for the unexpectedly low payoffs, the “live” horses so to speak. This simple matrix for a hypothetical exacta illustrates the point. The row across the top would represent the odds of the winner, the column on the left the odds of the second place finisher, and the amounts in the boxes the payoffs.

First Horse

	2-1	4-1	6-1	8-1
Second Horse 2-1		28	36	37
4-1	21		60	60
6-1	27	50		80
8-1	27	55	75

 

This abbreviated table shows that the horse with 8-1 tote board odds is paying the same as a horse with 6-1 odds under the 2-1 favorite, and far less than we would expect on top of the 2-1 favorite. We can certainly speculate that the 8-1 horse is well intentioned today.

Horses for courses. It’s a well known fact that certain horses become super horses on race tracks that they favor. Most readers will remember Fourstardave, the “Sultan of Saratoga.” From 1987 to 1994 – eight straight years – Dave won a race at Saratoga, including five straight years where he won stakes races. On the other hand, he was something like 0-20 at Aqueduct. I’m not sure anyone has an explanation for why Dave favored Saratoga, but it didn’t take long for the crowd to embrace him as one of their all time favorites, and for the track to name a stakes race after him. Saratoga still has a reputation as being a track where previous success is often a harbinger of future success. The same is true for many other tracks. Some horses revel in Belmont’s sandy surface, while others despise it. Aqueduct’s inner dirt track is so different that I’ll usually discount horses that have not shown a liking for it, and similarly discount horses with good form on the inner dirt moving to the main track. I recently spent a few days at Del Mar, and it seemed there were a few race winners each day that ran new tops. Churchill Downs is famous for bringing out either the best or worst in a horse. Plus, trainers are very aware of which horses in their care favor a particular track and will often point them toward that meet. Whatever track you play, consider any horse that has shown partiality to that track, even if it might not appear to be prime physical condition, and vice versa – deeply discount horses that are proven to dislike a track.

Competent trainer from smaller circuit ships in. It is often the case that horses with good connections get overbet and horses with unfamiliar connections are ignored. But the fact that the connections may not be fixtures on a particular circuit does not mean they should be overlooked. On the contrary, trainers who are highly competent and respected on their home circuits can return big dividends, especially if you can find evidence of trainers who have a history of success when shipping from the smaller track to the larger one. Molly Pearson has been training for 30 years, mostly at secondary tracks like Turf Paradise, Arapahoe Park, and the California Fairs, and has consistently posted winning percentages between 20 and 25. In her career she’s had multiple graded stakes placings. In her element, she’s a highly competent and successful trainer. She ventures occasionally into the larger California tracks, including Hollywood Park and Del Mar, and when she does it is often with a horse that deserves a second look. Pack Your Bags ran in the 6^th at Del Mar, a $20,000 claimer on September 1, going off at odds of 20-1.

9 Pack Your Bags            B. g. 7 (Feb)                                                                        L 118

20-1   Own: Eli Diamant           $18,000                  Sire: Flying Continental (Flying Paster) $3,500                                    Life 54 10 8 8 $306,373 91                                         D.Fst 13 4 1 2 $115,938 87

Black, Green Yoke On Front, Green                                    Dam:Ultimate Honor (Norquestor)                                                                        2012  8 2 0 1 $48,121 87      Wet(355) 1 0 0 0 $1,271 75

Br: Summer Mayberry (Cal)                                                                        2011 13 2 2 2 $89,448 85      Synth 26 4 4 2 $97,020 86

BISONO A (26 5 2 3 .19) 2012: (125 10 .08)                                    Tr: Pearson Molly J(3 0 0 1 .00) 2012:(135 31 .23) Dmr  4 1 1 0 $26,900 86                        Turf(282) 14 2 3 4 $92,144 91

 

27Jly12-5Dmr fst 6½f :23.16 :46.00 1:10.42 1:16.59 3ÎClm 20000(20-18) 73 4 3 1^hd 1^hd 2^1/2 6³    Fukunaga Y L120 21.90 89-09     Inside, lost whip 1/8 9

 

1Jly12- 8ArP  fst 7f      :21.61 :43.61 1:08.30 1:22.32 3ÎFrntRange40k      59 7 3 3⁷ 3³ 7^41/2 8^103/4 Vicchrilli R R LB122 15.20 85-12 Mild bid, gave way 8

 

3Jun12- 9ArP fst 6f      :21.65 :44.07 :56.00 1:08.53  3ÎArpSprint40k        75 10 3 4^41/2 4⁴ 2⁵ 3⁹       Vicchrilli R R LB122 8.40  89-12 2p,outfinished         11

 

Previously trained by Arnett Jon G 2012(as of 4/29): ( 104 15 18 10 0.14 )

29Apr12-7PrM my^s 6f   :22.07 :44.84 :57.26 1:10.22 3ÎClm 23000(23-21)  75 1 1 1^hd 1^hd 3^nk 4²      Tohill K S LB120 *2.10 83-17      Dueled, gave way    6

 

25Mar12-9Sun fst 6^1/2f  :21.96 :44.02 1:08.38 1:15.12 3ÎBThomasMem100k 63 1 3 1^1/2 3^1/2 4^41/2 6^121/4 Medellin A L120 13.50 82-10 Angld out3/16,gave way 7

 

Yes, Pack Your Bags had the Molly Pearson angle and that may have been enough to back the horse, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out two other things reinforced the horse’s potential. First, Pack Your Bags had historical success on synthetic tracks; moreover, he had a win and a second from four starts at Del Mar. Second, his last race at Del Mar might be better than it looked. After leading to the stretch, the jockey lost his whip, and yet the horse only lost 2½ lengths in the last eighth of a mile. So we have a competent trainer bringing in a horse that favors the track and sitting on what may be his best race in a while. Pack Your Bags pressed the pace, took the lead in deep stretch and held off the place horse by the slimmest of margins.

Scratch the stronger part of an entry. This is a very simple angle to play. When a trainer has an entry (neither horse can be on the also eligible list) and he scratches what looks to be the stronger half of the entry, assume the remaining entrant is live. The concept is positive trainer intention. He wouldn’t scratch the stronger horse if he wasn’t confident the weaker looking horse had a good chance of putting in a top effort. And, by scratching the stronger entrant, he is sure to bring the odds up. The exception, of course, is if the veterinarian or the stewards scratch the horse.

 

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

		3-5	4-5	1-1	6-5	7-5	3-2	8-5	9-5	2-1	5-2	3-1	7-2	4-1	9-2	5-1	6-1	7-1	8-1
	3-5	–	–	–	–	–	–	–	4	5	6	7	7	8	9	10	12	14	16
	4-5	–	–	–	–	–	–	6	6	7	8	9	10	11	13	14	16	18	21
	1-1	–	–	–	–	–	7	7	8	8	10	11	13	14	16	17	20	23	26
	6-5	–	–	–	–	8	8	9	9	10	12	14	16	17	19	21	25	28	32
	7-5	–	–	–	9	9	10	10	11	12	14	16	18	20	22	25	29	33	37
	3-2	–	–	8	9	10	11	11	12	13	15	17	20	22	24	26	31	35	40
	8-5		8	9	10	11	11	12	13	14	16	19	21	23	26	28	33	38	43
Win	9-5	8	9	10	11	12	13	13	15	16	18	21	24	26	29	32	37	43	48
Horse	2-1	9	10	11	13	14	14	15	16	17	20	23	26	29	32	35	41	47	53
	5-2	11	13	14	16	17	18	19	20	22	26	29	33	37	41	44	52	59	67
	3-1	14	16	17	19	21	22	23	25	26	31	35	40	44	49	53	62	71	80
	7-2	16	18	20	22	25	26	27	29	31	36	41	47	52	57	62	73	83	94
	4-1	19	21	23	26	28	29	31	33	35	41	47	53	59	65	71	83	95	107
	9-2	21	24	26	29	32	33	34	37	40	47	53	60	67	74	80	94	107	121
	5-1	23	26	29	32	35	37	38	41	44	52	59	67	74	82	89	104	119	134
	6-1	28	32	35	39	43	44	46	50	53	62	71	80	89	98	107	125	143	161
	7-1	33	37	41	46	50	52	54	58	62	73	83	94	104	115	125	146	167	188
	8-1	34	43	47	52	57	59	62	67	71	83	95	107	119	131	143	167	191	215

             

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.

This is an update of an article I did for Horseplayer, so if it sounds familiar, that is where you saw it.

Andrew Beyer once said, “literature on handicapping can be divided into two eras. Before Tom Ainslie and after Tom Ainslie.” Without Tom Ainslie proving that there was a market for intelligent, well-written books on horse racing, many of the sport’s best known authors – Andrew Byer, Dick Mitchell, Steve Davidowicz, Jim Quinn and Mark Cramer to name a few – may have never found publishers.

Tom Ainslie was the pen name of Richard Carter. While he had success as a writer beyond horse racing – he wrote biographies of Curt Flood and Dr. Jonas Salk – he will forever be remembered for his talents as a turf writer. I met Ainslie at Saratoga many years ago. I can attest that he was personable and likeable, and if I had sooner realized my own writing ambitions, I may have pestered him to the limits of his graciousness.

In 1968 he wrote the first version of what is certainly the groundbreaking book on horse racing: Ainslie’s Complete Guide to Thoroughbred Racing. Ainslie published two more editions of the book, the last in 1988. While racing has changed (In 1988 Ainslie referred to the Daily Double as a “lottery bet”) much of the basic information of racing remains consistent. For the emerging horseplayer, Ainslie’s Guide still might be the best place to start a handicapping education.

It’s also not a bad idea for the veteran punter to occasionally go back to the basics. With nothing better to do on a cold and snowy day a few weeks ago, I picked up my copy of the original edition of Ainslie’s Complete Guide to Thoroughbred Racing and started flipping though the pages. On page 38 was a section labeled, “The Magic Number.”

For anyone who has forgotten, the Magic Number is 17.

Anslie posited that even a person betting entirely at random should not have losses exceeding 17%. Why 17%? That was generally the track deduction (the “take”) on a win bet. The secret was to stretch your bankroll by making a large number of small dollar bets, in essence exploiting the arithmetic of the pari-mutuel system. So a hypothetical player with a $1, 000 bankroll betting $2 a race will make 500 total bets and in Ainslie’s words, “would almost certainly lose no more than $170,” regardless of his handicapping skill. To say it another way, since the crowd as a whole only loses 17% a day, a random better who bets enough races should do no worse.

You can see where this is going. All you have to do to become a consistent winner is to learn enough about handicapping to reduce the worst case 17% loss. If the complete know-nothing can limit his loses to $17 per $100 bet, the knowledgeable handicapper should be able to not only eliminate longer-term losses, but realize measurable profit. Theoretically this makes a lot of sense. Because the game is pari-mutuel, you don’t have to overcome the fixed odds of casino games. You just have to be a little more skilled than the next guy.

Which brings us to the less well-known Dr. Burton P. Fabricand. Dr. Fabricand was a Ph.D. from Columbia who published widely in the fields of atomic and nuclear physics, oceanography and finance. Being an aficionado of the Sport of Kings, he thought there had to be a way to apply a high level scientific approach to making money at the track, and in 1965 he published “Horse Sense: A New and Rigorous Application of Mathematical Methods to Successful Betting at the Track.” Fabricand studied 10,035 (I’m sure you’re wondering the same thing I am – why didn’t he stop at 10,000) races and found that a flat bet on every favorite would result in a loss of nine cents on the dollar. Based on the calculations from Fabricand, Ainslie pointed out that simply by betting on the race favorite, the 17% loss gets cut in half.

So there we are. Just a short 8 or 9% from the land of milk and honey. And all we have to do to get there is…learn how to handicap favorites. Now all of this is based on the concept of synergy, which in the case of the racetrack means that in the long run, the collective wisdom of the betting public exceeds the individual wisdom of any single player. It is a comforting thought. Most people relish the idea of being part of the majority.

Ainslie and Fabricand definitely had the right idea, although they were perhaps a little too mechanical and blind to the idea that grinding out a moderate profit lacks broad appeal. By finding what ultimately came to be known as the “false favorite” Ainslie and Fabricand showed it would be possible to turn your 8-9% loss into a positive if not massive profit. Unfortunately, as with everything that seems too easy, there is a catch or two. In this case, even if you are playing only one track, you are obligated to bet the same amount to win on an average 92 favorites out of every 100 races. Plus, given the relatively low rate of return, you’d have to bet substantially more than $2 a race to be the envy of your racetrack buddies.

I once read an article that noted a bet on the tenth choice in a race will win, on average, two times in one hundred. This makes the natural odds on any respective tenth choice 49-1. Instead, the average return on these horses is only 38-1. The moral of the story was simple; you can’t win if you bet longshots. But suppose you were a good enough handicapper to eliminate 62 out of 100 tenth choices. You might guess that it wouldn’t be that hard since most tenth choices really don’t have a prayer of winning. You might even postulate that it would be easier to eliminate 62 tenth choices than eight favorites. The point is that in theory, Ainslie’s idea works for favorites or longshots, as you’ll see below.

Perhaps Ainslie’s system of playing favorites would be a good way to be a professional horseplayer, but the average weekend player is more likely to subscribe to Halvey’s law of inverse synergy:

On any respective event, the individual wisdom of any single player can exceed the collective wisdom of the crowd.

In fact, to adapt the old racing saw, it is possible to beat a race AND beat the races. None of us may be the equal to the crowd in the long haul, but if we can get the best of them at some key moments, we can still be long-term winners. Most of us are not at the track every day. Most of us in the age of simulcasting would have a hard time limiting our action to one type of bet at one track. But most of all, not many of us have the ability to closet our passion for the game in favor of a rote investment strategy. Sure a solid favorite can be a profitable proposition, but the highlights of any handicapping career are when you hit a race the crowd totally missed.

What we need is to twist Ainslie’s idea slightly to allow for something more expansive than betting favorites. The method is devilishly simple: construct an accurate odds line and apply a conservative betting strategy. What Ainslie was suggesting was that if you could find the undeserving (overbet) favorite and eliminate him, profit was yours for the taking. But the exact same is true if you can eliminate any overbet commodity. And obviously, if there are overbet horses, it stands to reason that there must be underbet horses. If you can successfully assess a horse’s chances in a race, and limit your action to the “overlay” you have everything you need to be a long-run winner. Plus, you don’t have to bet almost every race every day. You can pick your spots and vary your bets based on what you calculate as your advantage. You can wind up on favorites or longshots.

When you set your odds line, in every race, the sum of probabilities of winning for all horses has to equal 100% PLUS the amount of the take. For example, at Belmont the take on a win bet is 16%, so the odds line should add up to 116%. Since the tote board odds are calculated after the track has removed its take, you must in essence replace it before setting your own odds line.

Here are my seven steps to creating an odds line:

1. List the horses in rank order from best chance of winning to worst chance of winning. Don’t spend an inordinate amount of time separating those horses at the bottom of the list.

2. Put a check mark next to any horse that you believe has less than a 5% chance of winning then draw a line that separates these horses from the others. These are your non-contenders.

3. Assign the horses below the 10% line an aggregate win percentage. For example, if there are three horses below the line, you may decide all three together only have a total 8% chance of winning. This simply provides you with the remaining percentage that you can divide among your contenders.

4. After you have taken care of your non-contenders, assign winning probability percentages, working your way up from the lowest contender to the highest contender. I like working from the bottom up because I think I am less likely to overrate the lesser animals. If you start at the top, you may “overbet” the horse, much like the crowd often does. The other issue is that errors at the low end are usually exaggerated relative to the high end. For example, the difference between a horse with a 39% chance (8-5) and a 42% chance (9-5) is relatively insignificant. On the other hand, the difference between a horse with a 5% chance (19-1) and a 2% chance (49-1) seems pretty substantial.

5. After you have assigned percentages, add them up to see if they equal 100 plus the take. If they do not, make reasonable adjustments until they do.

6. Look at the first two choices on last time and decide if the percentages you assigned are acceptable. Since these are the horses you most want to bet, their winning percentages are most critical.

7. Convert your percentages into betting odds.

Now the basic rules for using your odds line.

1. Limit investment to only those opportunities where the crowd’s assigned win odds are higher than the real probability of winning.

2. For horses on your odds line at even money or less, the tote board odds should be at least 1.5 times your odds before considering the horse for wagering. So on an even money shot, the minimum play odds are 3-2. The idea of asking for a premium simply gives you, the linemaker, a reasonable margin of error.

3. For horses between 6-5 and 7-2 on your odds line, tote board odds should be at least 1.75 times your odds.

4. For horses between 4-1 and 9-1 on your odds line, the tote board odds should be at least double your odds.

5. For horses between 9-1 and 19-1 on your odds line, the tote board odds should be at least triple your odds.

6. Horses at 20-1 or higher on your odds line should rarely be bet because the margin of error in assigning these horses a winning probability is greater than for the true contenders.

7. In races where there are two or more acceptable overlays, the highest overlay should always be played. The second overlay can be played as well, but in no circumstances is it sensible to bet more than two horses to win in one race.

While the crowd is more efficient than any individual, as Ainslie and Fabricand proved, they are still wrong two-thirds of the time. Exploiting the inefficiencies of the crowd provides the bettor with outstanding opportunities for a positive bankroll. The one great betting truth is: you will make money if you bet true overlays.

First, many thanks to Seth Abrams for running down Mark Cramer and getting an elucidating 30 minute interview. He reminded me of the whole point of betting horses: find value. So I’m going to post some of the stuff I’ve written previously on value.

Which brings me to this. 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.                              39-1                           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.

I’m going to give you two pieces on value betting in my next two blogs. Trust me. If you don’t know this stuff, your chances of being a winning player go down considerably.

 

Intangibles

You know what they say. The rain in Saratoga falls mainly on the turf.

You never know what kind of year it will be. It could be like 2011 when Hurricane Irene moved in, or it could have 25 days of good northeast New York weather. In any case look for these things:

1. Find turf horses that have been able to maintain their training and race schedule. Trainers carefully map out a turf season, and when rain intervenes it can create setbacks for a horse.
2. Everyone knows that the inside posts are an advantage on the Saratoga inner turf. They are also an advantage on the Mellon Turf.  On both ovals the highest winning post position for routes was the 1. Interestingly, the five post had the second highest win percentage on the Mellon and the third highest percentage on the Inner turf. Perhaps the five hole allows horses that break alertly to easily get position, and horses that pull back to place themselves where they want.
3. In sprint races on the Mellon Turf (the inner turf doesn’t have sprints) post position did not seem to be much of a determining factor. The highest win percentage came from the 4 post, with the 8 post second and the 7, 2,3, 5 and 6 all about the same. This says that in turf sprints, find the best horse. It was the case that post positions outside of the 8 had poor winning percentages.
4. Pay close attention to where the rail is set. For those of you who use Formulator, it gives the rail distance and the run up for turf races. As I mentioned in my turf post, a nine foot rail translates to an extra 30 feet in distance, or about seven tenths of a second. That can be the difference between finding a solid win bet or settling on a different horse.

Post position on the main track seemed close to irrelevant. For sprints, other than the 4 post at 20%, all the other posts down to the 9 were about the same. The sprint angles are pretty obvious. If you horse is a front runner, closer to the rail is an advantage. If your horse is a tracker or closer, one of the middle post positions will probably keep the horse out of trouble. On the other hand, the inside posts could be a disadvantage to more sustained horses.

For route races, It was the 5 post that stuck out. Otherwise the same principles as for sprints were in play.

Finally, let’s talk about the “Graveyard of Champions.” Ever since Man O’War’s defeat at the hands of Upset, the media stamped the Spa with that label. The great Secretariat was beaten by Onion, adding to the legend of Allen Jerkens as the Giant Killer. Indeed, local scribe Bill Heller even wrote a book called Graveyard of Champions. You know what one of life’s major truisms is, don’t you?

If I read it on the internet, it must be true.

The fact is that Saratoga is about average in terms of winning favorites, and it is about 1-9 that this year favorites will win 32-35% of the races. Will there be upsets? Of course. Will there be monumental upsets? Without a doubt. But don’t bet against a favorite just because of some moniker pasted on the track by the media.

My Saratoga preview is not exhaustive. As I’ve mentioned, there are a lot of instantaneous statistics available in the Daily Racing Form, Brisnet, and Timeform. I just wanted to give the bigger picture and maybe give you a leg up on the crowd. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to ask them.

 

Trainers and Jockeys

In the movie Moneyball, there seemed to be two kinds of baseball people. Incurable stat geeks and grizzled, listen-to-my-gut baseball veterans. I would have been somewhere in between. Is the past the perfect predictor of the future? Sometimes but not always. Do most racetrack goers have the patience to recognize arcane patterns (Trainer X has won the third race on the third Thursday of the meet three years running)? Generally no. All the statistics in the world aren’t going to beat a horse with no name connections who throws a 1:08 and change first time out of the gate. The point is, use the statistics, but don’t become a slave to them.

Saratoga always doled out first-rate money. Even low-level NY State-breds could depend on $20,000 plus purses. But now that the slot machines are ringing at Aqueduct, daily purse money was up $250,000 in 2012, $500,000 in 2013 and will increase again this year. Owner John McMahon even quipped, “it’s actually possible for someone to make some money in this [owning horses].” Competition for barn space remains fierce. Well-known out of state trainers are looking to move entire operations to New York. Saratoga always had many more applications than spaces, and demand will only increase. Expect the day to day quality and the competition to be unequaled at any other American race meeting. Look for fuller fields with fewer “fillers.” Expect to see new faces from tracks up and down the east coast and Midwest trying to hop on board the new gravy train. This can only represent a boon for horseplayers.

The question isn’t who will be the leading trainer –Todd Pletcher seems to be the indisputable answer – but just how dominant Pletcher will be. In 2011 he started almost double the number of horses his closest competitor, Chad Brown, did, so it wasn’t surprising he finished 16 wins ahead of him. In 2013 the gap between them had closed slightly and Chad Brown actually had a higher win percentage than Pletcher. None of the Pletcher statistics is breaking news, and frankly a long analysis into the gory details of Pletcher’s work isn’t going to change the fact that it’s hard to make money betting Pletcher and even harder betting against him.

Start here. You’ll need a healthy dose of insight to go against Todd Pletcher, Johnny Velazquez, and a short priced favorite. Pletcher had a typical year, winning at an overall 26% clip. Pletcher favorites came home in front a powerful 38% of the time. 2-1 on a Pletcher horse seems to pass for good odds these days. Sure, a lot of his medium priced (3-1 to 6-1) horses, especially two-year old firsters are overbet, but it’s not like they won’t ever win.

What else can be learned from studying Pletcher’s 2013 Spa record?

• 63% of his starters were on the dirt as were 72% of his winners. Pletcher on the turf is slightly more vulnerable.
• His two-year old win percentage is good at 30%, and his win percentage with maidens and claimers is almost as good at 29%. Only Chad Brown and Steve Assmussen had a higher success rate when racing less expensive horses.
• Pletcher actually had a lower percentage of sprint winners (24%) than route winners (30%). Normally you would expect this to be reversed because of the high number of two year-olds he debuts at the Spa.
• This may be due to the fact that his two year-old winning percentage was down from previous years, fourth behind Assmussen, Linda Rice and Chrtitophe Clement.
• On the other hand he did win a third of the stakes races in which he had a starter.

In a case of local boy makes good, Mechanicville (barely a stone’s throw from Saratoga) native Chad Brown, who has only been training on his own since 2007, just keeps getting better and better. It may be only a matter of time before he surpasses Pletcher at the Spa. Brown actually had a slightly higher win percentage than Pletcher (28% to 27%), and a barely higher average win payout than the leading trainer, both of which are testament to his burgeoning following. His overall in-the-money percentage was a sparkling 64%. He excelled on the Turf course and in maiden and claiming events, winning at a 31% and 33% clip respectively. Unfortunately, the locals have been betting him like you would expect them to attach themselves to the native son, and the rest of the world has caught on to his ability as well, but he clearly has earned the respect

Steve Asmussen may not bring a full contingent to the Spa, even given the higher purses, but pretty much all his starters are live. Check out these statistics:

• His overall win percentage was 21% down significantly from his eye-popping 33% figure in 2011. His in-the-money percentage remains strong though at 56%, second only to Pletcher..
• The vast majority of his winners (77%) are on the dirt.
• He remains a powerhouse with two year-olds, winning at a 35% clip, and slightly more than half (53%) in-the-money.

Who are the other trainers to watch? Stalwart New York trainers David Jacobson and Kiaran McLaughlin had excellent meets, with each saddling 16 winners. Jacobson had better success on the dirt (12 winners), while McLaughlin had the majority of his winners on the turf (9 winners). This was a big turn around from 2011 when McLaughlin was a miserable 1 for 15 on the lawn. Jacobson also won with a sparkling 55% of his runners that achieved favoritism.

If you are looking for a trainers who return some healthy prices, check out George Weaver and Christophe Clement. Weaver’s 9 winners from 41 starters returned an average mutuel of $16.60, while Clement’s 8 winners average $16.70.

Jonathan Sheppard is getting older but can still get it done on the turf (I regularly would bet any Sheppard horse going from steeplechase to the regular turf because almost no one understood the angle).

Horseracing lost a hard-working and colorful trainer when Dominic Galluscio passed away this March. Galluscio never got the best horses, but he made the most of the ones he had, especially the New York breds. His presence will be missed on the New York racing scene.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Once you’ve made it to the majors, and Saratoga is about as major as it gets, you’re a talented rider. Jockeys in the second tier of Saratoga’s riding colony, riders such as Cornelio Velasquez, Rajiv Maragh,  and Jose Lezcano, could probably lead half the race meets in the country. That being said, I worry far less about the jockey per se than I do about whether the trainer/jockey combination is productive or whether the jockey, regardless of where he is in the standings, has had success with any respective horse.

With the modern racing form you don’t have to depend on me to point out the obvious. Jockey/trainer statistics will be on the bottom of the past performance for everyone to see. Instead, I’ll point out some of the less obvious things.

The leading riders – in 2013 Javier Castellano, Johnny Velasquez, and Joel Rosario stood well above the rest of the colony – got there because they ride for the best trainers who get the best horses. Nothing succeeds like success. And they stay there not because they manage to keep from falling off talented runners, but because they don’t make the kind of mistakes that lose races. They work hard, they pick up mounts from all quarters, and they are fearless to a fault. Still I always subscribe to the theory that the best horse will usually win the race as long as it gets a competent ride.

Are some riders better on the turf? Yes, and in the case of Saratoga in 2014 their names were Castellano , Velasquez and Rosario along with Jose Lezcano. That’s right. The best dirt riders were also the best turf riders because, frankly…well I already said they ride for the best trainers who get the best horses.

After having some good years in New York and at Saratoga, Julian Leparoux moved his tack to SoCal in 2013. He married Mike Mitchell’s daughter, and given Mitchell’s health status after brain surgery to fight cancer, California was a necessary move.

Who else was sneaky good in 2013? Joseph Rocco, Jr. had 5 winners in 18 starts in stakes races.  Junior Alvarado had half the starts of Javier Castellano but hit at a 16% win clip, slightly lower than Castellano’s 20%. Irad Ortiz, Jr. finished fourth in the standings last year, but given his continued improvement could crack the top three.

Finally, a fond farewell to jockey Ramon Dominguez whose head injuries from a spill at Aqueduct in 2013 forced his retirement. Dominguez was just shy of 5,000 career wins, and was the Eclipse award winner for 2010, 2011, and 2012. He was always competitive at the Spa, or wherever he rode. I know everyone wishes him all the best.

Whether you have been betting horses a long time or are relatively new at the game, one thing has been consistently true for decades. You are wasting your money with horses that tease you with close second and third place finishes but can’t seem to get to the line in front.

I do not favor rote rules when it comes to handicapping, the kind that seem to accompany “systems.” You know, throw out any horse who hasn’t started in the last 45 days or something similar to that. But sometimes it helps to have some general guidelines.

Lots of handicappers avoid maiden races because of uncertainty, but they are often as bettable as other races. When it comes to maidens, once a horse has more than 10 starts, it either needs to be

• in an incredibly weak field
• up against a group of other horses who have more than 10 starts
• making a major change, like going from a major circuit to a minor one or dropping substantially in class

to be considered as a win bet.  In maiden fields, I like to look for horses  with a few starts and something to show, especially lately.  In the two maiden races for 3 and up at Belmont on July 3, one was won by a horse with only three starts and the other by a first timer. Look for horses in maiden races that haven’t shown themselves to be on the road to professional maiden. They 18 start maidens will occasionally win, but just not often enough to justify the investment. Yet year after year they suck money like a Dyson inhales dirt.

This is just as true in NW2 races. Let’s look at the 7th at Belmont on July 3. Distorted Dream’s line was 16-1-4-1. He was a very low win probability yet he was the second choice in the betting at 5-2. He would have been a bad win bet at 10-1, primarily because he hadn’t shown the ability to “close the deal.” He sucked a ton of money from the public that saw he could finish within a few lengths of the horses that won the races. He barely held on to second behind the clear winner Official, a horse that had only started six times and had a first and a second.

In that same race the #5 Ginger’s Joe started with a record of 41-1-1-2.  That many starts and that many out of the money finishes puts him in the category of “no hoper,” and as expected he didn’t outrun his 50-1 odds. I think you shouldn’t even put that sort of horse on an “ALL” ticket.

Let’s go to the 9th race and look at #1 Desert Bliss with a record of 26-2-6-7. The first thing that jumps out? Less than a 10% win percentage, but almost 60% in the money. The crowd conflates the win probability of a horse for the in the money probability, and they’ve been doing it forever. At 9-2, Desert Bliss finished 4th.

These kind of examples abound. Here’s some general guidelines.

• In maiden races be suspicious of any horse that has started more than 10 times at the approximately the same level and has shown an ability to be in the hunt but never enough interest to pass all the horses. They are unreliable win bets.
• In maiden races for the most part look for horses with six or fewer starts and have shown some interest in running. Obviously you still have to handicap. If a horse has started six times and has faded every time, you need a really good reason to decide today he isn’t going to fade. Same sort of thing for NW2 races. Horses that broke their maiden and have been at the NW2 level for a lot of races are generally bad bets in the win pool.
• One of the most consistently productive angles in racing is the straight maiden dropping into a maiden claiming race. The levels of competition between straight maidens and maiden claimers is exactly like the difference between allowance horses and claiming horses.
• Any horse that has less than a 10%  lifetime winning percentage should be scrutinized very closely before being put in the top spot.
• Any horse with three or four times the number of 2nd and 3rd’s as wins is a weak win play, especially at lower odds. Desert Bliss was probably 10% to win the race and 60% to be part of the superfecta.
• Any horse that has more than 20 starts and less than 2 wins,  30 starts and less than 3, or 40 starts and less than 4 should generally be discarded from win consideration.

There’s certainly more than what I’ve said above, but it gives you a start. Make some comments, ask some questions. I’d be happy to have a discussion.