Mark Cramer
C & X Report

OK - here's #12. This issue appears to have formatted better but we're still working on making it look like the actual newsletter, which will be in the mail to you shortly. Enjoy!

C&X 12
EDITORIAL

RESEARCH OF THE MONTH : SMALL TRACK EDGE

THE DOUBLE PATTERN MATCH

PLAYER PROFILE: SUSAN SWEENEY

SWEENEY SPEAKS

GOING DEEP

PRIEST RULES ON HORSE BETTING : IS IT MORAL ?

BREEDERS’CUP CLASSIC: A LESSER-OF-EVILS RACE?

EDITORIAL
With this issue, the new C&X is finishing up its first year and I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I feel that new discoveries have been made and some of our previous research has been validated. The C&X Crib Sheet is a worthy tool for structured and contrarian investment. Readers have written with positive responses, often with good news from the betting windows.
On the other hand, our idealistic mission (some would say hopelessly “quixotic”) of providing the knowledge and inspiration to give all of our subscribers a positive return on investment has fallen short of the optimum. I sense that some of you are still underachieving, and this is disturbing to me.
For the next round of 12 issues, I am considering all kinds of radical solutions. One former reader (name will remain forever confidential) has shared with me the fact that he is hopelessly addicted to “the action”, and has been losing money regularly. If I thought for one moment that this publication would be drawing in more handle for the race track emporiums and their OTB partners, I would fold up and call it quits.
Fortunately, many readers have sent me e-mails and letters connecting their scores to info or ideas they got from C&X. But I want everyone to benefit. Thinking of the gentleman who was good enough to confide about his suicidal betting, I would like to make a proposal.
This one guy agreed to stop betting until Breeders’ Cup and to go over whatever poorly kept records he has to uncover reasons for his faulty betting decisions and deficient handicapping. Most of us do not come anywhere near the desperate state of this good person, but all of us can benefit from ideas on how he can handle his situation.
Even if we are winning, we can all benefit from a structure that would help us operate in a more efficient and rational way. What follows is a checklist of possible pillars of a betting structure.
(1) We’ve learned that high-percentage trainers get more of their fair share of longshot winners while low-percentage guys get less than fair share. Why not establish a minimum trainer hit rate for any win bet or exotic key? Does fifteen percent sound like a fair minimum? Surely we have no long-run future in betting trainers with less than a 10 percent hit rate. You decide where the cutoff is.
(2) We’ve learned that proven losers at a class level show a dreadful performance record. Why not establish a maximum of races lost at today’s class level for a win bet or an exotic key: no more than two losses at today’s level or below sounds like a reasonable boundary.
(3) We’ve learned again and again that standard or conventional handicapping does not lead to a profitable bottom line. Why not pass any race in which we have made no real discovery? I’m not a Puritan. I like action as much as anyone. But non-stop action has a dulling effect on the nerves and the soul, and is no good for the wallet. Everything good about life involves being selective, whether it be diet, travel, housing, personal relationships. Why not be selective about betting? Why not savor those rare moments of discovery instead of zapping from one race to another in a shit-hits-the-fan style? Even the most avid of hedonists knows that too much of a good thing has a staling effect.
(4) So many of us are better handicappers than decision makers. We spend 95 percent of the time handicapping and then only 5 percent in making our betting decision. Why not spend at least as much time in constructing our bets as in handicapping the races? If we do not have the time to dedicate to the decision-making process, then maybe we are handicapping too many races. After all is said and done, this is a game of decision making.
(5) And knowing that the pari-mutuel system dishes out more underlays than overlays, why not decide once and for all to only bet overlays ... only bet when we have a true advantage. That doesn’t mean to play exclusively longshots; 5/2 can be an overlay if the horse should be even money. But readers have told me again and again that it’s tougher to grind out a profit playing the low end of the odds spectrum. Establish the worth of a win bet or exotic key, and if that horse is below fair odds, pass the damn race and go on to the next.
(6) Finally, why not keep tab of the reasons for every bet we make? Knowing which ideas pay off and which do not even more important than keeping a precise dollar-and-cents betting ledger (which is also important). Yes, it seems like a platitude, but why not keep good records?
These six guidelines can solidify our betting structure. Nothing can make bad handicapping get good results, but I suspect that in the cases of most readers, good handicapping is not getting compensated as well as it should be.
In this upcoming year of C&X, let’s have fun, for sure, but let’s see some good results in the bottom line. It’s no coincidence that the new year of C&X begins with the university academic year, since we know this infinite game involves a long-term learning process. I can’t promise the stars, but I can assure you that C&X will leave no stone unturned in its effort to improve your return on investment.
One last note: at this moment Gary Stevens is considering returning the the U.S.A. Someone has been disappointed, though it’s hard to tell for sure if it’s the jockey or the trainer. In any case, Stevens has won on 20 percent of his mounts over a period of 250 races, not at all shabby. If he returns to the USA, ride his wagon early.

RESEARCH OF THE MONTH:
THE EDGE AT SMALL TRACKS
First, let’s get one thing straight. No one is going slumming to small tracks. Handicappers at minor league tracks are no slouches. But ther is an edge to be discovered. In the age of simulcasting, high roller pros are less likely to play the small circuits, for they perceive that the pools are too small and that their bets could diminish their own odds. There’s another perception among the horseplaying wizards: that small track horses are ailing and small track handicapping is a crap shoot with irrational results.
In this month’s issue we’re featuring a pro player named Susan Sweeney. Sweeney does indeed play the minor league tracks, where she often finds a void in the betting market that results in signer payoffs.
We horseplayers have to go anywhere it takes to find an edge. Is Sweeney on to something? This month’s research examines the factors that lead to small track longshot winners. The research focuses on eight lesser race tracks: Arapahoe, Evangeline, Finger Lakes, Fort Erie, Great Lakes, Mountaineer, Prairie Meadows and Yavapai. Other small tracks pop up in my data base as well.
In order to design the research I went back to my impressionistic and anecdotal knowledge and chose six factors I felt would impact in choosing a live longshot. Let’s first look at these factors in order to see why they were chosen.
Freshness. At lesser racing circuits with low purses, horses eat the same and vet bills are no less than they would be at larger tracks. As a result, horses are exploited more than their major league colleagues, often raced into the ground. For my own race betting in the bush leagues, I have come to believe, with no more than anecdotal evidence, that the fresh horse racing first, second or third time after a layoff has an advantage over those rivals who’ve been racing week after week for a period of months.
Furthermore, conditioned claiming races, so prevalent at such tracks, have built-in favoritism for lightly-raced horses. In an event labeled for “non-winners of a race during the year”, for example, a horse that’s 0-for-1 gets into the same race as a horse that’s 0-for-19 because the 0-for-1 horse has been laid off. It’s proven losers versus one or two lightly-raced horses. Recency, a factor that came up high in the original William Quirin research, is no advantage for a horse that’s failed 19 times. Who cares if he’s coming back in seven days!
For this research I divided the freshness category into three sub-categories: first after a layoff, labeled lay-1, lay-2, and lay-3. I also decided to note when lay-4 horses would win, but did not include lay-4 in the final tally.
Class drop. Previous research in C&X shows that a one-level drop to the bottom of the barrel is a powerful factor. Horses racing again and again at the bottom level of the minor leagues have nowhere else to go. A horse dropping into that level should have a greater advantage than other class droppers. I say “should” because this is only an hypothesis for small tracks. My original research was done at large tracks. In any case, with so many races in such low claiming ranks at these minor league circuits, it seems as if droppers would have an advantage.
Conditions drop. For this research, a conditions drop is separated from a drop in claiming level. For example, in a race open to horses that have not won 2 races lifetime (nw2L), a horse that is coming from an nw3L race will most likely be facing lesser competion, even if the nw3 was for claiming $4,000 and the nw2 is for $5,000.
Won before at high odds. My observations, with no research to prove it, had told me that there are essentially two types of horses at small circuits: those that regularly go off at low odds, win or lose, and those that regular go to post at high odds. It seemed rare to me that a horse winning at 2-1 would later win at 14-1. It seemed as if the crowd never learned to respect a horse that won at double figure odds or higher, and that this horse’s next peak performance would also be at high odds. Once he has proven he can win when he doesn’t look good in the past performances, it tells us he’s capable of popping up again at high odds.
Big odds drop. I have noticed from time to time that double figure winners with none of the usual handicapping positives often showed inexplicable betting action following dull races. A horse that finishes mid-pack at 17-1 should not be 5-1 in it’s next race, unless there is some hidden reason. Insider trading, anyone?
Coming from a major league circuit. I’ve had mixed results with bad-form horses going from a big circuit to a small one. I’ve seen numerous wake-ups at big odds but I’ve also seen such horses get bet heavily by the small track locals only to turn in yet another dull performance. I divided this category into three: first race after coming from major circuit, which I label as ship-1, ship-2 (second race at the small track) and ship-3.
These are the six primary factors I would use in my research. However, I also planned to note any other factors that arose. I could do this since my research is hand-tallied. (I may be one of the only artisan researchers remaining in the 21st century.)
I did have a seventh category, but this was for contrastive study. I call this category, “No reason” and it means that I could find no reason for a horse’s longshot victory. “No reason” means none of the above six factors cropped up.
I decided to retain the “no reason” annotation even when a horse showed one of my secondary factors. I entered the research with no pre-conceived notions of secondary factors, and tallied such things as I went along.
Findings
The no-reason description came up for 33 percent of double figure winners. This is somewhat misleading, for in virtually every case, some secondary reason not among my original factors would come up.
(In fact, we could have labeled these secondary reasons “terciary”, since my original factors are already considered “secondary” by the handicapping establishment. But let’s keep it as is, with the original researched factors as primary and discovered factors as secondary.)
In going back over the tally, when two or more secondary factors coalesce, the number of “no reasons” declines considerably, to less than 20 percent. We shall refer to these secondary factors following the analysis of each primary reason.
The freshness factor came out on top as the most frequent trait of small track longshot winners. Fresh horses (first, second or third race after a layoff) accounted for 33 percent of all reasons for longshot winners. Of the three segments of the freshness factor, first-after-the layoff is more powerful than second-time back, and second-after-the-layoff is more powerful than third time back. If you graphed it, you’d see a perfect descending curve beginning at the top with the freshest horses, and descending accordingly. If fourth-after-the-layoff had been included as a primary factor, it would have followed the same pattern, less potent than third after the layoff. I would have thought that lay-2 or lay-3 would have been more frequent than lay-1, but it wasn’t the case.
TIP! On various occasions, a winning longshot of a comeback race had previously won at a price following a layoff. This is a potent pattern match. As noted before, it’s entirely understandable that fresh horses have the advantage at small tracks over horses that have become stale from too much racing. Fresh horses are more likely to have a conditions advantage in the “non-winners-of” categories; by having raced less, they have fewer losses at the class level and are less likely to be proven losers.
The second-most frequent longshot “reason” was a mild surprise for me. The reason labeled “shows a previous win in double figures” accounted for 16% of all longshot winners in this survey. I required the previous longshot win to be within the horse’s previous six races, with no low-price win sandwiched between, but I made exceptions in a few cases when a horse had more losing races following his longshot win, only if those races were deemed by me as no-chance outings. With only one or two of such exceptions in this study, the 16% level holds up anyway.
After scanning thousands of race results, a pattern emerged which divided low-odds horses and high-odds horses into virtually separate colonies. Naturally, no horse races with the same odds all the time, but the handicapper scanning the pps can instantly graph the usual odds level of a horse.
The third most-frequent longshot win reason was class drop, signing in at 15 percent of all reasons. This was no surprise at all. Class drop has figured as a potent factor in most C&X research.
A disappointing fourth in the longshot-reason standings was: coming from a major league circuit. Small track players have been too accustomed to horses with bad form going slumming and picking up a win, so the average mutuel of such horses was mostly disappointing. That said, there were some pleasant surprises, and this factor cannot be dismissed. All in all, the downward circuit switch accounted for 7 percent of the longshot reasons. Two thirds of all those circuit switching tote blasters were in their first race at the small track. Second and third race at the small track decline sharply as longshot indicators.
However, the percentage of reasons in this category is misleading since there are far fewer circuit switchers than fresh horses. The circuit switch from major to minor leagues remains a live factor.
Also mildly disappointing was the conditions drop, in fifth place, involving only 5 percent of all longshot reasons. But before you dismiss this one, consider that it does not pop up in the past performances all that frequently, since most trainers do not enter their horses above the right conditions. If you were a trainer, you would not enter a horse that qualifies for “non-winners of 3 races in the last six months” if your horse were a non-winner of two races in the last six months, unless you could not find another spot for your horse, or if you made a mistake, which sometimes happens.
So conditions drops are a rarity, and it does mean something when a horse returns to the right condition. In any case, the big edge in conditions is embedded in the freshness factor, since fresh and lightly-raced horses generally have a built-in edge in the condition book. If the race condition states “non-winners of 3 races in the year”, and it’s already October and your horse is 2-for-3 in the year (because he had a long layoff) and the other horses are 2-for-22 or 2-for 19, then your horse becomes the only consistent performer in the field. Conditions drop should be seen as an appendage to the freshness factor.
I expected the big-odds-drop-from-last-race factor to be on the bottom in my tally, and it was. But the winning longshots under this category were visually (in the pps) impressive for their poor previous race followed by an inexplicable odds drop. This factor cannot be considered lightly, but it’s not one that we can use in constructing a rigorous betting method.
Secondary factors
One big discovery in this research is the fact that the majority of “no reason” longshot winners did indeed have some secondary reason in their pps, but such reasons can only carry weight in the context of other factors.
For example, jockey switch came up as often as the freshness factor, but with so many horses changing rider, winners and losers, it was impossible to establish an identifiable impact value for this factor. In many cases, jockey switch was an only factor. Let’s face it. Horses do wake up with a change in rider, for whatever the reason.
Another secondary factor that constantly popped up is wet-to-fast or fast-to-wet along with dirt-to-turf. When such surface changes emerged, I went back and checked the pedigree. Pedigree did play a role but it was impossible to define it as a mechanical factor. For example, one horse that had been 0-for-5 on wet tracks won at 30-1 when switching from dry to wet. He had a huge Tomlinson off-track rating. But as a handicapper, I would have seen his 0-for-5. We can hypothesize on this. It very well could have been that he had raced without mud caulks in those five races and his new trainer decided to fit him with caulks in his sixth try (it was a new trainer). The mud caulks factor adds a serious distortion to mud pedigree ratings.
Switch to turf is analyzed under the same banner of surface switch, but the switch to turf is in fact much more quantifiable, since there are no equipment factors like mud caulks that would distort a statistic. The Tomlinson ratings did play a role in a substantial number of turf wake-ups but not a majority.
In any case, if you specialize in particular small tracks and watch them every day, then keeping a record of which horses have caulks and which do not can make you some money, since such information does not appear in the past performances.
Finally, an unexpected factor emerged as something to be reckoned with: finished second in previous race. I never would have considered including such a factor in longshot research. (That’s why artisan research which involves hand-entry of tallies and visual inspection of each entry is superior to computer generated research.) A majority of longshot winners that had “finished second in previous race” were moving up in class.
In-the-money-at-high-odds failed to perform as well as won-previously-at-high-odds, but the factor “in-the-money-at-high-odds produced an amazing number of other in the money finishes at high odds. Often these were come-from-behinders who were up against a normal speed bias or hangers with talent but lacking guts. Such horses look like excellent exotic inclusions in back-up positions.
Conclusions
The key to regular longshot winners at small tracks is the freshness factor. “Won before at high odds” is a factor that can be used in combination with other above factors, or in conjunction with your handicapping of the race. The steady performer once again is the “class drop”, which never fails to make an impact in C&X research. Am I predisposed to this factor? Maybe. But the class drop factor in conjuction with others of these contrarian factors is a regular producer of small track longshot winners. The big surprise is how well lay-1 does compared to lay-2 or lay-3, though all three freshness indicators are valid handicapping factors.
It’s always good to have some key factor to latch on to when opening up the past performances. At small tracks where ailing horses are run into the ground, this key factor is the fresh or lightly-raced horse.


THE DOUBLE PATTERN MATCH
with reference to the above research on the small track edge
Identify the small track longshot factors and find the pattern match

CRACK THE VAULT Tr. John Baird, 11% wins Life 35 8 4 5
6July04 Mnr 6f Clm 30,000 toteboard odds: 8-1
18May04 Mnr 1m70 Clm 30,000, finished 2nd odds 10.4-1
12Apr04 Mnr 1m70 Clm 30,000, finished 2nd odds 6.4-1
12Mar04 Mnr 6f Clm 10,000, WON paid $22.80
31Dec03 Haw 1 1/16 Clm 18,000 finished 6th, 15 lengths behind
6Dec03 Haw 1 1/16 Clm 25,000 finished 9th, 12 lengths behind
8Nov03 Haw 1 1/16 Hcp 111k finished 9th, 7 lengths behind at 107-1
Take a moment before reading on, and try to identify the factors listed in the above research. Also look for pattern matches. Pattern recognition is the most underrated of all handicaping factors.
Okay, here we go. CRACK THE VAULT is entered at 6 furlongs at Mountaineer. Evaluate his intrinsic chances without seeing the rest of the field. He’s flashing at 8-1 on the board.
The factors are:
First, won before at high odds (a primary factor), on 12 March.
Second, freshness (a primary factor), he’s lay-1, first race following a layoff.
Third, in the money at high odds (a secondary factor) 18May and 12Apr.
The first and second factors were the most frequent, in reverse order, in the above research.
That finishes the automatic part of the process. In this case, the analytical part will add to the evidence.
We can identify a double pattern match: lay-1 and route-to-sprint: a scenario that is identical to his last win.
We also discover that he evidently likes Mountaineer, having failed at Hawthorne, even at apparent lower class levels. He has fired every time at Mountaineer, always as an overachiever.
For further confidence we note, from the performance box, that he wins more often than he places or shows, a sign of competitiveness. Going back to his 8Nov race, we suspect that the reason for his decline at Hawthorne had something to do with a loss of morale, having been entered way above his level, as illustrated by the 107-1 odds. The switch to Mountaineer along with the class drop was a morale booster. (I’ve spoken with several trainers who have explained that they sometimes use a class drop as a “morale booster” for horses that have acquired a negative self-image.
CRACK THE VAULT won the July 6 sprint and paid $19.00 to win.
The case of Mercedes Son
Mercedes Son entered the 25Jun02 turf race at Mountaineer coming from three horrendous losses on dirt, by 45, 23 and 22 lengths respectively! There was a switch, apparently for the first time, to jockey A Z Lybert.
Mercedes Son was victorious on the grass, paying $11.20.
Next out, Mercedes Son returned to his losing ways, finishing ninth, 21 lengths back, with a different rider.
Next time, on 22Aug, there was a double pattern match. First, he went back to the Mountaineer turf course, and second, Lybert, his previous winning rider, was now aboard. Having moved up in class, he was 58-1. But still, it was a double pattern match.
He won.
Often a winning factor, the double pattern match is especially potent at small tracks when combined with the factors in this month’s C&X research.


PLAYER PROFILE AND BOOK REVIEW: SUSAN SWEENEY
During the mid-1990s, when Susan Sweeney was just getting started as a horseplayer, I had the chance to observe her evolution as a player, at the Cracked Claw restaurant and OTB in Urbana, Maryland.
Having been aware of the power of trainer specialties, I was naturally inclined in favor of Ed Bain’s “Layoffs-and-Claims” methodology, in which he restricts his substantial wagers to trainers who showed a minimum of a 30 percent hit within one of those specialties. Ed is not afraid to use a relatively small sample because he’s catching such trainers when they are at their peak. Besides, he uses numerous filters to weed out questionable bets.
Susan is Ed’s wife. I would sit at their table along with Julian Brown, another superplayer. At the time, I was specializing in maiden turf races, using the Tomlinson ratings before they had become commonplace. It was a fertile period for all four of us, and yet we had very different approaches.
In the beginning, Susan was the least daring of the four, betting $2 across the board. How far she has come! In the beginning I wondered about her caution. I knew she had been a sky diver and expected that, by nature, she would dive into betting.
I soon learned that she was simply getting the hang of a new game of calculated risk. I saw her use Ed’s ratings, incorporate the body language of horses (based on the Joe Takach, video Beat the Beam) and then branch out carefully into esoterica based on something as mundane as the performance box. She would distinguish between win types and in-the-money types that did not like to win. I had already played and written about the backwheel and variations, and no one has developed this into a greater art than Susan Sweeney.
I would call her an anti-handicapper. She learned with Ed that speed figures can only take you so far because the public is simply too aware of the speed factor and generally overbets it. So Ed, and then Susan, decided to ignore speed figures entirely, specializing in what some turf experts call “secondary factors”.
At one point when Susan was still at her cautious stage, I made a prediction. I said to myself that she was going to become a great player. Her point of departure, using a good set of contrarian handicapping tools, was the right path, but not enough.
What really caught my attention was the time and effort she dedicated to decision making. Many players spend 90 percent of the time handicapping the race, with the decision making process as only an afterthought. Susan observed that her husband spent more time on decision making than on handicapping. A selective player, Ed knows which horses were potential bets with a click onto his screen. After that, most of his time is spent filtering out the weaker candidates, getting down to his comfortable four win bets per day.
Susan, at that time beginning to play exotics, took this to a necessary deeper level, since the more combinations involved in a bet, the greater effort is needed to map out an investment. She had all the traits of a great decision maker. First, she gave the process the importance it deserved, unlike most players. Second, she knew how to synthesize, her mind coordinating the various factors I had mentioned above, even when such factors contradicted each other. Finally, she would drift into a zen state of intense concentration. The building could be on fire, a fight could break out, plates could crash to the floor, but nothing would make a dent into her concentration. She would physically drift away to a preferred corner of the room. The way a weight lifter would concentrate all his energy into the right muscles, Susan’s whole body would coalesce into serving one thing: her mind.
Since those days, she has developed into an exotics specialist, concentrating on trifectas, and serial bets from pick 3 through pick 6. Her money management precept is as sound as they come. Find a key horse that’s 5-1 or up. She wants her key to be a value horse. Otherwise the bet’s not worth it. If she has good keys in two legs of a bet or in two parts of a tri, she is entirely willing to use the ALL in the other segment of the bet.
Since then, there was no looking back. At times the road was rocky, but I know of no player who has collected on high-payoff signers as consistently as Susan. If the IRS gave prizes to its most faithful contributors, Susan would win one.
This is as far as I can take it, for the intricacies of her development as a player and thought processes need many more pages to develop. For this reason, I was thrilled to learn that she was preparing a book.
Here’s the touchy side, where I stumble upon a potential conflict of interest. Though my financial interest is so minimal as to be a laughing matter, I decided to back her project by lending the name of my new publishing company, Altiplano Publications, as co-publisher. I could have ignored Susan’s book, but I felt it is truly different from anything that’s come before it. By dealing with the existential aspect of horse betting, including the personal evolution as a player, Susan has gone into territory that’s pretty much ignored by most handicapping books.
I have long maintained that handicapping books that fail to deal with player psychology are missing a major factor in how to win. I’ve been calling for someone to write a book that integrates handicapping, decision making and betting psychology. Lo and behold, Susan did it, so how could I ignore reviewing her book?
Susan’s new book is called Signers : the Storyof a Woman in the Men’s World of Horse Betting.
This is the second title under the name of my publication house. The first is a book on English language learning. I’m also working on a title related to the subject of bicycling and quality of life. (I won’t be overlapping at all with my current publishers such as Dave or Mike Helm.)
To find out the details on Susan’s book, just visit: www.altiplanopublications.com

SUSAN SWEENEY SPEAKS
C&X. What made you reject speed handicapping?
Sweeney. I don’t know if “reject” is the word to describe me and speed.
Probably I would say that I don’t give speed much thought, especially when I am
scanning races to bet. Since I evolved as a player in the same way as a student
in school (in my case my instructor was my husband, Ed), there was a time
that I bet speed.
We used track par times to determine lone speed and when we’d see a situation
line up with a lone front runner at odds of 5/2 or higher, we’d bet the horse to
win. Ed made a difficult process (calculating individual horses’ speed figures)
easy for me, by assigning a numbering system related to the horses’ times. We’d
cash a lot of tickets but we knew from our betting records that we were not turning an overall profit.

C&X. Without getting into the illustrative details covered in your book, tell us a little about the spark
that brought your horse betting to a higher and more confident level of success?
Sweeney. I would say it was when I believed you could win and earn a consistent
income from betting on horse racing. Ed and I set a goal: to turn a profit in
racing. To do so we had to be willing to change and make adjustments in the
way we bet and I learned a lot from the bets I made. I keep an open mind,
especially to any logical analysis and I form my own decisions. Cashing tickets on
these decisions sparked the fire and kept me on this path.

C&X. Why is it that so many proficient handicappers underachieve when betting real money?
Sweeney. Lack of confidence in their betting decisions and being swayed by
outside sources to not follow a possible productive path. This can include things
like being afraid to bet a horse because his odds are too high or years of bad
betting habits haunting you. When you’re trying something new and depleting
your funds before you’ve had the time to learn a new approach or when you get
caught up in trying to hit “The Score” and forgetting to cash on anything
consistent.
Paper bets allow for any amounts. The funds never exhaust. Real bets have a limit for everyone so its best to try any new approach with amounts that fit within your limit and then stick with the same amount even when you’re way ahead. At least wait to increase your bet until you’ve reached a level of confidence with the way you are betting. And most important, knowing how to pass a bet regardless of the time you spent handicapping a race and then being able to mentally live with the results even if the passed bet wins, because you’ve kept your money for a bet that will be a better investment.

C&X. I have noticed that many handicapping contest winners are also athletes. This is just a thought, but do you think the competitiveness of sports has something to do with success in horse betting?
Sweeney. I hope not because I don’t consider myself a competitive person. That’s not to say I don’t look at competitive trainers and size them up against one another when making a bets. It’s just I am not competitive when I’m making a bet.
Perhaps this trait is true among the tournament players and that could explain why I do not do well in handicapping tournaments, though I’ve only entered two in my career and I don’t have the desire to enter another for several reasons. I am after the day in, day out consistency that racing offers and the wonderful challenges offered at my discretion and not at someone else’s. I want to make the decision of what I bet and how I bet it. Tournaments can make the 90% of the people that enter them feel inadequate because they left without a prize when actually they may possess excellent handicapping skills. In a tournament, they had to change their entire structure because the tournament may demand you to only place win bets or play specific racetracks that you may not do well at. Perhaps competitive spirit does make a difference, but for me it’s different. I’d rather take that $500 entry fee and use it for my very obtainable shot of turning that into thousands with what everyday racing offers.
C&X. Compared to the recycling business where you also did battle in a mens' subculture, how does horse racing compare when it comes to respect for a woman player?Sweeney. Nearly two years ago, Ed and I moved to Florida and recently we discovered that one of my previous male business acquaintances moved down here too. Al Stevens and his sons owned and operated the largest independent trash hauling company on the East Coast until he sold his company and retired in 1998. I met Al when my Mom and I owned what is called a packing plant (a facility that processes recyclables), when he purchased a piece of used recycling equipment from me back in the early 80’s at the time when trash and recycling just started going hand in hand. Perhaps because we met when I was driving a forklift to load a truck, or because I worked with him and his sons from that day forward, teaching them the ins and outs of the recycling business, but Al and his sons Pat and Mike always treated me as an equal. We did a lot of business together and we never had a contract. We were as good as our word and that was good for each of us.
I mention this because Al’s wife and daughter also worked in their business and they would say things to me like, “Al is such a chauvinist, how do you get along so well with him?” They would even question why he liked me so much especially because of my being a woman.
Well we recently had the pleasure of seeing Al, his wife and one of his sons Pat after we found out they were down here, and Al was as happy to see me as I was to see him. Again his wife mentioned how she never could understand why Al had shown such respect for me, but I knew why. Al and the majority of the men I knew in the recycling business treated me as an equal because I worked hard at what I did, from the ground up, and I threw my heart and soul into it even when business was tough. I did this for the same reason they did, because I believed I could “make it” and because of that belief, I eventually did.
Then, when I got into racing, I transferred the same work ethic as well as belief in success, and never viewed myself any different from the men around me, believing and trying just as hard as they did.
Perhaps it’s this naive thinking that doesn’t let me see myself as any different from them and perhaps that is the reason I have their respect. I am sure in recycling and in racing that there are men who view woman as inferior in knowledge and ability, but my experience has been positive in the majority of my encounters. C&X. Your husband Ed Bain is primarily a win bettor (and a true professional) while you specialize in exotics. It sounds like Romeo and Juliette: lovers from two very different cultures. Yet you are true partners. How do you share horse betting from such different perspectives?Sweeney. I guess because neither one of us is a Democrat or a Republican. That we will vote for people for who they are and what they represent, and not because they are representing a certain party.
I would never have been interested in horse racing if the requirement were that I had to do everything exactly the same way as Ed. One of the main reasons I love and married Ed is because he loves and respects me for the individual I am. So for him it is only natural to expect me to use information and make decisions on my own. It just so happens that we primarily use the same information yet we bet in completely different ways and both of our ways are profitable.
We are true partners in life and in racing. I am certain he is one of the best players there ever was. C&X. Is your decision making an integral part of your handicapping or does one come before the other? What percentage of the total process of horse betting is decision making?Sweeney. My full process of handicapping is 100% decision making. It starts with scoping races that fit my established routine and continues with making or passing the bet. And when a bet is made, it is a decision for the best possible return for my investment.


ON GOING DEEP
I used to rail against going too deep into exotics. The deeper you go, the more combinations you use, the higher percentage of winning races you need just to keep even.
This remains true for players who use exotics as fishing expeditions and fail to consider whether the exotic is playable or not, or for those who use more horses based on conventional handicapping factors.
For such players, my previous assertion is correct: the more combinations you use, the more automatic losers you are playing.
But for serious, discerning and selective players, I am now convinced that going deep is the answer.
I’ll explain why. An exotic bet with more combinations increases the player’s rate of expectation. For example, if I play a pick three with one horse in each leg, and if each horse has a 50 percent chance to win, that should look great, but it only results in a 12 ½ percent chance to win: .5 x .5 x .5 = .125
Having identified three horses each with a 50 percent chance to win is a beautiful beginning. But the results of at least a third of all Tbred races are determined by either chaos or by how the race was run: chances are, one of those three standouts will find a way to lose.
Adding more horses to this combination without having an idea on their real chances of winning is still a precarious strategy. However, if I identify a horse in the second leg with a 20 percent chance, and another in leg three with a .20 percent chance, that alone will double my chance of collecting. In the second leg, I have a .50 chance and a .20 chance, equalling .70. Ditto for race three.
.5 x .7 x .7 = .245
By adding two horses that should be 4-1, I end up with a 24% chance to collect instead of a 12% chance!
The secret to adding horses is value. Let’s say that in the first leg, I end up with an underlay and the horse I thought should be even money goes off at 3/5. If the other two legs include underlays as well, then the payoff will be less than fair value. I know that I’m not going to collect every time on such a bet, and not even half the time. Using underlays in pick threes, or any other exotic, will substantiate my original assertion: too many automatic losing parts of a combination will grind you to a long term loss.
However, if I can project overlays in two of the three legs of the pick three, then I have a chance to collect at a payoff level that is sustainable in the long run.
If the horse I rate as even money in the first leg projects to go off at 5/2, then I already have a potential edge. Let’s say that in the next leg, my two horses are both underlays, but in the third leg, the horse that should have been 1-1 is 3-1 and the one that should have been 4-1 is 7-1 ... well, then I’m looking at an overlay payoff.
This means that the player should “know something” that the crowd does not know in at least two of the three legs. If that’s the case, if you really have a profound edge in two of those three races (you must be honest with yourself), then you can do an ALL in the third leg, providing it’s a race you do not understand where the morning line favorites look either false or vulnerable.
Some years ago at Santa Anita, I once collected a $587 consolation on a $2 pick 6 ticket. I went back and analyzed what it would have taken to hit the six. After the fact, being honest with myself, I mapped out a ticket of all my contenders in each race. The ticket came out to be in the hundreds of dollars, and yet, I still would not have had the winner in the missing leg.
Going deep would have been a dumb move leading to a break-even payoff, unless I’d have had the foresight to know that the race I did not understand merited the ALL.
That’s a huge leap. In retrospect, I probably would have used the ALL in a different race.
Here’s an example where I made an inspired bet and yet I had no way to improve upon that wager by adding horses.
What I learned from that occasion and other betting along the way is that we must have a way to deal with chaos races. Invariably, going deeper into a race which we do not understand results in the following typical example:
I used two horses in the first leg and won. I used a single in the second leg, and won. I used six horses of nine in the third leg ... and lost.
What does this prove? That going deep in a half-assed way is destructive.
But what if I understand all three races and play a small ticket. Again and again, I have learned in such cases that not going deep has been destructive.
In conclusion, the more you understand about the legs of an exotic, the deeper you can afford to go. The less you understand about these races, the better it is to not play at all. The exception is that when you have a profound and overlay understanding of every leg but one. In such a case, you can use the ALL.
This is a DANGEROUS article. It could encourage wild betting. Ultimately, players must be honest with themselves. They must be able to distinguish between true handicapping insight and ho-hom conventional analysis where there’s little or no inspiration. That’s tough. It requires both critical thinking and self-discipline.
It may seem like a contradiction but the time to get wild is when you really have an objective latch on a race or races involved in an exotic bet, when you know something that the crowd cannot perceive. Only then should the player go deep.
PS. I remember a guy at the Cracked Claw OTB in Maryland who, after seemingly every trifecta and pick three, was saying, “I had it”. Turned out he was playing so many combinations that he would have had to win 80 percent of the time just to break even. But he was having a good time, and in this valley of tears, he had found an outlet.

PRIEST RULES ON HORSE BETTING: IS IT MORAL TO PLAY THE PONIES?
Being a father or mother is the toughest profession in the world. And they don’t even offer courses in high school on how to be a parent, a subject that’s much more strategic than algebra or classical literature.
Once in awhile, a father receives a true reward. I’m not talking about the kid’s graduation or a gift he sends you or an award he wins. Those are good things, but not so unusual.
In this case, I was totally unprepared for the reward I was going to receive from my 19-year-old son.
It began with his three week hiking trip to the rugged southwest of Ireland, where steep mountains meet the sea. Always in search of a challenge, Marcus had noticed this hiking trip on the bulletin board at his university, La Sorbonne. He was attracted by two points. First was the challenge: the ruggedness of the terrain, the notorious Irish weather, and the fact that the group would have to look for free housing along the way in Irish villages. Second was the cost, a single low price including food, dubious lodging, and transportation from France, two ferry rides sandwiched between crossing northern France, England and Ireland by bus. The third attraction would only be learned after the fact: the remarkable hospitality of the people in this region.
The hike was called, “Christian retreat” and was sponsored by a Catholic group. At this moment in his life, my son is quite the skeptic about religion, but he has nothing against religious people.
As it turned out, after a tough day of hiking, and once the group had found a place to stay for the night (a local school, a gymnasium, or sometimes even private houses), they would get together to scrimmage at rugby (men and women), play games, and hold debates.
The debates concerned religion and morality.
When the group learned that Marcus’s father is a horseplayer, they decided on a debate about horse betting: is it immoral?
There were no horseplayers on this hike, so we were poorly represented in this debate. It began with the usual platitudes: horse betting is a form of gambling, gambling can destroy families, and even when you win, it’s a matter of pure luck, so what’s the point?
At this juncture, my son chimed in. He is not a horseplayer and never has been. But on one or two occasions, he did pick up a racing form, study the past performances, and make a bet or two, mainly to find out what it was all about.
He had tried horse betting, he explained to the group.
“It’s the hardest, most demanding thing I ever did,” he affirmed. “Harder even than my university studies. It’s not much about luck, and much more about knowing probabilities.”
He went on to explain that winning requires a great deal of knowledge and lots of ability to analyze information.
I must confess that I was rather pleased to hear my son speaking in this way, and even more so in the context he did it. He had become a very worthy defended of our game. For me, as a father, this was a great gift.
The following day, the group brought the issue up with a priest, including Marcus’s arguments. The priest listened to the debate replay and then gave his ruling.
Horse betting is okay, he explained, so long as you are not squandering the family income, which would be a fatal sin.
I am not precisely quoting the priest because I’m taking these words from my son’s paraphrased account. But reading between the lines of this priest’s words, you could conclude that the real sin is not betting the horses but losing.

BREEDERS’ CUP CLASSIC: A LESSER OF EVILS RACE
The Travers is now history, but I share with you my notes on the eve of the Travers as they related to my projecting of BC-Classic scenarios ...
I’m sitting here scanning the past performances on the eve of the Travers and there’s only one thing that comes to my mind; that this year’s Breeders’ Cup Classic, like so many others, may end up as a lesser-of-evils race.
It’s the same scenario as a majority of BC Classics in the past decade or more. Horses like Concern, Alphabet Soup, Cat Thief, Volponi and possibly Pleasantly Perfect as well, win the race not because they are super horses, but rather, because there are easier pickings than what should be in such a prestigious race.
Looking at the Travers pps, I see that the winner, whoever he may have to be, will not have to beat a memorable field. I also notice that Nick Zito may already be aware of the difficulty of sustaining a star’s campaign of regular racing, for he is entering Birdstone off an 84-day layoff. And he also went into his Belmont win off a layoff. The freshness factor, so important in our research of horses at the bottom-of-the-barrel tracks, may now be just as significant at the elite level.
As usual, horses come into this field from races in which they won by default, or in which the best 3-year-olds had defected or gone lame. They are good horses, to be sure, but not memorable ones.
In last year’s Classic, the 3-year-old usual suspects squared off against the older usual suspects, who in turn were reaping their Grade I rewards from puny 5- and 6-horse fields, at odds of 3/5. The best horses from both generations had already defected or gone sour, because increasingly it has become impossible to sustain a top horse’s career for more than 6 months.
Gone this year is the winner of the Kentucky Derby and Preakness. Smarty Jones was too valuable to investors (having been syndicated to future stud duty) to be risked on the track.
Ditto for several previous years’ Derby and Preakness winners, who, for one reason or another, were no longer valid items by the time the Classic came around.
Handicapping such Classics is incredibly complex, because we are not looking for the greatest horse but for the one who is less likely to melt down. There is a simple solution to such things: play the toteboard.
The proof comes from a long-term analysis of the BC-Classic, which shows that if you had bet every single horse in every single Classic (random betting), you’d have ended up with a profit, and even excluding the hugh mutuel of Arcangues, this strategy still led to a profit.
So why split hairs about which horse is least likely to wilt in the stretch, or which one is least likely to by ruined by the pace duel. “Least likely” is more difficult to quantify.
The answer lies in watching the board for the best potential payoff for any of the horses entered that can still gallop straight after the post parade.
Well, back to the future, Birdstone won the Travers, and Zito seems to have gotten a sense for the huge trend of today: the lightly-raced horse. Having peaked twice in the same racing year, Birdstone brings up the possibility that we could have a real star going in the Classic.
Then there is Pleasantly Perfect, who, with last year’s Classic and subsequent peaks, could be seen as a late-blooming star. The word is that Mandella is pointing him to the Japan Cup, November 28, in an effort to break Cigar’s record as the all-time money earner. That would make the BC-Classic as a glorious prep race for Pleasantly Perfect.
In any case, suddenly for this year’s Classic, we may actually have at least two legitimate stars in the field. Beyer noted that this year’s 3-year-old crop is nothing to brag about, and we all remember, when following the top older horse ratings leading up to last year’s Classic, that the two top-rated horses both defected, meaning that Pleasantly Perfect ended up defeating the second team.
A third scenario would see a dominant Euro horse entered in the Classic. The Euros do not have a bad in-the-money record. Arcangues did win, and Swain would have won in ’98, if in the stretch drive, had he not run sideways in the direction of the grandstand tavern. Could we see Doyen in the Classic? It would give Dettori a chance to make amends for his ride on Swain.
The Classic could end up breaking a sad trend and suddenly living up to its name. I’ve hesitated to even consider saying such a thing. Defections seem like the rule rather than the exception. But both Zito and Mandella seem to understand how racing has changed, and even how the very nature of the thoroughbred has changed.
If the above three horses are NOT entered in this year’s Classic, then it will be a usual-suspects race, and we can get out our lesser-of-evils handicapping methods.
Stay tuned for the C&X on-line Breeders’ Cup race analysis, with odds lines and new features.

IF I COULD TOOT MY OWN HORN
It’s been an ongoing battle for me to keep a very good man like Dave Powers from using superlatives about C&X and yours truly. My reputation lies in what I produce and not in any advertising praise. However, at this transition between year 1 and year 2 of the new C&X, I would like make an exception and briefly toot my own horn, in urging you to renew your subscription. What you get in C&X can be found in no other racing publication. Nowhere would they discover a book like The Wisdom of Crowds and thus be privy to a vital pari-mutuel message. What other publication would discover a horseplayer who had actually walked the course at Epsom? As a journalist, I am not afraid to ask the most probing questions, as was especially the case in our interview with pro player Barry Meadow. How many publications actually stalk and track big players to see how they get the job done, as we have done with Meadow, Sweeney, Bain, and others. What publication takes you inside the mind of a successful player, as we did in our action profile of Brad Free. C&X Research takes us to unknown regions of handicapping awareness. Articles like “The Ralph Kramden Syndrome,” “Ionesco Would Say: Key the Longshot,” “Social Darwinism at the Track,” and “Priest Rules on Horse Racing” bring our game to a universal level. Our five C&X Crib Sheets, alone, could have sold as a “System” for the price of a whole subscription. Read the letters to the editor in other publications, and you’ll be hard-pressed to come up with anything as insightful as what we receive from our readers in the C&X Cafe. In the next 12 months, a single piece of information discovered in these pages could make the positive difference in your betting life. But more important is the intangible factor of how the ongoing exchange of handicapping ideas and decision-making pointers can give a hidden boost to one’s handicapping health.
Hope you will stay aboard for the upcoming year.
Mark
PS. Just for fun, don’t forget to check my eclectic website at: www.altiplanopublications.com