Mark Cramer
C & X Report

CONTENTS
Editorial: Know Thy Enemy
The Negative Class Drop: Not So Quick
The Essence of Overlay
Thin Slicing and the Derby
Never a dull commentary from Bob
A Classic Backwheel Scenario
Getting Serious With the Time Factor

EDITORIAL:
KNOW THY ENEMY
The pari-mutuel system, a French invention, seems like the essence of my life. The whole philosophy of overlay can be applied not only to horse betting but entertainment, work, and travel. For example, the most stimulating places to travel are often lesser-known places, so the overlay concept extends to my travel writing.
During the past four years, I have found one particular wager in France which has been one of the greatest overlays in my betting career. Called the �Multi� it is equivalent to a 4-horse quinella. You need to pick the top four horses, in any order, with fields of at least 14 horses. As I�ve explained before, as a proficient longshot handicapper, I am especially rewarded by this wager, for my longshot finishing third or fourth gives me just as much leverage as if it had finished first. (We know that good longshot handicappers will choose horses that finish second more often than first, and third more often than second.)
So here I am in a situation, during the past four years, where my return on investment has been highest within this one wager, even though the takeout is nearly 26 percent.
(Please follow this argument, because it will have a universal application for your own betting.)
After the potential for the �overlay�, the other incredible aspect of the pari-mutuel system is the fact that we are in an investment war but we do not see our enemy. The enemy is the other bettors, or at least some other bettors. Sometimes, we could say that the enemy is our friend who has backed a different horse. But that�s less convincing because our friend�s wager is a very small percentage of the pool. In essence, our enemy is invisible. This makes the game extremely collegial and congenial. We can even find ourselves in a position of sharing psycological support with our enemy.
This is true until you actually know your enemy. With the Multi, I have just learned who my enemy is. I have been given his name. I know he is a banker. I know he loves wagering but does so from an entirely businesslike posture. In a country where there are very few professional players, I know that this man put 3 million dollars into the Multi pools in 2005, not playing any other type of wager, leveraging his bets by using all kinds of combinations, and that he got 4 million back.
Before I had learned of his identity, I had felt his presence, because I had perceived that certain Multi payoffs were becoming lower than their expectation. On the other hand, I also know that he is not invincible, since on other occasions, I�ve still managed to gain a substantial overlay payout.
Until now, I have survived mainly be staying out of the pool when I felt I had no special insights. But this has lowered the volume of my betting.
Direct conflict
I have developed a strategy for preventing this powerful enemy from depriving me of my income. I will go back to the results charts and study which types of races ended up producing overlay multis and which ones were underlays. In this way, I will have a very good idea where this enemy is concentrating his efforts (in which types of races and on what types of horses).
By studying the Multi payoffs with excessive overlays, I will be able to identify this enemy�s weak points. In which scenarios was he overleveraged? Where has his handicapping been especially weak?
For me this is a personal drama. But the C&X audience has no need for my personal musings. If there were no universal lesson which can be applicable to my readers, I would refrain from narrating my individual anecdotes.
You can employ the same strategy
In your own betting you can learn from my story. The first step is to stop thinking that your enemy is invisible, and begin personifying him. As a police investigator, develop a profile of your enemy. You can do this by reading, and if necessary, saving results charts, and profiling which types of races and which types of horses generally produce overlays and which other types produce underlays.
In this way you will be tracking the ways of your enemy. You will know when to stay out of a race and when your enemy is most vulnerable. By personifying the impersonal pari-mutuel system, you can find yourself in a more advantageous position in this investment war.
In general we have already outlined a profile of our enemy. He overbets speed, and to a lesser extent, overbets pace. He also overbets recent form, even though recent form is a powerful handicapping factor. At the moment, he underbets the class factor. And above all, he underbets what the experts call �secondary factors�: trainer specialties, the performance box, horse-for-course. Above all, he is not good at picking out the most unusual pattern matches, for he is methodical but not improvisational.
He sometimes falls victim to hype and overbets celebrity horses, but in recent years, he�s become a smart-ass and has entered the countercultural realm of horse race handicapping. In this sense, he is encroaching on our terrain, and the conflict is more direct.
Horse betting remains one of the most �civil� forms of competition in the world. But beneath the layer of civility, there is a real enemy out there. The better we know him, the better chance we have of not allowing him to cut into our profits or destroy them altogether.

INSIDE THE HUMAN MIND
As you probably have deduced by now, I feel that the more we know how the mind functions, and the more we gain initimate awareness of our own thought process, the more likely we are to become critical analysts when confronting the past performances.
My posts for the Wood Memorial can be used to illustrate what happens within the mind on various levels. I believe that baring this process will help you to learn more about your own innermind functioning as it relates to deciding on the possible outcome of a race.
For the most possible clarity, I�m gonna number the steps of this particular process.
(1)
Here, I had seen the race and not liked what I had seen. Having checked the wealther forecast, I was in a bind, for the prediction of showers could lead to a wet track, which would enhance the pedigree factor. I felt uncomfortable about having to handicap with my mind on a split screen.
Malcolm Gladwell�s best seller Blink explores the importance of hunch and instinct to the workings of the mind. Too bad I�ve lent out my copy but in a past C&X I have referred to Gladwell�s concept of �thin slicing�, whereby there will be situations in which too much information creates confusion rather than enlightenment and the thinker would need to pick out those one or two pieces of truly valuable information and bypass the rest.
In handicapping, this is the classic dilemma of angles versus comprehension handicapping. Today I am amazed that our use of the word �angle� is so close to the current idea of thin slicing. For years, angle players have been put down by comprehensive handicappers as superficial or one-dimensional.
I looked at the Wood, began to handicap in a comprehensive way, and then realized that the information available was far to blurry and contradictory. So my first reaction was to make a few simple (some would say �simplistic�) choices in what information I would highlight.
I decided to depreciate the value of races from the Big A inner dirt and from Tampa Bay. That really simplified the process. Bob And John was not only coming from California, which I felt would be an asset against lesser-track horses, but also did not really have the right running style for SoCal racing. So between the two likely favorites, Bob And John came to the surface. Litfin picked the other one but the Big A program had B&J as the fave.
With the rest of the field coming from places where the class factor was questionable, I decided to slice away all the pps and look at the trainers. I was intrigued by Marco�s Style�s trainer�s 9 for 34 record in 2005, but in the end, I settled on the NOW trainer, the hot guy who was saddling Jazil. With rain predicted, I was a little concerned about getting past the mud loving Keyed Entry, but I had deep respect for the mud pedigree on both sides with Bob & John, and then realized that Jazil had the same Mr. Prospector line on one side, and also the same dam-sire as Bob And John. Call it a hunch. I felt that these two horses would have something in common, and especially on a wet track.
However, handicapping the weather at the same time as analyzing a race is not always recommended. I had no choice. I had to post my analysis long before we�d know the track condition.
At this moment, I was already willing to play against Keyed Entry, but feared that he might benefit from the mud factor. So at the stage of the first posting, I was inclined to treat this race as a minimum investment scenario.
(2)
The human mind�s must react to both complexity and confusion. Handling these two opposite forces is key to a horseplayer�s success. When Bill sent in his post with a very perceptive analysis on Greeley�s Legacy, I took notice. I think of him as Bill 2, to differentiate from Bill 1. Dr. Billy M of Kentucky Derby fame. But you will recall that Bill 1 and Jon as well gave me their analysis prior to the Derby and I failed to use their info effectively. Looking at Bill 1�s commentary on Greeley�s Legacy, I sat up and took notice. He made sense in many ways, and in fact, had the race track come up fast, the outcome may have been closer to Bill 2�s analysis.
So with his ideas, I had to differentiate between complexity (his entirely correct analysis of the Gotham) and confusion (his reference to Greeley�s trainer confidence). It�s not that the trainer info was not pertinent. On the contrary, it was worthy information. However, I correctly decided that, though correct, it was partial. What about the opinions of the other trainers. As I later noted, my experience on the backstretch and in situations of interviewing trainers is that you usually find five or six trainers in a race who all think their horse is gonna win.
Rather than overreact to Bill 2�s commentary, I noted to you that I would have to sleep on it. And there were moments of wakefulness when I seriously considered dropping Jazil from the mix, based on his very questionable maiden victory. But I never lost sight of the original reason for liking Jazil.
Over the years I have learned to sort through other peoples� opinions and eventually benefit from them. On the one hand, Bill�s calling my analysis �sparse� was justified. On the other hand, it had been intentionally sparse, since I had decided to elevate angles or thin slicing above comprehensive handicapping.
(3) Several things happened with Greeley�s Legacy. I discovered that GL was the smartass buzz word amont the handicapping intelligentsia, and I recalled that the �smartass� horse often ends up underperforming in relation to its odds. I feel that in this race, discouraged by having to work with two low-odds favorites, the handicapping intelligentsia automatically looks for another horse, and this other horse is still an obvious horse. It�s the obvious longshot candidate. It�s like the favorite of the longshots, if you understand what I mean.
That said, over and over again, I watched the replay of the Gotham and decided that in that race, the best horse was indeed Greeley�s Legacy. On a fast track, at least, given the odds differential, Greeley had to be of greater value than Keyed Entry.
Even at my lowest moment with respect to Jazil, I posted these words: �I do believe in trainer determinism, and this guy's trainer is in one of his hot clusters.�
(4) Ironically, thanks to Bill�s post on Greeley�s Legacy, I was liking this race much more and willing to bet more. Even if I were to use more horses, I could still win more money (or lose more).
This brings us to my last post, and you will note that thanks to Bill, I actually became more enthusiastic about Jazil. With Bill�s trainer comment, I could have said, �Gee whiz, maybe I should dump Jazil and go with Greeley�. But I knew what had to be done, and digged back for a more balanced view of the trainer comments, by reading the opinions of each and every trainer who offered one. That meant liking Jazil much more, but also liking Marco�s Style.
I quote the last post in its entirety so that you can witness the evolution of my thinking on the race. I�ll bolden the key points in the evolution of my thinking. I�ll add brackets to fill in what I did not write.
�Bill referred to Weaver's comments on GREELEY'S LEGACY. However, having lived on the backside, I can assure you that for most races, you will find 5 or 6 trainers who say their horse looks great, worked perfectly, and has a good chance to win, and in this race, there are other optimistic trainers.
DEPUTY GLITTERS. We still do not know his status, depending on probable rains. His trainer is dominant, but I will take a stand against the Tampa Bay colony and see that his GP race does not compare favorably to Jazil's GP allowance race. [Not knowing the extent of the rains, I had to make an all-encompassing decision about this horse. I compared the GP allowance wins of Jazil and Deputy Glitters and used the superior Jazil alw race as one piece of further evidence that the Tampa Bay context would have to be demoted in the case of DG. We still do not know what DG would have done on a fast strip, but for me I now seriously doubted this horse on any surface, and I�d seen before where the Beyer ratings from certain tracks are inflated compared to others. DG�s high Beyers no longer concerned me.]
BOB AND JOHN. Still can't get past him, but at the same time, no great enthusiasm based on the odds. Yes, I will make him the most likely winner for the connections of previous Wood winner Congaree. [Here, I added an extra positive for B&J, based on trainer-owner history. The shipping to New York made more sense in the historical context.]
MARCO'S STYLE. If you like Greeley's Legacy, then you gotta consider Marco. As a second-time starter, he lost by 3/4 to Greeley before both horses improved. Marco's 19 March race, a day after the Gotham, looked super impressive, as he was 3-wide around both turns but then really turned on the gas and pulled away. The fractions may not be favorable to the Gotham's but this is one improving horse and he really knows the where the wire is at 1 1/8.
JAZIL. I was tempted to toss this horse after having named him the exotic inclusion. He beat doggy-doo in his maiden win. But that was as a 2yo. His GP allowance win was not shabby. In the same way that Bill checked Weaver's comments on Greeley, I checked 'em on JAZIL. In the Fountain of Youth, Jazil bled through his lasix. That's why he lost by 7 to Corinthian after having been only 3/4 behind Corinthian in the previous alw. If you whiten out the Fountain of Youth, you come up with a horse that finished 3/4 behind the eventual winner of the Fountain of Youth.
Now, JAZIL has worked out with no lasix and did not bleed.
When I first posted JAZIL as the exotic inclusion, I mentioned the dominant trainer and rider. Well since then, this same combo has a 13.20 winner yesterday at the Big A. They are red hot. [So you can see, I had found additional info on Jazil that actually fortified my opinion of this horse. Bill�s post might have dissuaded me on Jazil, but on the contrary, it brought out the best in me by encouraging me to do more information digging.]
MARCO'S STYLE's trainer was 9 for 34 in 2005 and his rider Norberto Arroyo is hot right now.
Summary
I will keep JAZIL as a longshot exotic inclusion, sticking with my original "thin slicing" (see Malcolm Gladwell's book "Blink") but will also find ways to use GREELEY'S LEGACY and MARCO'S STYLE. [As you can see, I had returned to my original idea, but more convinced, but had also decided to �find ways� to add the two additional horses.] I can afford to do this only because I believe that Keyed Entry can finish out of the top two slots. [Here I felt the need to emphasize that value in the race resided not on in playing in favor of horses but playing against a horse that would take heavy action. If you watched the race, you would have seen that Keyed Entry had nothing left in the extra sixteenth, which was exactly what I had feared in previous postings on this horse, because he improved progressively less with each stretchout.]
Sorry, can't say how exactly I'll use these 3 longshots, but one combo for sure is to exacta backwheel BOB AND JOHN under those three. [Here I plead guilty for not being able to map out a bet ahead of time. This is something that I cannot do without knowing late-breaking information, and especially in this case with the weather. I mentioned the backwheel only because I�ve received so much correspondance from readers who tell me how they had failed to use the exacta-as-place bet. But you can see clearly that Jazil remained as the exotic inclusion and Bob And John remained as the most-likely winner, so you had to have that exacta. The other two longshots could be used in other ways. Clearly the message here was to go more heavily in combinations with Jazil.]
For me, the addition of new information from Bill only helped me to become more enthusiastic about the race and to like my original exotic inclusion even more. I certainly added the other two longshots to the mix, but in the end, I made out better thanks the Bill�s commentary.
C&X readers are always invited to participate in the Stakes Weekend by sending objectively explained opinions, and Bill�s insights were most welcomed.
In conclusion, there was a unique dynamic between thin slicing and comprehensive handicapping. In this case, the comprehensive analysis played a dynamic and supportive role in the thin slicing. In critical analysis of past posts, I can say that on more than a few occasions, I overhandicapped.
The key is to decide in a particular race just how deep to go and what should be the balance between angles and handicapping.
PS. Some of you may have seen Jazil�s lower Beyer ratings and refrained from using him for that reason. It�s a good moment to repeat previous C&X research that shows winning horses to average between an 8 and 9-point jump in Beyer rating. In other words, most winners will have run an improved race and it�s our job to project the improvement and not expect continuity.


THE NEGATIVE CLASS DROP:
NOT SO QUICK!
Don sent me a race from Oaklawn in which he made the right bet but lost. He asked me to look at the race and perhaps find some �reasons� behind the result.
It�s always easy to analyze a situation after the fact, and please do not imagine that I �would have� made the right decision in this case. However, after-the-fact questioning is vital for improving handicapping and decision making, and I did find a lesson within the pps that we�ve not referred to often enough in this publication.
Don used the C&X �short form� to illustrate his handicapping, bumping out proven losers at the class level of the race and low-percentage trainers. I�ll try to narrate the decision in a way that we do not lose precious space reprinting pps. The horse that Don chose from the 7-horse field at Oaklawn (Race 3, 2March) was Bandangle at a hard 7/2.
BANDANGLE 12,500 Claiming
Chapa R
10Feb06 OP sly 6f 30,000 Clmg, finished 10th, 13 lengths back
27Jan06 Hou fst mile Allowance, finished 8th by 17
7Jan06 LaD fst 1 1/16 50,000 0pt Clmg, finished 9th by 13
4Dec05 LaD fst 5 1/2f Md 25,000, won this debut race by nearly 4 lengths at 7/2, 67 Beyer
There was something of a pattern match in here as Bandangle was finally getting a fast-track dirt sprint, the precise condition of his victory, and switching to the rider who had won with him. While both Chapa and trainer Calhoun were a little cold at the beginning of the year, they both were prove 20-percent winners throughout 2005.
As a broad-brush rule of thumb, the correct claiming price for a horse that won a maiden claimer is half the claiming price of the MdClmg, so the 12,500 claiming price was not an unreasonable level. Therefore, this could not be considered as a negative drop. The horse was being placed where he could win.
The horse that Bandangle needed to beat was the 4/5 favorite:
JOINT SESSION
10Feb06 OP sly 30,000 Clmg, finished 8th by 8 lengths
21Jan06 OP fast 20,000 Clmg, WON at 9/2 63 Beyer
In this case, we have what appears to be a negative drop. The horse won at 20,000, so in essence, he�d plunging way below his win level! Joint Session is going off at 4/5.
I�ve read handicapping treatises that tell us to always toss a negative dropper. They may be right, but they also may be using a very liberal interpretation of negative drop. Let�s look more deeply into Joint Session.
(1) His trainer is Steve Asmussen, consistently an above-20% trainer. I�ve often interviewed trainers about their class drops and I�ve learned two things. High percentage trainers often tell me that the reason they win at a high clip is that they are willing to race their horses at the proper level, and prefer to lose a horse via the claiming box that wins than not win at all. Some low percentage trainers are always spotting their horses too high.
(2) In this particular case the huge class drop may be illusory. Let�s see why by going back more deeply into the horse�s pps.
1Jan06 LaD fast 15,000n2L, 2nd at 12-1 with a 67 Beyer
His previous races were out of the money at much higher levels until you get back to his maiden win, which was at Maiden Special Weight.
Please note that the place finish on New Year�s Day was for horses that had not beaten winners (non winners of 2 lifetime races), so that the 15,000 claiming tag in a race that he lost was essentially inflated, and that field was no better than today�s 12,500 claiming race for open company.
We now have several comparables. In order to judge whether Joint Session�s 67 Beyer at LaD was truly better than Badrangle�s 63 at the same track, we need to compare the fractions.
Joint Session: 58.4 for 6f versus Badrangle�s 58.4 at 5 ? furlongs. Looks pretty close, and Badrangle certainly has a right to improve, since his fraction was in his debut race.
We can also consider the level of maiden victory, an important handicapping tool for younger claimers. Joint Session�s maiden win as at Maiden Special Weight while Badrangle�s was at Md25,000, same track. However, the handicapper should not overly discredit a maiden claiming victory when it is the only maiden claiming race that the horse has won. This tells us that he has never lost a maiden claimer.
All things considered, Don made the right decision in backing Badrangle, given the odds differential of 7/2 versus 4/5. If you were still not sure, you could have noted that Asmusson�s return on investment over a period of 1702 sprint races was $1.32 for $2 and that his roi for 916 claiming races was $1.35, both categories with win percentages of about 21%. Calhoun, Badrangle�s trainer, had significantly ROIs in these categories: $2.01 and $1.79 respectively, taken from large samples.
From a strict handicapping point of view, understanding that Joint Session was probably not a negative drop, we could have given these two horses the same rating, perhaps about 2-1. This would have made Badrangle the overlay and Joint Session the underlay.
However, there was one last decision that could have been made. I say �could have� because I cannot assure you that I would have made this decision. Usually, the �exacta as place bet� is used for when we like a longshot to win versus a legit favorite. Bandangle was not exactly a longshot. If the player put twenty percent of what he�d wagered to win as the exacta, then a theoretical 10-buck win bet would have been accompanied by a 2-dollar exacta. Bandangle almost caught Joint Session, missing by a nose. The exacta paid $14.40.
Postcript on class drops
Whether you believe in the much maligned class factor or not, numerous trainers have told me that they will drop a horse in class to restore the sense of courage in the horse. In other words, horses have a herding instinct and can feel the difference. Previous C&X research has shown that in the long run, with all other situations equal, horses dropping in class yield a slightly higher win percentage and return on investment than horses staying at the same level or rising in class.

THE ESSENCE OF OVERLAY
Who cares if it�s an overlay? Just give me a winner!
If been subjected to this line again and again. Let�s look at the whole fallacy of it.
Let�s say that we decide to wager on all horses going off at 4-1. In theory we should have 20 percent winners (one winner in every five races). However, when the pari-mutuel system tells us it�s 4-1, it really has about a 5-1 chance to win. The toteboard lowers the odds artificially from 5-1 to 4-1, and that�s how it collects the takeout: by giving us less than we deserve.
(I�m using round figures to make this point. The way I�m showing it, we�re talking about 20 percent skimmed off the top, including takeout and breakage.) That�s somewhat high, since a takeout of 17% plus breakage would be something less than 20% off the top. But you understand the point.
So if you bought a ticket on 100 4-1 horses, you�d invest $200. You�d be playing horses that should be 5-1 (in the long run, but not in the short run, since the public is not so perfect in the short run in appraising the precise value of a horse). For 5-1, the equivalent of about 16 percent, you�d have collected on 16 winners from those hundred starters, and get paid at 4-1 for each winner, or $10. Multiply $10 by 16 and you end up with a return of $160 for your $200 invested. You lose!
Handicapping is really about finding horses that are underestimated by the crowd? We would require 6-1 on a horse that should be 4-1. If we could only play overlays and restrict our play on horses that we appraise at 4-1 to horses that are at least 6-1 on the board, then we would end up with a profit. Odds of 6-1 pay $14, but 4-1 means 20 percent winners. For our 100 races of should-be 4-1 horses that were going off at 6-1, we would receive 20 winners at a $14 payoff for a return of $280 for an investment of $200.
That, my friends, is what it�s all about. It can be done, but the handicapper must be sensitive to approximately what the true odds should be. By demanding 6-1 on a horse you deem to be 4-1, if you are off by a point, and the horse should really be 5-1, then you would only get 16 winners, multiplied by the $14 payoff for each horse, for a grand total of $224, for a profit or return on investment of 12%.
Thus, you do not have to be precisely accurate to make a line on a horse and bet overlays. By demanding a 50 percent overlay (6-1 on a horse that supposedly should be 4-1), you have a comfortable margin of error. You can be off somewhat and still win.
Separate Pools
Now here is the secret. What we need is a betting public that is way off the mark. This does not happen ever race, and maybe not even every day. But it does happen. The optimal way to make money is if you could find a separate pool. For example, I was able to play Julie Krone�s Colonial Affair in the Belmont Stakes and get 21-1 in the separate California pool when this horse was only 13-1 in the New York pool.
But let�s get back to the 4-1 example. In the Dubai version of the Breeders� Cup on March 25, the sprint race, called the Dubai Golden Shaheen, had California sprinters going against Euro and Dubai sprinters. Everyone knows that California sprinters are among the best in the world. I had a separate French pool for this sprint. What do the French know about California sprinters.
So Proud Tower Too was going off at approximately 4-1 in the USA. The French racing paper did not even note that Proud Tower Too was a front runner. Furthermore, French bettors had better name recognition of Euro and Dubai horses in that field.
As a consequence, Proud Tower Too went off at 8.7 to 1 in the French pool! That�s more than double. With those odds, you could bet him with your eyes closed. Nothing can come closer to an automatic bet. And you could play the other U.S. sprinters in the same race, something I�ve done since the inception of this race.
For a horse that should have paid maybe 10.40, you get 19.40.
Commingling is the Enemy of Horseplayers
As you can see, separate pools produce more overlays and commingling diminishes our chances. That said, I have an answer to how to win money at the races. The answer lies in steely discipline.
Creating Our Own Separate Pool
I�m exaggerating to make a point. We can get overlays like this in two ways. (A) We must wait patiently until the public is as wrong as the French players in the Dubai sprint. And not only the Dubai sprint, for you would have gotten back more to show on The Tin Man in the Dubai Duty Free French pool than he would have paid to win in the USA! (B) We need to handicap in a different way from the public. The closer your handicapping is to the public�s, the more indefinitely you�ll have to wait for an overlay.
This means that pontificating on �How to Handicap� is misleading if the pontif is talking about picking winners. We want to pick out those potential winners that will be paying MUCH MORE than they should, and we can only do this by handicapping in a different way.
This is why C&X features bizarre handicapping processes and methods that are often based on secondary factors rather than primary ones.
In order to get huge overlays, in order to create your own separate pool, you need to create your own separate way of handicapping. We�re talking about a beautiful balance between the science of handicapping and the art of handicapping.
C&X is dedicated to finding these artistic means for our separating ourselves from the pool.
That�s what overlay is all about.

THIN SLICING AND THE DERBY
In the end, two pieces of information produced the winner of the Kentucky Derby, published in our first post. Recall that I�d noted that only horses that have finished out in less than 13 seconds in their final prep have won the Kentucky Derby ever since Sea Hero. The one exception was Silver Charm, and he had done a 13 in his pre-Derby prep after having raced in an exceedingly fast fractions. The winner Barbaro was one of the only five candidates in a field of 20 horses. Barbaro was also a winner as a first-time starter, and in my point system, I may need to add points to this factor.
As it turned out, my key horse ended up being the wiseguy horse of the DRF crowd, and neturally it lost, all the while being bet down to lukewarm favorite. Once the odds became apparent, I had to go for Deputy Glitters, the longest shot on the board. Such things cannot be determined until one sees the toteboard. DG finished a creditable eighth among 20 horses and 11 wide into the stretch was asking him too much. (So many other contenders had horrendous trips, but isn�t that to be expected?)
Strangely, one of the reasons that I had liked Deputy Glitters was his victory over Bluegrass Cat, the eventual second place finisher. I was right in throwing out DG�s Wood Memorial race but I could have done the same for Bluegrass Cat. Whatever added nuances I now able able to see after the fact, at above 60-1, I�d have remained solidly behind Deputy Glitters. I�d make this type of bet every time.
One last point. First impressions in the thin-slicing perspective do have great importance, and this is not the first time that my initial analysis, before I tried to get complex, was closer to the outcome than my final hierarchy of horses. Read back at my early comments on Barbaro and you can see that first impressions are often the most valid, especially in situations of complexity when too many scenarios exist.
Nevertheless, I would simply not have taken Barbaro or any other horse at only 6-1 with such attractive odds on the board for other horses reasonable chances.

NEVER A DULL COMMENTARY FROM BOB
i'm not the smartest guy in the world.� i'm
somewhere in between an australian dyslexic
pygmy and duke cunningham.� BUT� i'm an
eclectic.� AND� i only steal from the best.� take a bow mark.
monday., apr 17 3rd race tampa bay.� nw2l.
34 1 3 3 for the performance box. 8.5 J.
in most cases this is an automatic dismissal.� glue runs faster than this horse.� a turtle with industrial-strength hemorrhoids runs faster.� i was about to
dismisss the animal when i noticed his lone win was at todays distance .7f.
then i noticed rocky� in the daily racing
form was the informed minority.� not only
did he pick him to win but it was his best bet of the day.� no other handicapper even mentioned him.� "NOW," i said, "if i
don't run into cramer i'm going to bet
him."� he went off at 30-1.� my five bucks
gave me a good return.� we dined royally monday night.� (burger king & dairy queen)� it's not that this knowledge is esoteric.� it just gives it positive reinforcement when you read or re-read it.
�
:-)�


i forgot to mention this horse had been off for 52 days.� one innocuous wk.
his last 4 odds were
25.20
24.60
103.50
60.20
�
his last finishes 9th 26l back...stopped
6 12l back
4th 6
9th 9
�
7-yr-old gelding.
�
this was a 100% "Informed Minority" wager.� a few more hits like this and i
can take sally struthers off speed-dial!
�
regards,
�
bob

Mark responds:
Good bet, Bob. The �Informed Minority� method does not produce a high percentage of winners, but it seems to work best when the horse looks worst. That said, if we could only filter out those public handicappers who are not so informed, or misinformed. In the Derby, I assumed that McGee was on the Romans horse because he knew Romans. But Romans himself had announced that he was gonna have his horse put on the lead no matter what it took, which was pretty much an announcement of suicide. This public handicapper is more a features writer than a handicapper, and we could have taken that into account as well.
The informed minority should have some credentials for having picked longshot winners. It would be an enormous task to monitor all public handicappers, but this might be the type of information I would pay someone to do for me.
Then, when a name pops up that is the sole handicapper to pick a horse, when no one else picks him, I shall know if he has ever picked a winner above $6.40.

A CLASSIC BACKWHEEL SITUATION
It seems as if picking a horse to finish second would be open to more chance and less precision than picking the first place horse. Probably this is true in most situations. But the handicapper finds certain race dynamics that point to the place horse more obviously than pointing to a winner.
One of the place scenarios that would inspire a backwheel wager is the plodding come-from-behinder who has the best final time fig in the race but who will depend on racing luck and his own tendency to hang.
The other scenario is even more striking. A horse figures to control the pace. His fractions and speed points say he�ll be the lone front runner. But he�s a hanger, and finds way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Such was the case in the Los Angeles Times Handicap at Hollywood Park and May 13, a six-furlong sprint.
Let�s �scan� the pps, slicing out only the relevant information for this thesis. We�ll use the half-mile fractions and the number of Quirin speed points. In last three sprints, horse gets one speed point for being in the money at the first call, and another for being ITM at the second call, with another speed point added if he�s within 2 lengths at first call, and yet another if within 2 lengths at second call. If he�s never more than a head from the lead, he gets an added speed point. This is the spirit but not the letter of the Quirin speed point method.
1. Pure As Gold. 44.2 was best, but never better than 3rd at the first call. No speed points in last three races.
2. Areyoutalkintome. Has been capable of sub-44 performances and gets 6 speed points.
3. Cigar Pal. Best is 44.4 verging on 45, and only 2 speed points.
4. Siren�s Lure, 44.3 is best, but that was on a wet-fast track, and gets a single speed point.
5. Secret Ridge gets zero speed points and always above the 45 level.
6. Prorunner, formerly had Turf Paradise speed but has lost it with no speed points in last two sprints, and then with two routes in which he did not have the lead. Five races back he earned 2 speed points, and at least has shown speed in the past.
7. Oceanus got no speed points at all and fractions are well above 45.
8. Thunder Touch got 1 speed point but fractions are all above 45.
This means thet AREYOUTALKINTOME should monopolize the pace. Our next step is to see whether �Areyou� is a win or place type horse. We have 12 lines in his pps. Of those twelve races, he shows a single win, but that was a deadheat, and he was the 6/5 fave. Red flag goes up. Possible hanger. In those same last 12 races, he shows three places and two shows. With Patrick Valenzuela aboard (today�s rider), this horse has four races, with the fateful deadheat (half win / half place), two places and a show. At Hollywood Park, his record is 12 1-4-4.
This, my friends, is the classic case where a pace control horse that should be the wire-to-wire winner will find a way to get caught. That means its backwheel time.
Next question. Partial backwheel or don�t take a chance and use the all. Given that �Areyou� will control the pace and will dictate fractions, the deep closers will have little chance. If �Areyou� were high odds, we wouldn�t take a chance and we�d use the ALL, but with �Areyou� being well bet, we�d be wise to do a partial backwheel.
We can feel comfortable excluding the two horses that have the double negative of never racing faster than 45 flat for four furlongs and not earning any speed points. Those are Secret Lodge and Oceanus.
Results
The running of the race was noteworthy. It was Prorunner, recovering his early speed from the past who got off quickest but the expected scenario materialized when Areyoutalkintome captured the lead without being hustled, from the inside. Meanwhile, one horse, Siren�s Lure, was off in a tangle and it took him awhile to get unwound.
Prorunner headed Areyoutalkintome from the second lane but you could see clearly that �Areyou� was not being asked. The 44.2 fraction suggested that this race was being run in Areyou�s ballpark and that it was slow enough for him to not lose gas and fast enough for him to hold off Prorunner, which was the case.
However, the 5-1 Siren�s Lure, the one that got off clumsily, had a beautiful rail move and edged out in the stretch and flashed by to win.
Areyoutalkintome did hold off the 25-1 Prorunner for second. For a $2 wheel, the investment was $10. The return is $36.80. Not a huge score for sure, but in a race where the winner was not obvious to this handicapper, the partial backwheel became the only possible wager. But backwheel�s can be massaged.
A variation of the backwheel would be the trifecta sandwich. In this case you would have had to keep the same five horses on top, use the backwheel horse alone in the place slot, and use all seven for third. For a $30 investment of the dollar variety, you would have collected $211.50 for the tri.
In this case, the backwheel sandwich got much more price leverage, but I am not sure in the long run if this would be the case. Your opinions on this question would be welcomed.
But we must understand that deciding between the straight backwheel or the backwheel sandwich is not an abstract affair. The player needs to know how to identify an honest backwheel scenario.

GETTING SERIOUS WITH THE TIME FACTOR
No, this does not refer to final time but your time. In my ongoing questionaire of why good handicappers get bad results, some of the frequent responses are: �I didn�t have enough time to put it together,� �I hadda cut corners, and it cost me the Pick Six,� and �I have a wife and kids, and when I�m handicapping and playing seriously, I end up treating them like my furniture. They�re around but I have no time for them.�
In fact, many of the stars of horse betting chose to not have kids!
We�ve already written about information overload and overhandicapping, but when surveying horsesplayers, I find that the more frequent problem is not enough time to manage the information.
We�ve written about the memory factor and how it interacts with the discovery of pattern matches. If the handicapper cuts corners with time, he or she no longer has all the pieces to the memory puzzle and will miss the most unusual pattern matches. The more complex the exotic wager, the greater the possibility that one piece of the puzzle that would unlock the exotic combination will have fallen through the cracks of time.
The time factor is not only wrinkled by family duties. What about the concept of friendship? What if there are friends getting together at the local tavern for a few drinks, and you have been invited. What if you need to handicap tomorrow�s card? Do you forget about your friends, and maybe your friendships, and go back to watching the replays, analyzing the past performances, and keeping the all-important betting/decision records?
Strategies in time management
In order to control time, the serious horse bettor should be aware of time constraints before they arrive. That deciding on the right strategy.
One strategy is the target meet, play seriously for a particular meet, such as Saratoga or Santa Anita. That would mean following the races on a daily basis for a few weeks leading up to your chosen meet. During most years, James Quinn used to choose either Santa Anita or Del Mar or both. Those would be his meets for professional play. For the rest of the year, he�d only play recreationally, just to keep in shape, concentrating on stakes races across the country.
A second strategy is the specialty race. With this strategy, the player would concentrate on a single type of race, and maybe a single type of bet within that race. Anything could be a specialty, from bottom-of-the-barrel claimers to graded stakes. This approach would put limits on the workday and allow the player to make serious bets during most of the year. I interviewed one player who specialized on marathon races, a genre that is becoming an endangered species.
A third strategy is thin slicing, referred to in previous C&X articles. This category includes numerous ways to restrain play to chosen essentials. Knowing that there is too much information to manage, the thin slicer chooses to use only certain types of information. Or, he may ask only one question when handicapping a race. That question could be: (a) is there a �different� horse in this race? (b) are there any identifiable pattern matches? (c) is there one particular trainer specialty that is so strong is to eclipse all other factors. I�m sure you can find your own way to thin slice.
Many players I�ve interviewed are aware of the time constraint factor but stumble back and forth between the above three strategies without ever defining which strategy is the one they should specialize in. The time factor demands time to reflect on the factor itself. That represents an initial investment in time that won�t have to be repeated once the serious wagering has become.
Trying to do everything everyday sooner or later leads to cutting corners with analysis or research. The one piece of information you did not have the time to deal with could be the one that makes the difference between five and six winners in a pick six.
Most players I know are well-rounded people. Horse betting can remain a primal passion but it is also placed in a proper perspective. In the end, we are all human beings, and our horseplayer identity is accompanied by our other identities: father/mother, friend, brother/ sister, caretaker, volunteer, traveler, athlete, or simply one who like to hang out. Hanging out means practically doing nothing, or at least nothing practical. It means spending time being and not simply doing.
Periods of being have a therapeutic effect for horse bettors. The competitive spirit and intensity we need so much is replenished from the time off. The muddied thinking that plagued us at the end of a lengthy period of serious betting becomes a thing of the past after we�ve rewound our betting spirit.
In the end, the player must decide where horse betting should be placed in his or her life. Is it a profession, an avocation, or only a pastime?

NEWS AND NOTES
It looks as if I will be going once again to Canterbury Park for the Claiming Crown in mid-July. This is one of those events where players who like to �find the different horse� will discover opportunities galore. Traditionally I have done well at Claiming Crown but this past summer, I had a losing day.
This month the participatory nature of the C&X Report has suffered a bit, due to a lack of letters from readers. Questions, disagreements, and contributions from readers make C&X a dynamic publication, so I hope the declining number of e-mails is not a trend. I did have some serious problems with my AOL, so I may have lost some of your mail. If you sent me an e-mail and got no response, that would be the cause.
One last note. I beg of you to excuse any typos that may pop up in this issue. I have been handling a few crises entirely unrelated to horse racing. Rather than wait for the calm in eye of the storm for a relaxed review of all the material within, I prefer to get this out to you as soon as possible. My most famous typo was a reference to an unmotivated horse that was looking back at the barn. Instead, I wrote, �Looking back at the bar.� Go analyze that slip.
mc