Mark Cramer
C & X Report

C&X 36

CONTENTS
Editorial: The real problem: Calvinism vs. Hedonism
Research of the Month: Sustainable Trainers
C&X Café
The Cost of Perfection
Expo Notes:
a practical statistical summary of C&X Research that has survived the test of time
Fierro on Race Typing
End Note: Randy Moss Pace Figures

EDITORIAL
THE REAL PROBLEM: CALVINISM VS. HEDONISM
Back in the days when we had only one track with nine races per day, it was possible to review the replays, enter statistics from the previous race in whatever log we were keeping, and even handicap the next race, so long as we’d had a relaxing session the night before of pre-handicapping.
Usually, there was no racing on Monday and Tuesday, so we had time to reflect on our handicapping and betting performance, time to make notes of pattern matches, and time to yearn for Wednesday.
Once Wednesday returned, the adrenalin flowed naturally and we got up for a new high. Racing was the most beautiful of drugs. It was natural doping. We could indulge and appreciate all the sensory pleasures that came with racing: stunning visuals of jockey silks and magnificent animals in flowing motion, the stimulating smell of horse shit, and rise and flow of the tide of shouting emanating from the grandstand, and above all, the pleasurable surge in our body that comes from the race itself. We also had time for Calvinist restraint, with days off and time off between races, and simply a lower or more manageable volume of action.
Between the Hedonistic surges we had time to engage in the Calvinist work ethic of keeping records, handicapping thoroughly, and gathering statistics. Watching a replay was the bridge between Hedonism and Calvinism, combining the sensorial with the utilitarian.
Today, everything has changed. With multi-card simulcasting, with so much racing coming at us out of a screen, we don’t go racing anymore. We’ve become technocrats of a sort, but our productivity would have to increase 10 times over if we wanted to reach the level of efficiency we had when there was only one local track to play.
I was going to write that our relationship with racing has become polygamous, but it’s much more than that. If it were polygamy we could have a different partner each day, but in fact, we have all the partners at the same moment. I don’t know about you, but I can say that I am biologically unequipped to handle all the action simultaneously. Much of the Hedonistic joy is lost and whatever the efficiency of the Calvinist restraint and work ethic is impossible to achieve.
Winning at the races requires a certain degree of restraint. Winning also requires a level of sensorial intensity that cannot be achieved in such heavy traffic of racing.
We have built an apparently efficient freeway system of racing and then filled it with an unbearable amount of traffic.
I see two options. Either go back to the old country roads, playing one track, or we find a good bicycle to weave through the handicapping traffic (automatic bets).
At the moment, horse betting seems like a hopeless juxtaposition of unsatisfied Hedonism (too many races to get intensely involved in the race) and incomplete Calvinism (too much volume of information and action to even the most self-discipline manager of human labor).

RESEARCH:
TRAINERS SUSTAINERS
For a horse owner, a sustainable trainer is one who wins enough purses to pay the bills and make a profit. For the player, a sustainable trainer is one we can bet on automatically and know that we will have a profit at the end of the year. The Matlow example in the last issue is one example: profitable by my records since 1990 in the first-time starter category.
I noted that Matlow, and other long-term profitable trainers, often have win percentages slightly below 20 percent, contrary to Ed Bain’s requirement of 30 percent. By demanding 30 percent on paper, Bain usually ends up the month with a percentage in the low 20s. In other words, the percentage is not sustainable but by demanding a higher percentage, he protects himself from the effects of the probably erosion. Some of his 30 percent trainers hang in there for much longer periods, their win percentage does not erode, but then their average mutuel erodes. He also insures himself against erosion by discarding the declining trainers at the end of each meet, and adding up-and-coming ones as well.
Without at all detracting from Bain’s method, I’m researching for something different: the trainer who is sustainable in the bottom line over the long period. This would mean that his average mutuel would not decline, and for this to happen, he would have to somehow stay out of the spotlight.
The research project I’m about to present is a hands-on item-analysis job. Rather than take each and every trainer ever computerized, I’m trying to find out what exactly are the dynamics of a sustainable trainer. I’ve zoomed in on three circuits: Kentucky, Illinois and New York, and I through in Monmouth as well, as a typical track that would not have the most recognizable trainers in the age of national simulcasting. It seemed to me that some trainers are more successful at keeping out of the limelight, and for the serious trainer handicapper, this (I mean laying low) may be just as an important factor as actually training the horse.
From this research, I was not only searching for an automatic bet. Just as important was finding out the minimum acceptable win percentage when deciding a cutoff point for any other system. For example, my previous work on the Maiden Comeback method (no more than 2 md sp wt races, laid off, comes back at md sp wt at equal racing circuit) arbitrarily required the trainer to have a 12 percent or better win rate. I wanted to isolate the most effective minimum hit rate.
Any trainer with a flat-bet profit for all his mounts in a given category must, by definition, be able to win with more than his fair share of longshots. Previous C&X research has shown that the higher the hit rate of a trainer, the more he gets extra longshot winners. In other words, there is a correlation between longshots and hit rate. That doesn’t mean that each and every high percentage trainer has a flat-bet profit, and the reason for unsustainability is that many, but not all high-percentage trainers bring too many low-odds horses to post. So Baffert, for example, can win with War Emblem but we cannot win by betting Baffert automatically because most of his horses are overbet.
Method of research
I chose trainers at random. Any trainer I happened upon was automatically tallied, so that I could, for example, have a Fairmount trainer among my Arlington pps, or a Florida trainer who happened to ship to Kentucky. I tallied only trainers who showed a positive return on investment for samples of at least 100 races within a particular specialty category. I then marked down the percentage of winners for each flat-bet-profit find.
The next step was to tally which particular win percentages have the most examples of flat-bet profits, and which ones had the least. I would stop only after a clear curve developed.
Finally, I would dig more deeply into each trainer record to search for the “why” of his success.
General findings
Of the random sample of trainers studied, there was definitely a curve.
Between hit rates of 10% through 15%, there were 21 trainer categories with a positive roi.
Between hit rates of 16% through 21%, there were 47 trainer categories with a positive roi.
Between 22% through 27%, there were 15 trainer categories with a positive roi.
Naturally, there are fewer trainers with higher hit rates of 22% and above, so the curve does not mean to exclude these higher hit rates. It only shows that sustainability can be found in the middle ranges of win percentage. On the other hand, there are more trainers whose win percentage is 15% or below, so in that range, it would be far less likely to find a sustainable trainer.
My first conclusion is that, in the long run, it would be better to require a minimum of 16 percent winners, rather than a minimum of 12 percent. This is validated by the fact that in the 14-15% range, there were 8 winning categories, while in the 16-17% range, there were 15 profitable trainer-specialty categories with at least 100-race samples.
If you break it down by individual percentage, the curve is still there but it’s uneven. For example, there were slightly fewer profitable categories between 18-19 percent than between 16-17 percent, but there were by far the most winning categories between 20-21 percent, and then it dropped off suddenly when the parameter was 22-23%.
The irregularities can be expected, given the relatively moderate number of categories. But even with such irregularities, if you visualize it as a graph, the curve is strikingly clear. The best range is between 16-21%.
I went into this with only a suspicion that 18 percent was the magic number. I was more or less near. The point is that it would be easier for a trainer to remain out of the spotlight by winning at less than a sensational clip. But if he wins at a less than competent rate, then there will be no profit for his pari-mutuel backers.
Patterns
Alright, 16% seems to be the best cutoff point. Let’s move on to more specific findings. I was searching for any specific specialties might be more valuable more trainer-dependent and therefore more valuable in composing some future methodology. One particular pattern emerged. Let’s lay down the data and you scan it for the pattern match.
Paul McGee
With claimed horses: 108 races, 20% wins, $2.40 return for each $2
Sprints: 199 races, 15% wins, $1.27 return
Dirt: 322 races, 17% wins, $1.54
Thomas Amoss
With claimed horses: 254, 30%, $2.14
Sprints: 420, 26%, $1.63
Dirt: 544, 26%, $1.68
Kelly Breen
With claimed horses: 157, 25%, $2.36
Sprints: 258, .20, $168
Dirt: 399, .22, $174
John Cox
With claimed horses: 35% wins, $3.20 return
Dirt: 30% wins, $2.54
Joseph Broussard
With claimed horses: 11% wins, $3.63
Dirt: 11% wins, $2.39
Allow me to theorize. A claimed horse is the new guy on the block and subject to improvement given that he’s under new guidance from motivated hands. Non-claimed horses have had the same trainer and it is less likely that change will outdo continuity. The claimed horse usually undergoes some kind of change in regimen. It’s only natural since he’s in a new stable. The horses that have already been languishing in the same stable have show what they can do and the public is well aware.
Thus, with a claimed horse, a trainer has a time period where he can “hide” the horse’s form from the public, which will be judging the horse from the last trainer’s regime.
Note that Broussard has the same win percentage with claimed horses and with all dirt horses. So he’d not a better trainer one way or the other. But the average mutuel for his claimed horses is higher.
With the other four mentioned trainers, they improve their win percentage with claimed horses, but given the much higher roi, they also improve their average mutual.
Whatever the reason, with competent trainers we can often expect recently claimed horses (races one through four following the claim) to get us more than our fair share at the windows. No wonder Bain chose the claim factor as one of the pillars for his stats.
On hiding from the public
Broussard is not a rare exception. Numerous trainers seem to get higher average mutuels in one category more than another. This may reflect a great ability to trigger form reversals in some categories than others. Bernard Flint offers us a prime example. Flint gets 18% winners in sprints and 21% winners in routes. But as for return on investment, the stats are reversed. His sprinters show a flat-bet profit and his routers a horrendous loss. In fact, the roi for his sprinters is 80 percentage points higher than the roi for his routers, even though he wins 3% more with routers than sprinters.
If ever there were an exemplary lesson that picking bets is more important than picking winners, this is it.
I cannot say exactly why, but Flint is able to hide the form of his sprinters more easily than his routers. Or, he’s able to wake up a sprinter more easily than a router. He must win more with routers that look in form while winning with sprinters that do not look in form.
The 400 Club
What is the right size sample? How many races are enough? This is the eternal question. In the case of Matlow, he’s been successful in his debut specialty since at least 1990, so who needs a large sample. His sustainability is proven by years and not number of races.
That said, for any trainer to sustain a profit in any one category for more than 400 races is a great accomplishment. In this study involving only selected trainers, I’ve invited two trainers into the 400 club.
Bernard Flint has surpassed the 400 race mark in the sprint category while managing a 7 ½ percent profit ($2.15 return for each $2 invested), and doing so with 18 percent winners. With so many races in the sample and with only 18% wins, we can assume that this trainer produces a steady flow of double figure winners.
Subsets. If there’s any large Flint subset overlapping the above that looks reliable, it is the category of Allowance, where this trainer gets a slightly higher percentage of winners but a slightly lower percentage of profit. Are you willing to accept a sample of slightly less than 100 races? Given the above credentials, why not? Take Flint in the category of 2-year-olds, where he will give you more than $3 for each $2 you invest. Some greedier folk would ask for the subset of the subset, but I’ll leave it there.
Bruce Levine sprinters earned a 10 ½ percent profit, but with 28 percent winners, suggesting that we should be more willing to accept lower payoffs on Levine horses.
Subset. Of Levine’s subsets, perhaps the most intriguing is Route-to-Sprint. What draws me to this subset is the fact that in today’s speed-oriented racing, the route-to-sprint move is one of the most difficult for a trainer to succeed in. Backing all of Levine’s horses on this move leaves us with a 30% profit.
Kiaran McLaughlin achieved his 400-club distinction in the broader Dirt category. With only 17 percent wins but a 17% profit, we can be sure that he gets more than his fair share of longshot winners.
Subset. McLaughlin is profitable in many categories, but like Levine, he excels where so many have failed: Route-to-Sprint, where he earns us a return of better than $3 for each $2 invested, even better than Levine!
It is very possible to find legitimate winning subsets for an otherwise unprofitable trainer. However, in the search for trainer sustainability, I would imagine that winning subsets for profitable trainers are even more sustainable.
The vast majority of trainers provide us with a flat-bet loss in all categories. Some offer profits only in certain subsets, and in having followed many of these subsets I can assure you that such profits most often disappear as the small samples enlarge.
There is a considerable number of trainers who show profits in various categories for relatively large samples. What usually happens is that they become well-known. Scott Lake’s positive returns have mostly disappeared, and even Wayne Catalano is on the verge of losing most of his profitable categories. No fault of Mr. Catalano. Simply a problem that he could no longer lay low. Appearing in the Breeders’ Cup and winning a race will not help the roi in his specialty categories.
Most of the sustainable trainers in this particular study (but not all of them) have in common that they have managed to be well-known enough to attract owners but not famous enough to become “designer trainers”.
Let’s sum up with a few conclusions. First, it appears as if the 16% win rate is a good cutoff point when using trainer win percentage as a filter for other methods. Second, certain categories such as “claimed horses” seem to highlight the hand of the trainer, and the magic hands of some of them. Third, trainers who have proven sustainability in broad areas such as Sprint or Dirt are the first ones we should check out for profitable subsets. Fourth, a subset seems to be especially worthy if it represents a move that most trainers fail at, such as Route-to-Sprint. And finally, a trainer’s chance to remain profitable to bettors over the long run has as much to do with his ability to stay out of the limelight as his ability to saddle winners.
Several years ago, C&X tabbed Chris Block on the turf as a potentially sustainable trainer stat. Sure enough, this guy has managed to provide his backers with a 10% profit on the grass. But if he begins entering horses in Breeders’ Cups, he may lose his sustainability.

C&X CAFE
DIGEST WATCH
Hey Mark, I think you might wanna do a piece of Today's Racing Digest. Two nights ago I played their
late P4 for a $24 ticket and hit for $219(with the help of a rare Garrett Gomez DQ). Then yesterday,
using their quick picks sheet (only 9.95 a month) I filtered through their chosen contenders and hit the
early P4 for $2800! I could provide you a lot of personal info on how good this service is-and I've
tried many.
Bill

CARRYOVER WATCH
Mark
Beulah is the only track in the country with a 25 cent minimum Pick 6. What makes the carryover build despite that small minimum is a provision that it is paid out only in the event of a SINGLE winning ticket. Multiple winning tix do not take down the carryover.
Now if we lived in a perfect world, what would you rather have.....the $71,000 carryover payout or the Beulah twins, Katie & Jenna, available for twosomes and threesomes for a year?
Vinnie

BETTING FIRST TIME TURFERS IN THE POST-TOMLINSON ERA
Dear Mark,
Can we make an assumption that turf races are generally run in faster times than dirt races at the same distance??? In turf races where there is a horse who has not yet run on the turf, if a dirt pace line is entered and it turns out that the horses total energy is either best or within a 2 or 3 rank from the top it seems like a really fine bet if it's Tomlinson number is a pretty good one.
Regards, Dr. C
Mark responds:
Dr. C, can you give us an example. First I’ve seen some pretty fast turf times at certain tracks, but I don’t know if this means turf is faster than dirt. Certainly, you can not use the downhill SA track as a yardstick, since it’s downhill for a good ways. Some turf courses play like putting greens, but not all of them. But even if turf racing were faster than dirt racing, that doesn’t mean that dirt times or performance can be an indicator that a horse will do well on the grass when trying it for the first time. I’m intrigued. Send us something.
Mark
Hi Mark...thanks for responding...one exemplary race I had in mind was the 8th race at Tampa on Jan.27th.The horse was Great Plains ( 7 horse )...The horse had a fast time on the dirt compared to most others on the turf and had a reasonably good Tomlinson Number.
Anyway, thanks for the input. I had success with turf races when the Tomlinson Numbers first came out in the early 90's but lately cannot seem to get a handle on them. This approach with first time starters has been very fruitful.
I had written to you once before regarding early speed and you were kind enough to respond then as well. If you don't mind I would like to drop you a note now and then about other variables I am using.
Regards, Dr. C.
Mark responds:
Other readers may wish to chime in on the dirt-to-first-time turf issue. And as always, I appreciate hearing from readers. C&X has an illustrious readership.
Mc

WIN BETTING: THE FORGOTTEN FRONTIER
From Don:
A personal opinion only. I hope my words accurately convey my actions at the track. I am not an exotic player in any sense of the word as it pertains to vertical betting (exactas, trifectas, supers) Occasionally I dabble in a daily double or a pick 3. But, primarily I am a win better only. The reasoning is: Identify the contenders--bet the overlay. It sounds simple but in reality I believe that identifying contenders is the most neglected factor in racing. Identifying contenders is an individual preference. I have been working on this for quite some time. I prefer to label each horse with some of the labels being: non-proven loser, never lost, pos/neg. I do not identify by speed/class although it interwinds. I can certainly confirm, with records, that when you teach high % trainers=high prices that it is a fact. I also know that a win contender may not be an exacta contender. A year or two go (issue 1 of a new season) you interviewed Nick Kling of the Troy record. In reviewing that article his saying that he is the world's worse exotic player is an article that can translate my opinion better then I can write it. Summation: Identifying contenders and playing the overlay or most likely winner based on fact or underused information is only for the win slot. To identify in the money candidates would require a whole different criteria of which I have little knowledge. Put me down for win w/minor action on horizontal wagers. Don
Mark responds:
With all the wiseguys telling us of the wonders of the exotics and how difficult it is to make money from win betting, it seems like the right time to review win betting. I don’t believe for one moment that the win pools have lost their value. Not at all. And if all the bigshots are out of the win pool, the there should be extra value, as long as we pick our bets.
Don is right that the backup slots in vertical exotics are not necessarily the second or third most likely win candidates. But that doesn’t mean we cannot handicap for second and third.
In any case, too many smartasses have badmouthed win betting and abandoned the win pools, so that seems to be the time we should move in.


THE COST OF PERFECTION:
And the cost of not being perfect!
[With reference to: Success through Failure by Henry Petroski (Princeton University Press) and Six Secrets of Successful Bettors: Winning Insights into Playing the Horses, by Frank R. Scatoni and Peter Thomas Fornatale (DRF Press)]
Henry Petroski is a professor of engineering who has written about how “failure is central to engineering. Every single calculation that an engineer makes is a failure calculation. Successful engineering is all about understanding how things break or fail.”
The engineering required to construct a successful bridge (and not the Tacoma Narrows Bridge that collapse in 1940) requires calculations that approach perfection but that can never be 100% perfect. Perfection arrives through the pedagogy of accidents and catastrophes, as I have also learned from the airlines engineers with whom I have worked as a language consultant.
Building a successful bridge or airplane can be related to constructing a successful pick six or superfecta ticket. In fact, the more elaborate the exotic wager, the closer to perfection the handicapper must arrive. An enlarged exotic ticket multiplies geometrically in both form and content, the content being the handicapping nuances that went into the choice of horses and their positions on the ticket.
In Six Secrets …, one of the interviewed handicappers, Dave Cascuna, has explained the nature of a horseplayer’s work in language that resembles Petroski’s. In referring to handicapping and constructing a ticket, Cascuna notes that:
“If you could do a 98 percent job in 30 minutes or a 100 percent job in three hours, what would you do?”
Think! How often does a longshot finish third in a tri, or a horse we’ve left out of a superfecta make it to third place when we end up with first-second-fourth-fifth, and we look back at the past performances of the horse and we discover a detail that could have easily convinced us to use the horse? These are the collapsed bridges or crashed airplanes of the horseplayer engineer. Of course we need to look back at the reason for our accident, most specifically why we did not use the horse that ruined our otherwise perfect handicapping.
In handicapping, one overlooked detail can mean the difference between collecting a five-figure payoff or collecting nothing. Engineers know that the cost of 98 percent perfection is much less than the cost of the last 2 percent. This fact should be enormously important for any player who is considering playing a multiple-horse exotic, and such perfection can also be necessary even for a simpler win wager.
I know this may contradict with what we’ve written about “thin slicing”, where we’d extract the essential and discard the rest, but the simplicity of thin slicing can only be arrived at after the horseplayer has passed through the complexity of handicapping knowledge. For a player to isolate one factor above the rest, he has to know, or at least feel, why the other factors should be of less importance in a particular situation.
Cascuna, who is a successful securities trader, refers to such engineering comparisons.
“It’s situational,” he writes. “If I’m an astronaut and I have to fix the space shuttle to get back to Earth, I’ll do the 100 percent job. But if that same astronaut has 30 minutes of oxygen left, you go for the 98 percent job and hope you do right.”
Now let’s be honest with ourselves. In this age of multi-card simulcasting and a virtually unlimited menu of tracks and types of bets, how often do we even achieve the 98% effort? When good handicappers cut too many corners, their talent is wasted. We cannot underestimate the importance of managing our time as well as the substance and intensity of our efforts.
Cascuna notes that, “Often, if you can do a 98 percent job on six races, it’s better than doing a 100 percent job on one race. But there will also be times,” he adds, “when that extra 2 percent information is the difference between winning and losing. And you have to determine that, and you need to do it before the event, rather than after.”
What makes this situation even more difficult is that information management is much more complex than the amount of time spent and the number of factors considered. According to Forbes Magazine and Dremen Value Management LLC, “A large number of studies show that giving an expert more information doesn’t do much to improve his judgment, and the study that produced this conclusion was done with race track handicappers. Handicappers confidence rose with the amount of information they had, but their results did not rise correspondingly.
Therefore, the time spent on a race should deal with the substance of information even more than its quantity.
Cascuna also refers to the substance of our work as being more important than the simple amount of time we use.
“When I talk about hard work,” he notes, “hard work is being able to factor all those things into play and think it through and process and reevaluate for next time [very much in accord with Petroski] – to know I did the 98 percent job in this situation when I needed to do the 100 percent job, and if I encounter this situation again, I’m going to do the 100 percent job.”
I recall once betting a $2 pick six ticket at Santa Anita, missing the first leg, and then winning the next five races, for a consolation of $567. I looked back at the card, objectively. Instead of lamenting that “I could have had it if I’d handicapped more effectively or used a larger ticket,” I discovered that I’d have added more horses in other races before I’d have added horses in the leg I lost, and that the horse that beat me in the first leg would not have been used by yours truly. Therefore, the 100 percent solution did not apply.
On the other hand, I think back to the moment when Frank Cotolo and I bought an $8 pick six ticket at Hollywood Park and ended up with four winners and two seconds. Our two place horses had both lost maiden claiming races, defeated by Richard Matlow first-time starters. That was the first time I had discovered Matlow, and I duly noted that neither of his winners had fast workouts nor a top rider. In this case, Frank and I would have had to have done trainer specialty stats on all the trainers, and then, and only then, could we have used the Matlow horses. The 100 percent solution would have provided us with a grand pick six payoff! But we did follow the Petroski and Cascuna advice of learning from catastrophes and cashing in on what we learned later.
By the way, Cascuna learned racing as a young child when his father, a musician, took him to the track. In fact, his father had no interest in racing and was there to play music. He learned the racing form from a partner of his father and started going to the track when he was 12.
The player profiles in Six Secrets of Successful Bettors are well-worth a read.
The quote from Cascuna comes from the chapter, “A Hard Way to Make an Easy Living”, subtitled, “They’re not really gamblers; they’re entrepreneurs whose business is betting.” Within this chapter, pages 47-50 relate to time management. For a more philosophical and managerial view of time management, see The Art of Time, by Jean-Louis Servan-Schreiber.
No question about it. Many good handicappers are getting bad results because they are quite simply overwhelmed today by the amount of information that must be managed in the context of the amount of races and wagers available. If you have not been able to keep up, then you should step back and reflect. Either develop a method for cherry picking only the best betting opportunities, according to what you do the best, or concentrate on a single racing circuit.
The following article, “Expo Notes”, attempts to place much of what we have learned into a simple structure that should aid us in our time management.
mc

EXPO NOTES
I will be attending the maximum possible number of Handicapping Expo seminars, taking notes and also interviewing speakers. The following two C&X issues will concentrate on new ideas from the Expo and player profiles. In the meantime, in preparing my own presentation, I was able to synthesize highlights of C&X research in the past years. I thought that a summary of my presentation would serve to (a) introduce foundation of the C&X handicapping methodology to new readers while (b) creating a useful summary for long-time readers.
The topic of the presentation is:
CONTRARIAN THINKING AND HIDDEN FORM PATTERS
C&X readers will probably receive here a more expanded presentation, since I expect there will be time limitations for the Expo presentation.
We must begin with what I call FOUNDATION STATS. From past C&X research we have learned several indispensable starting factors.
Trainer
High% trainers get more than their fair share of $20-plus longshot winners. Not only do high percentage trainers outperform low percentage trainers in the realm of win percentage but also in return on investment for horses 9-1 and up. This may seem obvious to some of us, but in fact, there is a certain logic that would suggest that high% trainers should not do so well at higher odds since they are more well-known and their horses more heavily bet.
In fact, low percentage trainers are more likely to do well when the quality of the horse outshines the ability of the trainer, which means at lower odds levels.
If you through hundreds of $20-plus winners into a bowl and pick out the overall win percentage of each of their trainers, you will discover that the average trainer win percentage, overall, is 16%. On the other hand, if you take ALL winners, the average trainer win rate is 14%.
Conclusion: high-% trainers are better at high odds than low-percentage trainers, even though they are more known to crowd. Thus, trainer percentage should be primary factor in our handicapping. The experts still consider the trainer factor as secondary.
Speed
Winning horses average an 8.7 point Beyer fig improvement from their previous race. This stat was compiled when comparing same distance/same surface between the horse’s last race and today’s effort. Therefore, we are eliminating extraneous causes for Beyer increase. The average Beyer increase is even higher for second-time-starter winners, and if we extract this subset from the overall group, the average improvement slightly declines. Still it is eye-opening to note that the Beyer or DRF fig in a horse’s last race is not a static number.
Conclusion: projecting form improvements yields better than predicting continuity. Other factors sometimes contribute to the wake-up, including class drop, when a horse gains confidence and gets brave against lesser competition, and a troubled trip in the previous race that masks a better-than-looked effort.
Class
Once again, comparing same distance/same surface, class droppers outperformed same-class and class risers, in both win percentage and average mutual. This confirms Quinn’s “bet against proven losers at today’s class level” from his Handicappers Condition Book.
Conclusion: overall class droppers have slight edge. If we combine this class finding with the trainer finding, then we come up with the C&X Short Form, the two step handicapping elimination process. Exclude horses that (a) are proven losers at today’s class level or against lesser, and (b) exclude no-win trainers, those who win less than 10 percent, especially when combined with low-percentage jockeys. Please understand that the trainer factor is statistically far more important than the rider factor, as corroborated by SportStat’s huge samples.
Trainer sustainability
I intend to summarize the research article in today’s issue. For trainer profit longevity, the optimum hit-rate range is 16% - 21% trainers. This modest success allows a trainer to lay low from public hype while still winning enough to sustain a positive roi.
Those are the foundation statistics. The next step is a compendium of more action-oriented stats.
FLAT-BET PROFIT STATS
1. MAIDEN RETURN FACTOR
Rules: A. MdSpWt with 1 or 2 lifetime races (lightly raced). B: Comeback after layoff at same MdSpWt level; C. No trainers below 12% hit rate
ROI + 8 cents on the $. ROI improves if the cutoff rate is 16%. No minor league-to-major league ships.
This method was validated by independent research by Sportstat, Las Vegas.
2. EARLY BLOOMERS (EB)
Rules: automatic bet in career races 6 thru 10 of horses that won debut or debut-2 races:
23.5% wins and a flat-bet profit
Rationale: early winners, in any sport, prove natural talent and a privileged place in the herding order, what we call competitiveness. The killer instinct is awakened when victory seems possible. If victory is perceived by the animal or human as impossible, then the athlete is more likely to fold.
This research was validated by a 4-year study at Hastings Park by Professor Sember, though with slightly different nuances.
PS. In BC races, the EB Method has been profitable betting all horses that won either debut or debut-2, suggesting that early talent is illustrative of long-term competitiveness. In other words, if we were to bet every single horse entered in the Breeders’ Cup which has either won his/her debut race or won as a second-time starter, we’d have a flat bet profit. We might as well eliminate the baby races from this action, since there are so many entrants that fit this description. Incredibly, even with older horses, the fact that a horse was an early bloomer is indicative of a competitiveness that could be significant throughout the horse’s career.
3. SUSTAINABLE TRAINERS
Flat-bet profit trainer stats usually dip below the profit level not because of win percentage but because of drop in ave mutual due to fame and notoriety. Wayne Catalano is a prime example. Trainers with relatively modest win percentages (between 16% and 21%) were more likely to be sustainable automatic bets over long run). If you prefer to time the market, you can make money by betting up-and-coming supertrainers who have been winning at a 30 percent clip. But these trainers are far more likely to eventually dip below a positive roi than successful lay-low trainers who have a lower hit rate but who have proven to show a positive return on investment.
If we are looking for subsets with a higher roi, then we would do well to choose trainers who already have a high hit rate in broad categories such as sprint, route, dirt or turf.
4. THE INFORMED MINORITY
In James Surowiecki’s book, The Wisdom of Crowds, we learn that experts underperform compared to the crowd of experts collectively. That’s why it’s so hard for an individual mutual fund to outperform the S&P Index. The reason that the crowd outperforms individual experts is that it incorporates diversity of analysis, independence of opinion, decentralization of knowledge, and a mechanism for the aggregation of this information, such as a stock exchange or a pari-mutuel system.
The author is right about the stock market, sports betting, and horse racing but wrong about elections. He’s wrong about elections because the reason for the high performance of the crowd is knowledge and a commitment to be well-educated in the issues. The electoral public does not have this commitment and is more prone to what Surowiecki calls “groupthink”. The public is willing to remain ignorant when voting, while most horse players or stock investors are studious in search of the knowledge that can give them an advantage.
Of course, since the wisdom of the horseplaying crowd is nullified by the track takeout, Surowiecki’s wisdom of crowds does not help the horseplayer, except to make us respect the public, our opponent. In fact, we must realize, thanks to this author, that our opponent is formidable.
Where Surowiecki is very helpful is in the exceptions, the windows of opportunity when the crowd is wrong. One of those windows is, of course, groupthink, when crowd loses edge, and an expert can outperform the crowd. Another scenario, more important for us is that of “maximum confusion”, what we’d call “contentious races”. The Breeders’ Cup is a laboratory for maximum confusion handicapping.
It is here that the Informed Minority (IM) method kicks in. I’ll simply outline the stats.
BC.2006. 22 IM plays, $44 invest, 83.80 return
(Miesque’s Approval 50.60 & Thor’s Echo 33.20)
BC 2005. 14 IM plays, $28 invest, 32.20 return
(Intercontinental $32.20, by Jay Privman)
(Ace, second at 16-1, by Kachulis)
BC 2004. 17 IM plays, No wins. Profitable in place/show.
(Antonius Plus, 31-1, steadied first turn, steadied last turn, checked stretch with Spencer
lost by only ½ to perfect tripper Singletary. Antonius paid 37.60 to place and 13.60 to show.
BC 2003 15 IMs, profit with two wins incl Cajun Beat, 47.60, by Beyer.
BC 2002 19 IMs, big IM profit with Domedriver at 26-1 and Volponi at 43-1
PS. Dangerous to massage with subsets. However, results do improve if we restrict bets to 15-1 and up.
Since 2000, the IM has been profitable in the win and show holes in every BC except one, and has been profitable in the place hole every year. Naturally, the roi is better in the win hole.
But the question is: can you live with a 10% hit rate, doubling your money? If not, play across the board and collect much more frequently.
Personally, I find this one of the most intellectually stimulating research projects I’ve ever done. It’s dragged on over the years. It picks the brains of the best experts, but only at moments when they’ve become contrarian handicappers. With this method, we get Beyer at his best but we bypass Beyer when he’s less than his best. Ditto for Privman, Kachulis, Klein, etc.
This is not picking the brain of experts, it’s cherry picking their brains.

Claiming Crown 2006
15 IM horses, 3 wins Al’s Dearly Bred, 9.00 by Maday, Radiant Avie 15.00 by Marcus Hersh, Ten’s Holy Spirit 28.00 by Marcus Hersh: invest $30, returned $52
Claiming Crown 2005
11 IM horses, 2 wins, Procreate 10.00 and Ell’s Editor, 26.40 by Steve Fierro
invest $22, return $37
Claiming Crown 2004
Another profit. Cramer, Chisholm $20.

Conclusion: The IM method would seem to work in situations when public handicappers are most intense: big racing days. Or big meets, such as Saratoga, when all handicappers are intense. When smaller grids, demand IM on top with no other handicapper picking horse on top or ITM.
Well, this is the essence of my Expo presentation. I suspect that, given the time constraints, some of what you have here may not make it into my presentation.
In any case, the above serves as very useful summary of the most useful of C&X over the past years, though not necessarily the best, since there are things that happen on our pages which do not lend themselves to summary in a seminar.
The handicapper who respects the foundation statistics and uses the flat-bet-profit stats wisely cannot help but to improve his return on investment. On the other hand, if you are already making a 26% profit on your own, don’t tamper with what you’ve done right.

STEVE FIERRO ON RACE TYPING AND DIFFICULT RACES
When C&X reviewed Steve Fierro’s The Four Quarters of Horse Investing, we emphasized his revolutionary templates for making odds lines in the “second quarter” of his process but we failed to give credit to his first quarter on the process of contender evaluation. Fierro’s mission, the horse betting “is not a game of winning and losing but profit and loss”, is better understood by his balanced view of race “types”.
Anyone who has found himself losing his big bets and winning the small ones would do best to understand Fierro’s approach, which in some ways flies in the face of what I have advocated regarding selectivity and passing races. Let’s refer directly to what Fierro has to say, extracted from pp. 46- 48 of his book, with a subsequent commentary from C&X.
Race Typing
By Steve Fierro
You have your race card organized and are ready to start the contender selection process. Race typing is a process that has us subjectively grading the amount of insight we feel we have in a race. It is a simple call. It is a judgment call. It is a call that can be tracked for accuracy down the road when it comes time to do some record keeping. Yes, with effective records you can actually go back and see if the level of insight you feel you have in a race is producing a profitable result.
This has nothing to do with your current contender selection process. If you are a proficient handicapping, keep using your own process. This will help you sort out whether or not you have sufficient insight into a race after you’ve selected your contenders.
Race Type A
The “A” race type is where my vision is 20/20, virtually crystal clear. This is the type of race where the contenders jump off the page at you. It could be a 12-horse field, but within moments you know everything you need to know about the race. Contender selection is simple.
This is the type of race that the night before you get a strong mental picture of how the race will be run. It has happened to all of us. You select your contenders and you have a vision of the race shape, based on the pace. Then it runs and the race plays out as expected.
There are other ways to come up with an “A” race, depending on the contender selection process you use. I am big on trainer moves. I can’t begin to tell you how many times a race is crystal clear because of a statistic I have on a trainer. Breeding is another strong factor, especially on the turf. Nothing is more exciting than an ugly looking maiden that has been running terribly on the dirt but is bred for turf and today gets to run on it.
These are a few examples of how you can get an “A” race type. I could write another book on “little A” race nuggets, as I call them. By the way, these races will be the ones you will spend the least amount of time on handicapping and selecting contenders. Don’t be fooled. You have this 20/20 vision because of the contender selection process YOU use. Just because your insight into a race is excellent, it doesn’t mean you are on a stone-cold favorite. Appreciate the fact that you have in front of you a race in which your insight and intuition are at their peak.
Race Type B
This is a race filled with “what ifs”. We need glasses for this one. Our vision is now impaired from 20/40 to 20/60. When we have this kind of race, we are faced with a mixed bag of contenders. We feel OK about our contenders, but we have some conflicts within our contender selection process.
We may have a fuzzy picture of the pace of the race. A contender who we feel is a key player in the race is sentn to post by a slumping “no-win” barn. The horse is stretching out today, looks ready, but isn’t particularly bred for the distance. For every positive you have on a horse, a potential negative is right behind it.
These are just a few examples. The race is not chaotic; we just have to lake some tough calls to get our final contenders. This is the race you will spend the most time on. The majority of races you will handicap should fall within this category. I have found that this is the type of race where you really appreciate the fact that you will have to attach a value to each contender in the second phase of the process: the second quarter when you make your line.
Race Type C
The letter C is very appropriate for this type of race. The first words that come to mind for this race type are “chaos” and “clueless”. You get the idea. We are blind in this race and we have no apparent vision. This is the type of race where you can’t find a logical contender, let alone the eventual winner.
You will get at least one, maybe two of these on every card. Don’t fight it. Call it a “C” race, pick your best/worst contenders and move on. Remember we are still in the first quarter of the investment process. Don’t throw this type of race away [even if Mark Cramer has warned us, “no insight, no bet”] I make some of my best scores in this type of race.
Why? Toss this around a bit. If we are confused during the contender selection process, so is everyone else! I am talking about an ugly race. However, we have a huge advantage since we are attaching value [our person odds line] to this sorry group of runners. The rest of the crowd, at least 98%, is going no further than contender selection. They certainly aren’t going to pass the race either. I know we are not in the attaching-value phase yet but I feel an example from phase two, the second quarter, is called for at this point. With this type of race I generally assign a betting line that looks something like this for the probable four contenders:
Contender A (someone has to be “A”): 7/2
Contender B: 7/2
Contender C: 7/2
Contender D: 6-1
I then demand a higher odds level than I would in the listed betting line for A or B races where one level above the line is considered an overlay. In a “C” race I require three levels above the betting line before I play any one of my contenders in this type of race.
Therefore, my 7/2 line/probability horses would need to be 5/1 for a play, and the 6/1 would have to go off at 9/1.
My typical advice to customers in the analysis portion of my daily betting line sheets is to stick to those that are being sent to post at 5/1 or higher. I have two or three combinations, what I call odds templates, when I use this type”C” race. The one above is the most typical for me.
The example I’ve laid out really displays that by attaching value you will now have some potential in a race where before you had none. When you add a solid money management strategy (my third quarter phase) , you’ll have created a situation that not many at the track can take advantage of. The toteboard becomes your ally, not your nemesis. Your contenders will also be your allies, not the enemy. The betting line becomes your best friend.
So now we have our contenders and based on our insight, we have categorized race types A, B, and C. On your past performances, you should duly note the race type in a designated spot that’s easy to see. This will come in handy not only when you deal with the card but also in the final phase of the investment process, the record keeping, for you will be able to tally and compare your personal, individual contender-selection results, and then refine your designation of race types according to the tally.
Mark responds:
I’ve seen Steve Fierro in action and he puts his money where his mouth is. He is a selective player, but his selectivity does not come from throwing out a whole race. Each and every race is a potential investment. What allows him to pass is if he gets no overlay among any of his contenders.
For example, in the above line, he would not play if horse A, listed at 7/2, was going off anywhere under 7/2, nor would he play if the horse was bet by the public at 4/1. He would require 5-1.
Ditto for the other contenders. The horse he deemed a 6-1 chance would not get his money even if it went off at 7-1, and of course, he would not play the horse at odds below his line.
The result of this strategy is to keep the player away from betting on unfairly priced horses. And that is the name of the game. Given that there is a takeout, a player can not, under any circumstances, make money betting on underlays. Of course, overlay and underlay depend on one’s evaluated odds. I’ve seen Fierro play a horse at 2/1 because he had listed the horse at 3/2. This means that the 2/1 was perceived by Fierro as a greater overlay than, say a 6-1 in Fierro’s C race that he’s listed at 6-1 in his line. Similarly, a horse that is a non-contender on Fierro’s line cannot be played at any odds. If he feels the horse should be around 10-1, that’s a non-contender, and 20-1 is not considered an overlay. By proceeding in this way, Fierro extracts the maximum benefit from the toteboard, for he knows that statistically, the higher the odds range, the fewer the overlays. For Fierro to play a 20-1, he’d have to have called the horse 6-1 or less in his line. In other words, most longshots are severe underlays (they are actually overbet), but Fierro’s line-making strategy allows him to isolate or cherry pick only the best of the longshots.
Where I would differ from Steve is that I do throw out whole races, categorizing them as sub-C races. I’ve learned to do this, though, thanks to the record keeping process that has permitted me to learn when what race types I have no prayer of dominating.

END NOTE: RANDY MOSS PACE FIGURES
By now most of you have seen the Randy Moss pace figures at the DRF on line. This was a long time coming, as it seemed only logical that the same method used to calculate the Beyer figs would serve to plot the pace of a race. With these figs, not only do you get the horse’s result for the fractions, but you get the general pace of the race. My guess is that this might be a way to immediately pick out a key race, and perhaps back a horse that comes from that race even if his own figs do not seem dominant, so long as he was competitive in the event. But that’s a hypothesis. I use such a method with the harness races but the Tbreds seem too volatile in the way they alter their figs from one race to another.
My initial feelings are mixed. As one who has battled with various pace methods, beginning with Quirin, and extending to Sartin and Mitchell, I find it difficult to incorporate even more numbers on the already busy view past performances and I’ve appreciated when pace lines appear isolated on a separate sheet. I suppose that the reader would have to develop an automatic way of scanning the pps and isolating the pace figs in his mind. But who am I to say? I often find the Beyer figs distracting, as well, so who am I to say anything profound about the Moss’s Beyer-like pace figs.
Like the Beyer figs, the Moss figs are supposed to be transferable from one track or racing circuit to another. Longtime C&X readers may remember how I’ve tested the transferability of Beyer figs and Ragozin sheets from one circuit to another, sometimes with dubious results. At the Claiming Crown, for example, I felt that both Beyers and Sheets often undercalculated the value of local Canterbury horses. Both Steve Fierro and I were able to pick out longshot sprint winners by defying the transferability of the figs in front of us.
Well, that’s my job to be a skeptic. But I can predict that the Moss figs will be valuable, for example, when the most recent running line is not the appropriate one to use, and when a more typical line from an earlier race would show a pace advantage for a particular horse. In the end, pace handicapping is most effective when integrated with form cycle handicapping, since a pace advantage in a most recent race will not be ignored by the betting public, but a pace ability taken from an earlier race might be missed by the crowd.
In other words, I’d like to find a horse that is only ready to peak TODAY, and then go back to his best pace rating from the past and use that one to plot the chances of this horse today.
C&X has some accomplished pace handicappers among its readers. I’ll gladly cede to your opinions on the Moss pace figures. Any of you who have found some insights regarding the Moss pace figs should write to us and share your thoughts with the C&X readers. mc