Mark Cramer
C & X Report

C&X 37
CONTENTS
Editorial: Trashing the Tracks
The Wiseguy Choice: More Fuel for the Informed Minority and a word on the Kentucky Derby
Engineering lesson: learning from accidents (a case study from Sam Houston)
Structuring Madness
Expo: Statebreds in New York and California, with Litfin and Free
Gibson Carothers: wise man or wise guy?
Mike Maloney speaks softly and carries a big bankroll
Synthetic Surfaces: from Steve Davidowitz, Michael Dickenson and Brad Free
Weight Off My Chest: a book review
C&X Café: Breakthrough and Report from Chicago

EDITORIAL
TRASHING THE TRACKS OR, WHAT DOES HORSE RACING HAVE TO DO WITH CLASSICAL MUSIC?
At the Handicapping Expo there was much buzz about the issue of rebates, highlighted by a conference entitled “Rebates: Who, What, Where, Are They Unfair, and Do They Harm Casual Customers?”
To their credit, the two representatives of rebate houses, Lou Tavano and Kirk Brooks, admitted that they were partners with race tracks rather than adversaries. However, no race track manager was represented on the panel, and the general tone of the discussion was that race tracks were charging too much (takeout) so it was only natural in the free enterprise system that customers (players) would search for a better deal. The prominent ideology seemed to be that race tracks would have to get their act together rather than whining and griping about rebate houses.
Throughout my career as a racing journalist, I’ve rarely had a good word for race track management, though I’ve seen innovations by places like Canterbury Park and NYRA that could be termed as progressive and good for the game.
At the Expo, my feeling was that the playing field between rebate houses and race tracks is not fair, and I made my feelings evident by chiming in when the audience was invited to ask questions.
I made two points. First, we are in a period when labor intensive industry in the USA is rapidly folding up and moving away. In the global economy, it’s just too expensive to operate an industry that requires heavy expense for salaried workers and local sub-contractors. The race track is one of the last remaining industries, and is up against huge odds.
The expense of putting out the product (track maintenance, backstretch management, front office employees, mutuel clerks, heating, air conditioning of immense structures, etc., etc., etc., is up against the increase in other forms of gambling and the general global system. A telecommunications company can outsource an operator but a race track cannot outsource the remaining mutuel clerks, for there will always be a need for some degree of individual attention.
Even when rebate shops are located within the USA, they still represent a form of outsourcing. The fact is, it is incredibly less expensive to operate a rebate house than it is to operate a race track. And yet, the rebate houses cannot exist without someone running the live product. It’s easy for a rebate house to lower the effective take. They don’t have to provide housing for horses and exercise riders, nor heat immense structures in freezing weather.
The main answer to my question, paraphrased, was that in business you have to adjust your price to what the customer is willing to pay. In this case, the price is the takeout. A second argument is that the rebate houses are actually bringing more business to the race tracks. By offering cut-rate takeouts to big customers, they are bringing in betting action that would otherwise be diminished. Many high rollers would not be prepared to wager such enormous amounts with the rebates. In theory, a big player who loses 4 percent of his investment would have to withdraw from the game or become a recreational player with smaller amounts of money. With a 10% rebate, the same player would suddenly have a 6% profit and would stay in the game and raise his bets.
Thus, it’s a tough call for race tracks. Do they embrace the rebate houses for bringing in handle, or do they lament the fact that they are losing customers because the heavy rebate destroy their odds (which means losing revenue from parking, food concessions, programs, gift shops, and other profit enhancers?)
I’m sure that some race tracks offer special benefits to their high end customers, benefits that would translate into the equivalent of rebates, but they fear making these benefits public lest they offend their other customers.
Now consider a new proposal. You first heard it here. If horse racing were seen as a contribution to culture, then a race track would be the equivalent of a symphony orchestra. No symphony orchestra can survive without state subsidies. If classical music lovers would have to pay the true value of a concert (you have 100 musicians in the orchestra: a truly labor intensive product), then most would forget about seeing a concert and just buy the CD. But the society values classical music and therefore subsidizes symphonies. In fact, in many cities you can see and hear your local symphony for free in summer concerts in the park. The masses will never be flocking to hear classical music, so it would never be able to compete with classical music in the open market.
Now I would argue that horse racing, like classical music, is a cultural institution and therefore should be subsidized, if and when race track managers offer a significantly lower takeout. Once subsidized, they could offer certain no-takeout races, like promotions in stores. But most folk would not agree with me on the subsidy issue, even those who agree that airlines and dairy farmers should continue to be subsidized.
Perhaps there are other ways of strengthening the in-person product. Here’s one kooky idea. I get this from the casinos in Atlantic City that used to sponsor free round-trip shuttle buses from New York City. How about race tracks doing the same? Let me use Canterbury Park as a model. Canterbury could offer free shuttles from Minneapolis, Saint Paul, and perhaps one other point of convergence. This would attract people who might ordinarily play the horses from their own homes. On the bus, you can study the past performances. Even newer players might be attracted by the perk, folks who have to commute to work Monday through Friday and don’t feel like getting on the freeway for an extra commute during the weekend. This would represent a cost to the track, but with carbon emissions a big issue today, there might be a state subsidy available for an institution that takes people out of their cars and into more environmentally friendly mass transport. I once drove nearly every day 26 miles each way between my then Gaithersburg home and Laurel Race Course. Eventually I got burned out from the commute, even though most of it passed through beautiful country. I love to be at the track, even at drab Laurel: meander along the rail, into the paddock, up to the grandstand, watch the races, see the color, smell the horse shit, hear the shouts of the crowd. What’s happening to our culture that we have been excluding the exquisite sensorial aspect from a game that is well worth our dedicated passion.
So we’re back where we started on the rebate argument, in the context of trying to preserve live racing. What I know for sure is that racing is one of the last surviving labor intensive industries in the nation, and no matter how incompetent some racing managements may be, economic forces beyond managerial skills are the fundamental cause of the plight of racing today. Rebate shops are taking advantage of these economic forces all the while that their businesses would not survive without the existence of the live product.

LOWERING THE TAKE: NEWS FLASH FROM FRANCE
As of mid-April 2007, the French pari-mutuel institution (PMU) and its State partner has decided to lower the takeout on straight wagers from 18.5 to 15 percent. There are two reasons for the move. First, there has been competition from illegal off-shore bookmakers who have offered lower takeouts. Second, the European Union is about to enforce anti-monopoly laws upon the racing industry, which would open the French market to competition from abroad.
According to the PMU, the straight wager handle would have to increase by 14% in order to make the lowered takeout feasible, but in public statements, they believe that this will happen. (Evidently they did not believe so before real competition appeared on the horizon and began to make inroads.)
Considering that straight pool takeout was well over 20% a decade ago, this move represents a true cultural revolution. This French trend may substantiate some of the claims of the rebate shops: that if the race tracks offered a fair price, the rebate shops would lose their reason for existing.


MORE FUEL FOR THE INFORMED MINORITY AND A WORD ON THE KENTUCKY DERBY
At the Expo one is surrounded by experts, many of whom, once or twice, have ended up as the informed minority pick. If you’d choose every horse of these experts, you (they) could not possibly show a flat bet profit, except for an occasional Nick Kling in the Troy Record in upstate New York. Most public pickers are brilliant handicappers who show a flat bet loss because they must pick a horse in every race. The informed minority method represents a way of picking the brain of an expert only when he is at his contrarian best.
In the physics of human thought, there should be some opposite of the informed minority. (In case you’ve forgotten so quickly, the “informed minority” is when a single public handicapper on a large public-handicapper grid has chosen a horse that no one else has picked.)
Reality is composed of the dynamic of opposites. Light is sometimes a wave and sometimes a particle. Batteries have their positive and negative. There are heat waves and cold spells. In human relations, opposites are also the essential structure of existence. Love exists because hate also exists. You can’t have masculine without feminine. Selfishness is balanced by altruism.
In the realm of the informed minority, I finally seized its opposite when reflecting on the Expo events. The opposite of the informed minority is the wiseguy pick. The wiseguy pick is when a number of the star public handicappers settle upon one particular price horse. It’s a type of groupthink amongst the intellectuals of handicapping.
In the past editions of the Kentucky Derby, the wiseguy pick has lost every time. In listening to the experts, I tried to figure out what makes for a wiseguy pick. I came upon a common thread. The wiseguy pick represents the groping by good handicappers to squeeze some insight where none exists. The wiseguy pick is the lesser of evils among longshots, not the longshot with the most exquisite reason for a surprising win. And I am ashamed to admit that several times I have found myself embracing the wiseguy pick. It’s not because of any mass contagion since I do not look at public handicappers until I’ve finished my analysis. But there are times when my insight is empty and I force it.
The wiseguy pick represents the competent handicapper who wants to be the informed minority but is neither informed enough nor a minority.
For this year’s Triple Crown races, beware of the wiseguy pick, whichever horse it may be, but take notice if a top handicapper ends up as an informed minority.

ENGINEERING LESSON: LEARNING FROM AN ACCIDENT, WITH A RACE FROM SAM HOUSTON
LEARNING FROM ERROR
Engineers will tell you that the best learning experiences come from accidents. The Takoma Narrows bridge twists, wobbles, and plunges into the water, the Concorde crashes, a building unexpectedly crumbles under stress or in a fire when it should have stayed up. Most of these things could have been anticipated, by elaborate and time consuming calculations, and now with computer simulations. However, the cost of perfection is enormous. For example, there is always a chance that lightning might strike. The chance is slim. What if we wore special clothing to avoid dying when being struck by lightning. The cost in material and in human effort would be enormous, and pretty much useless, since the probability of getting struck by lightning is so slim.
But sometimes an accident happens and we learn a lesson which will allow us to greatly reduce the enormous cost of protecting against a future similar accident.
Most accidents are due, at least in part, to human error.
Not long ago, I had a betting “accident” that could be attributed to human error: my error. I found a live longshot in a harness race. The horse had left from the 9-hole in his previous race, captured the lead, and carved out fractions which made him dominant for this night’s race at the second and third calls, fitting my pace standout paradigm (horse shows clearly the fastest fractions for the second and third call of the race).
He also qualified by my new-found early speed angle, having lacked speed in the races leading up to his wake-up speed duel, where he ended up in third place. The new-found early speed factor is a valuable tool with the Tbreds as well.
He was 12-1 in the morning line but drifted up to 24-1 on the board. I played him to win. Usually I recommend backing up with an “exacta as place bet”, placing the live longshot under the legitimate favorite. But this race had no legit fave, with three different horses between 2-1 and 3-1.
As often happens, my new-found-early speed horse did not take the lead. He tucked in on the rail, and in the stretch, went after the leader from the inside passing lane. He drew up beside the leader, but then hung slightly and finished second by a half length, well clear of the third horse.
Looking back, I should have realized the reason I had invented the exacta as place bet. Live longshots are nearly twice as likely to finish second as they are first. This is a very reliable statistic. This means that good longshot handicappers will often be punished for a job well done with a second place finish. It’s no small feat to pick a 24-1 horse that finishes second only a half length from a win, and to come out with nothing is the horseplayer equivalent of torture.
In this particular case, human error, my error, was evident. Not only did I know this longshot stat but my live horse had a low percentage driver who finished second more than twice as much as first. The error was to not have played the “exacta-as-place” bet with all three favorites on top.
I usually pick my spots and do not bet on many races. I was hard-pressed to find a bettable race as the evening progressed. But then a race came up at Sam Houston in which I finally had an insight. The horse was nowhere near 24-1 but he was listed as third favorite in the ML and should have been the fave.
The horse was Time Well Wasted, in the fifth at Sam Houston, March 3, 2007. This horse qualified by my maiden return method. In his first race at the Md Sp Wt level, he finished a troubled fourth at 3-1 in a turf sprint. He was then laid off. Now he was coming back, also at the maiden special weight level. I know that this method gives me an 8 percent advantage, so it’s worth delving into. Trainer Mindy Willis passed the 12% minimum hit-rate requirement with 7 wins in 35 races. The same trainer also showed a flat-bet profit in the layoff column. The rider, Paul Nolan, is excellent on the grass. The stats were not so flattering in the sprint-to-route column.
However, the horse listed as the favorite in the morning line was already 0 for 7, what I call a proven loser. Furthermore, this potential favorite had a 5 percent trainer, and had already lost three times in maiden claiming races.
Once again, as with the previous harness race, there could be no exacta-as-place bet because the favorite looked false to me. But this time, thanks to the lesson I learned from the previous “accident”, I took no chances. As a back-up bet, I backwheeled Time Well Wasted to the ALL. Why not? The favorite was hardly likely to win, and beyond the horse I liked, this was an “anything-can-happen” race”.
Once again, my horse finished second. But this time, a 7-1 finished on top and I collected a generous exacta payoff. Looking back, the exacta-as-place bet returned more than what I would have won had my horse finished first.
As engineers know so well, perfect decision making is impossible. But in an activity where mistakes are learning experiences, the player who analyzes his mistakes, critically, will make up for them.
The irony here is that if I had collected on the 24-1 horse to win, I would not have backed up my wager on Time Well Wasted. Critical thinking can allow one thing lead to another, and often one bad thing will lead to another good thing when one is conscious of the role of accidents in the improvement of engineering techniques.

STRUCTURING MADNESS
When I’m invited to public racing events, or even when I take friends to the track, I recognize in advance that the intense concentration I usually require will not be available to me. It’s hard for me to put off other human beings, even for something as important as a horse race. So when racing is social, I usually favor the human element and reduce wagering to its bare minimum. Under normal circumstances, I try to play the races alone, finding a remote corner where my mind has no distractions.
When racing is a social occasion, there’s lots of healthy madness around, and not much room left in the mind for heavy concentration. I have the choice: either stop playing or play with a premeditated structure, something that gives me at least a 90 percent mechanical foundation.
Going into the Expo, I considered all my near automatic plays and decided that the “maiden return method” was in season and that this method should be the core of my handicapping. I would take the three racing forms, check only the maiden special weight races, and isolate all the lightly-raced maiden returners, those whose 2006 Beyers as 2-year-olds would make them seem slower than they would actually be when you projected the improvement that comes with this vital stage of a horse’s physical and mental maturity.
I found one possible opportunity in the 10th race at Sam Houston, on Friday March 2nd. Only one filly qualified by the method. The 11, Gringa My had a single race in her pps, coming from 5Jan07, technically just over the border into her third year on earth. That race had been run in the mud. She had shown early speed and chased three wide. She also qualified by the trainer cutoff percentage, no less than a 12% hit rate. Her trainer Danny Pish had 18% wins in 2006 and was running at 14% in 2007. It was good to see the two-month layoff. Pish earned a profit of 12.5 percent on such layoff horses.
The rest of the field was comprised of either first-time starters with mediocre trainer stats, or proven losers. Only one other horse could have been keyed: the favorite and first-time starter Poker Bet. Her trainer, Calhoun, got 17 percent wins with debut horses, and 22 percent in dirt sprints. In 2007, Calhoun was holding up a 30% win rate, so he was the hot trainer. Furthermore, Poker Bet showed a couple of bullet works, along with the one gate work you like to see. She followed her workout record in perfect sequence.
The maiden comebacker Gringa My was bet down to second favorite. The exacta payouts with the favorite looked like overlays. No doubt the crowd at Houston was playing catch-up in the last race and was underbetting these two in the exotics. I played Gringa My to win and boxed the two in the exacta. Anything could happen for third place, and I briefly considered playing the exacta-as-trifecta, by using the only two horses I liked in the top two slots with the all in third place.
That decision required too much of a thought process, and I was involved in socializing at the moment, so I decided not to stray from the basics.
Gringa My stalked Poker Bet, and won easily. Poker Bet hung on for the place with daylight ahead of the third horse, a huge toteblasting longshot. Another big longshot finished fourth in the 12-horse field.
The exacta with the two favorites in reverse came back at 9-1, a significant overlay, and I collected a humble payoff of $6.40 for the win, a whopping overlay considering that the horse should have been 4/5.
In the end, the lesson for you is not that I followed the script of structuring the maiden comeback method in order to transcend the social madness of the Expo. Nor was the lesson that I had found an overlay in both the win pool and the exacta, even if it was a low-priced overlay.
The real lesson was found in what I did not do: combine perfect logic with the chaos factor. Believe me, the greatest scores in racing come about when the money manager has the vision to blend an entirely logical handicapping process with an element of chaos.
The trifecta for $2 came back $591.60. Sam Houston is one of the pioneering tracks for the 10-cent superfecta. The Superfecta paid out at odds of 4,420 – 1. The ALL was doable for dime combinations, only because the top two horses figured strikingly clear but the rest of the field looked like total chaos.
The moral of the story is that, yes, when the horseplayer is not in a position to play intensely, he should apply a rigid structure for selecting races and a strict and proven methodology for handicapping those races. But also, that when a very clear and logical projection emerges from the handicapping puzzle, the player can blend this logic with whatever chaos factor seems to be prevalent.


STATEBREDS: LITFIN AND FREE
If you insist on playing pick 3s and pick 4s in New York or California, you’re bound to confront the perplexing puzzle of statebred races. At the Expo, Dave Litfin and Brad Free appeared on a panel that would help us decipher the trends in statebred racing.
The big story in New York is the enhancement of conditions that allow statebred horses more options before they must go up against open company. According to Litfin, both maidens and straight claimers used to be stuck at the 35,000 level for statebreds, and if they wanted to drop, they had to do so against open company, which was not always a real drop.
So the handicapper had to make the excruciating and vague decision, again and again, whether the drop in claiming price to open company meant an easier or a more difficult field for the statebred dropper. But with today’s new rules, the statebreds can go as low as 10,000 in their own company. Sometimes you can find some nice mismatches with these droppers.
In the allowance ranks, they’ve now added a nw3 and optional claimer, meaning that statebreds on the way up will not hit the ceiling too early in their careers.
We were advised by Litfin that in spite of a few high profile NY bred successes, such as Funny Cide and Commentator, the day-to-day quality of New York statebreds is not high. That said, for the pick 4 player, the New York bred races are no longer a dilemma. They can be handicapped for what they are according to the intrinsic worth of their starters, and a statebred in open company is now there because of trainer intention rather than the obligations of the conditions book.
For me, the only difference (but it’s a big one) is that I do not have to get in a tizzy about so many statebreds “dropping” from statebred maiden special weight to $35,000 maiden claiming. In the past, I just eliminated such races from my consideration. It wasn’t the type of puzzle that anyone would want to solve on a day-to-day, horse-by-horse basis.
Five of the top 16 New York sires are now deceased, and that does not bode well for the level of statebred racing.
The angle from Litfin is that statebred turf horses become good bets at the end of the grass season, including stakes such as the Knickerbocker and the Red Smith, when most of the best open company horses are being given a rest.
Calbreds, on the other hand, are not cheap. A sprinter like Echo Eddie was able to finish second in Dubai’s version of the Breeders’ Cup Sprint. According to Brad, there’s less difference between open and Calbred females than males, and in fact, at the $10,000 level, open and Calbred females have the same par.
At the California maiden level, a move from open $32,000 to statebred $40,000 is actually a drop in class. The Beyer pars for the various statebred class levels are: 91 for allowance nw1, 87 for maiden special weight, 76 for maiden 40,000 3yo and up (compared to 78-80 for md 32,000 open company) and 78 for 10,000 claimers.
Swiss Yodeler is the leading Cal debut sire, but it’s a deceptive stat since this sire has so many starters. (You can find big payoffs with Swiss Yodeler horses trained by Michael Harrington.)
Salt Lake, Bertrando and In Excess are other sires to respect.
In the end, statebred racing in New York now bears a greater resemblance to its equivalent in California as far as the handicapping puzzle is concerned, but Calbreds are a notch above New York breds in quality.

BEATING THE TAKEOUT: LESSON FROM DUBAI
Sometimes the takeout makes little difference! This may contradict the general notion that we prefer a lower takeout, as expressed in previous articles in this issue. However, in theory, we are playing against the crowd, and on those occasions when the crowd is overtaken by groupthink and is completely wrong, we can beat the crowd no matter what the take is.
The odds are determined by the level of accuracy of the betting public. The player who is conscious of pari-mutuel value waits until a contender is paying off a better than fair odds. Overlays will always exist, even in Mexico City’s Hippodromo de las Americas, where the takeout, when I played there, was 50 percent. Overlays occur when the public is stricken by erroneous judgment, lack of information (that we possess), or simply cannot decipher a handicapping puzzle with its usual factors. The higher the takeout, the more we will have to wait for betting opportunities, but betting opportunities will arrive, inevitably, because there are always inefficiencies in any pari-mutuel market.
In the days of Hialeah, when the owners raised the takeout to obscene levels, and virtually every professional player decided to boycott the Hialeah pool, there were betting opportunities precisely because of the high takeout, precisely because the smart money had left the pools.
For this reason, I love playing certain races in higher takeout venues. My classic example is playing the Dubai Nad Al Sheba World Cup day in the French betting pool. On the average, the takeout in the independent French pool was (before the upcoming changes) about 4 1/2 percentage points higher than American takeout.
However, for Dubai dirt races in which French and European grass horses are entered, the French betting public is so far off from an accurate evaluation that the payoffs are considerably higher when American horses win. This year, I zeroed in on two races.
In the Godolphin Mile, where I felt that the two American shippers, Dixie Meister (Canani-Flores) and Spring At Last (O’Neill-Gomez) were standouts.
Thanks to the higher odds in the French pool, I played them both to win and also bet them in a quinella (no exacta betting). I was able to spread my bet because of the higher odds. I won with Spring At Last, but Dixie Meister finished fourth.
Had I played Spring At Last in the American pool, I’d have received 7-2 odds. In the French pool I received 8-1, even though the takeout in the French pool was nearly 5 percentage points higher than in the American pool.
In the Golden Shaheen, a 6-furlong event, I’ve profited year after year, as American sprint shippers dominate over anything else that the Dubai or Euro people can throw at them. In last year’s Golden Shaheen, I still profited, even though I had to spread my bet around five different horses.
This year, I almost passed. There were seven American bred horses, as American trainers have learned that this race offers a great advantage. I could not find a way to play all seven. I decided to eliminate the two American breds that had raced already at Dubai and were no longer trained by Americans, including the BC-Sprint winner, Thor’s Echo, whose entirely disappointing Dubai prep race suggested that he was out of form.
The eventual winner, Kelly’s Landing, a horse I would have backed in the BC-Sprint, had he gotten in, paid 20.80 in the USA and 27.60 in the higher-takeout French pool. The winning all-American exacta, with Friendly Island finishing second, paid 72.80 in the USA. The French Quinella equivalent, playing the quinella twice so that it would equal an American exacta box, paid 118.00.
The payoff in America was still an overlay, because American players try to distinguish between the American-bred sprint candidates, where a player experienced in playing the Dubai Golden Shaheen knows to value each American shipper equally.
I am not trying to argue that we should passively accept high takeouts in the USA. We should always fight for our rights, meaning lowering takeouts as much as the industry can sustain. However, unless you are a grind-it-out player looking to bet an 8/5 that should be 6/5, the only effect of the takeout is to price many of our contenders beyond the boundaries of bettability.
I am looking forward to finding the time for an immense research project: combing the globe for all the independent betting pools where American horses might be greater overlays than they’d be back in the USA. In the meantime, once in awhile we still have a similar advantage with Euro shippers in American pools. When the Eiros first began arriving in meaningful numbers in the USA, the Euro horse was an automatic bet, based on pure class. I’d play the Gosden shipper every time in California.
But American players are now conditioned to the presence of Euro class, and this advantage has diminished, though not disappeared. Breeders’ Cup payoffs show us that there is still value when the Euro horse does not meet typically American handicapping standards.
In such cases, the takeout is no longer an enemy. What we players are looking for is an inefficiency in the betting market, when the players completely underestimate the chances of a horse that should be there among the contenders. This comes not from extra points in the takeout but from contrarian handicapping logic that moves in only when betting public has become irrational.

GIBSON CAROTHERS: WISEGUY OR WISE MAN?
Gibson Carothers is a former board member Canterbury Park and an imaginative advertising professional who is partly responsible for the advent of the Claiming Crown. Above all, Carothers is a professional player. He specializes in the pick six in California. He insists that creative handicapping can lead to pick six without syndicate-level investments.
(By the way, Carothers is also one of the “leading sires” in the C&X handicapper sire rankings, having sired Matt Carothers, a good longshot handicapper in his own right. Yours truly is near the bottom of these sire rankings. After my son picked Reraise in the BC-Sprint, he concluded that “this game requires a total commitment to study and research, and that’s too much of a time investment for me”.)
Gibson began his presentation, paraphrasing Nietzche in comparing the pick six to women, who make the highs higher and the lows more frequent
Here are some of the words of wisdom from Carothers.
If you play defensively, he says, by including “might-win” horses, you’ll be playing with less confidence. Therefore, he plays smaller tickets. All races should be either singles or covers.
The Separator
The most important single is what he calls THE SEPARATOR, a high odds horse that will knock out the competition. The other single is the “standout”, a horse that must be singled but which will nevertheless be singled by much of the competition. The standout is more of an obligation than an opportunity.
Then there are “stab” or “blank” races. In such races, “if you think five horses have a chance to win, you have to use all five”.
“Doubles kill me,” he adds. “If I see a potential double, I have to make a call. Doubles are not covers.”
Can you win with a $72 ticket? If there are two incredibly difficult fields as part of the pick six, the small player would have to single these. The pick six, according to Carothers, is a “thinking man’s lottery”. Each player has to find his or her own comfortable style.
The idea of singling of longshots or horses in difficult fields was intentionally provocative. Carothers took a stance against the current conventional wisdom that money management can replace inventive handicapping. He implied, without directly saying it, that vastly complex money management schemes are created by players who are not especially talented at picking longshots and intended to compensate for a lack of imaginative handicapping.
My own conclusion from the words of Carothers is that, if you cannot pick a longshot to win, you should not be playing the pick six. That’s what I read between the lines, when Carothers ends up as a sole voice resuscitating the idea that clever handicapping and the ability to pick longshot winners should be the prerequisite for winning at the races.
There seems to be a prevailing logic that in these times when the lottery plays have deserted the horse race pools for the slots, we are left with a betting public that is too sophisticated to defeat. I sense that it’s increasingly difficult to grind it out at between 8/5 and 7/2 but that the public continues to err in the higher odds regions, and that’s where a player like Gibson Carothers can find an edge.

MIKE MALONEY SPEAKS SOFTLY AND CARRIES A BIG BANKROLL
This was our first chance to hear Mike Maloney and we were not disappointed. Maloney is a professional player who wagers on track from a private suite. He is one of the major players in the horse betting market.
Maloney was asked to speak on synthetic surfaces. He explained (as Michael Dickenson confirmed) that there are a variety of synthetic surfaces. He notes that training methods are more important on artificial surfaces. For example, three foreign-born trainers, Biancone, Clement and Motion led the Turfway standings on the polytrack.
“Bet against speed trainers,” he added, “and upgrade a turf route training specialist.”
It was harder on the polytrack to go wire-to-wire. Maloney provided some stats. The first percentage is the dirt-track stat and the second percentage is the polytrack stat, for wire-to-wire winners:
Woodbine: 32% / 17%
Hollywood: 26% / 12%
Turfway: 30% / 13%
Keeneland: 41% / 5%
A few additional comments:
(1) Garret Gomez’s riding style fits the advances of polytrack.
(2) Since speed in the morning is less indicative, let randomness work in your favor in races with first-time starters.
(3) We do not have enough information, as Davidowitz agreed, about the way that polytracks will finally settle in.
I raised the question of the possibility that the jockey colony’s mass psychology will adapt its tactics to the polytracks and therefore the stats will eventually even out.
What you cannot perceive in this report on Mike Maloney’s presentation is the man’s style. For a big player he is surprisingly unassuming and matter of fact. Not only did he extract whatever data could be available, but he delivered his presentation with a purely conversational but professional style.
If I were opening a racing form and saw a Maloney article, I’d go there before looking at the past performances.

SYNTHETIC SURFACES
Mike Maloney’s profile opens the C&X discussion on synthetic surfaces. Here we add to the discussion with comments from Michael Dickenson, Steve Davidowitz and Brad Free.
Steve Davidowitz
Davidowitz gave a measured, “watchful waiting” presentation with few strong convictions. He attempted to be as objective as possible within this situation which will necessarily be evolving. Here are what I have judged to be his most most useful points:
(1) Horses training on artificial surfaces often seem to gain stamina.
(2) The strategic role of early speed changes from one artificial surface to another, though, as Maloney pointed out, there is no longer a statistical preference for early speed.
(3) On artificial surfaces, horses can be trained more aggressively, which could mean a gain in stamina or simply a work-induced improvement in form.
(4) The synthetic surface does not mean that track maintenance crews will not be able to create some sort of bias, but it will be less likely for the maintenance crew to manipulate the surface in order to create a better chance for a pick six carryover.
Davidowitz concluded with a fascinating statistic. At Keeneland, the average margin of victory on dirt was 3.6 lengths. But on the polytrack, the average win margin was reduced to 1.6 lengths, and fields were more bunched up, as it often is with turf racing.
Michael Dickenson
Michael Dickenson chimed in from a different perspective, relating to safety and ethics. Dickenson apparently has a financial interest in artificial surfaces, but his tone and demeanor exuded with integrity and the man has had experience training his own horses on synthetic surfaces.
He noted that, at this time, 68 jockeys are on permanent disability and that there are two horse fatalities per day at U.S. race tracks.
“We have to change”, he pleaded.
Beyond the surface issue itself, he asked what has gone wrong about racing in general. Once there was a 30-start-per-foal statistic and now it’s 11 starts per foal. Exercise riders are heavier. Incredibly, 95% of race horses are on anabolic steroids and “look like sumo wrestlers”.
Now that new and safer technology does exist, race tracks would be liable if they did not use it. From a financial standpoint, artificial surfaces would result in a 75% reduction in water use and maintenance.
From a player’s perspective, with artificial surfaces we would have larger field sizes, for in off-the-turf races, trainers are less likely to scratch their grass runners. Also, horses would be less likely to become sore on artificial surfaces.
Dickenson emphasized that there are at least six different types of artificial surfaces, and he brought samples for us to touch and feel. He made no judgment as to which of the six are the best.
As for picking winners, he believes that with synthetic surfaces, the game will become more predictable.
“Just pick the best horse,” he said. “It will be more predictable and consistent because fewer horses will become sore.”
In referring to dirt racing, he quoted Gary Stevens, who once remarked:
“None of us appreciate the brutality of kick back on the dirt.”
Finally, Dickenson urged that anabolic steroids should be prohibited.
C&X agrees with Dickenson on this point, and we have editorialized against steroids.
Brad Free
Brad Free approached the synthetic surface issue from a handicapper’s perspective, referring to the first season of “polytrack” at Hollywood Park.
(1) As was the case at Turfway, Hollywood was not nearly as speed favoring.
(2) Stallions like Momentum are being marketed as “synthetic sires” because they won on both dirt and turf.
(3) The class and fitness factors have become elevated in importance.
(4) Counterfeit speed horses can no long steal races.
(5) Of 19 debut winners, 17 had at least one work on the cushion track.
(6) Horses sired by Swiss Yodeler won 10 of 64 starts.
(7) A Euro horse named Cantabria dominated Hollywood Park graded stakes on the cushion track for Frankel but could not reproduce his form at Santa Anita.
(8) Low percentage trainers, as we would have guessed, are less likely to handle to change from dirt to cushion than higher percentage trainers.
In none of the synthetic surface presentations did we receive the magic secret, but this is because the presenters were all making the greatest effort to remain as objective as possible, considering that this issue will certainly evolve, possible in unsuspected ways.
Reader opinions on this issue are welcomed.

WEIGHT OFF MY CHEST
Even though the Expo was held in a 5-star hotel, you still had the chance to meet interesting people in the hall. One of those people was Walter Seip, who got his start in racing at Delaware and Maryland while he was serving as an army engineer and receiving a masters degree in engineering. He later worked with the Department of Defense, and now has written a book on engineering the defense of the bottom line for horseplayers. Called Dynamic Ability: a Mathematical Determination of a Thoroughbred’s Capacity to Race, this book considers all the numerical aspects, including weight.
In short snippets, the author is able to refer to some of the research in racing literature and discount certain factors that he claims we have overrated. One of those is bias. He picks out a few afternoons when it seemed that a particular running style or post position was dominating and then refers to the low odds of the winning horses, strongly suggesting that the results reflected a natural variation in the way numbers unfold while confirming that when in-form horses win as expected, there is no indication of bias.
He substantiates his affirmation by referring to a Steve Unite study that comes to the same conclusion. In the long run he is certainly right. But using the same supporting evidence, pari-mutuel returns, we can identify occasional afternoons or extended periods when bias was indeed present. I could give examples from my own past writings, but why not check Beyer’s My $50,000 Year at the Races and then discover that most of his profits came from having identified a bias.
More recently I’ve enjoyed Tom Amello’s and Nick Kling’s Capital Cities OTB TV program in which they point out biases by showing us a series of races from NYRA tracks and pointing out which horses benefited, say, from not being near the dead rail, or hurt their chances by being mired on the rail.
Where I might be able to build a bridge between the pro and anti track bias observers, I have suggested that jockeys operate in a “colony” and acquire a mass riding psychology that tends to reinforce a bias through a self-fulfilling prophesy, a type of groupthink related to riding strategy. Biases disappear or change when this groupthink reaches such an extreme that the jockeys begin a backlash, using more or using less speed in the early going in order to counter the bias, or looking to get their position on a different part of the track.
In any case, in the long run and in the vast majority of cases, bias does not exist. However, the above stats from Mike Maloney on the polytrack certainly show that there is a such thing as a prevailing running style and that this running style can indeed change when the surface changes.
Most interesting about Seip’s book is his concept of creating a dynamic, which includes numerical penalties for this or that factor, when ranking a horse, and Seip readily accepts that readers should pick and choose factors as they wish and make their own dynamic. For example, regarding the pace factor, Seip notes that a pace figure does not consider how well intended a horse was for a particular running line, nor does it consider the horse’s trip. The author argues that our visual impression of a horse’s past races is at least as valuable in projecting today’s pace as pace figures. I agree.
Seip’s point of departure for his arguments on the weight factor come from a massive study that dates back to the 1930s and was probably accurate in its time. But today, race tracks have effectively eliminated weight as a real factor by pandering to owners or trainers and rarely placing enough weight on a horse to create a true handicap.
I recently collected on a jumper at the Cheltenham meet in England. He had lost by 5 lengths to a rival, but that loss was a prep race. The weights shifted and my horse gained 8.8 pound advantage over his rival relative to their previous race. Since my horse’s last race was merely a prep, the form factor entered into my decision to play the horse. Weight alone could not have determined my decision.
As an engineer, Mr. Seip is right about weight being a factor. But that factor has been so minimized in contemporary American racing, fortunately or unfortunately depending on where you stand, that it no longer is a factor. Occasionally a trainer will put one over, entering a horse for 2 pounds less and then putting an apprentice aboard for another 5-pound advantage. Such weight-induced longshot winners often come in sprints for younger horses. As Frankel once noted, weight may make the most difference in the acceleration stage of a race, which would mean that weight would have more effect on a sprint than a route.
Another area where weight might make a difference is in the trainer’s perception of it. Years ago I asked McAnally whether he considered weight as a real factor, and he said that he would gladly take two-pounds off. Other trainers I’ve talked to had similar impressions. Thus, weight changes might have something to do with trainer intention. All of this must be seen in the context of serious studies on the weight factor, such as Quirin’s, which show that we’d do better in playing high weights than low weights, because the higher weighted horses are the usually the best ones.
Am I giving up on the weight factor? Not exactly! Any factor that remains entirely discredited could pop up under certain occasions to play a role in determining a value wager.
I’ve experimented with weight in my bicycle riding. On more than a few occasions, I’ve packed a substantial lunch, including bottles of water, sandwiches, and the desert I can afford to eat because I get so much exercise. I would ride for two hours, find a pretty place in the country, preferable around an agricultural village, since I’m a lover of small farms, and enjoy my banquet.
Following a short rest after lunch I’d be back on the bicycle, rolling by farmland, through forests, up and down hills, and I’ve always noted that my backpack felt lighter and I felt stronger. Weight did make a difference, even though it was merely displaced, from my backpack to my stomach. In theory I should have been carrying the same weight. Perhaps the lighter feeling resulted from the fact that the dead weight had been transformed into live weight.
In any case, weight certain does make a difference. If it didn’t, there would be no steam rooms for jockeys and Barry Bonds could get a mount in the Kentucky Derby. From an engineering point of view, which is entirely objective, weight does count, and so we players should keep that in mind in case a rare occasion arises when we can make money from the factor.
I invite C&X readers to chime in if you’ve found particular races where the weight factor did indeed count. Stats show that apprentices often decline in win percentage when they lose their weight allowance, which could be the weight factor or could be the self-fulfilling prophesy of trainers no longer wanting to use them.
As for Seip’s book, I did enjoy reading the impressions of a man who has been around, a man who does have a numerical view of things but who expresses himself in an entertaining way. The book is self-published and could have used the hand of a good editor. That said, it was enjoyable to read about the viewpoints and war stories (especially the pages on race fixing) of a man who has been around racing for many years, as a player and owner.
Dynamic Ability: Mathematical Determination of a Thoroughbred’s Capacity to Race is available from Seip Ventures, Las Vegas, Nevada 89110.


C&X CAFE
from Steve
BREAKTHROUGH
You can’t win money if you don’t handicap in an original way, but even if you do handicap with creativity, you can lose if you do not have self-confidence. It doesn’t happen often but sometimes I receive letters from readers who have turned it around and begun to win good money at the races. There’s no formula but usually it’s a question of putting things together that were already known and then finding the confidence to follow through.
With this, I print an extract from a letter from a reader who has made the transition from proficiency to excellence. Read between the lines and you will see that external circumstances plus newly found self-confidence have made the difference. This player uses the Sheets, which is a good product. But 10 handicappers can use the Sheets and get ten different results, as even sheets-man Len Friedman agreed. I’m withholding the name from the letter since there are finances mentioned within.
Mark: My search for freelance writing work around here didn’t produce anything, and I’ve ended up easing into becoming a professional horseplayer, at least for now. I had been so busy that I had barely played for a few years, and in ‘05 had my first losing year in a long time, so when I met old friends in Saratoga for a weekend last summer, I had no positive expectations other than fun. But damned if I wasn’t finding enough playable longshots to pay for the trip and then some.
When I got back home, with time on my hands and a positive mindset, I started playing more seriously, and unlike in the past when stepping up my wagers shook up my judgment and sent me into losing streaks, I just kept seeing more clearly and doing better. I haven’t hit a pick 6 yet, but every 4-6 weeks, I hit a race for about $5,000 and have a slightly positive ROI the rest of the time, even on the Aqueduct inner. Since September, I’ve made more than I did in a year teaching middle school, have time to play basketball and do yoga, and I have a lot more time and energy for the kids. I’ve also started refereeing & umpiring kids’ basketball & baseball leagues for fun.
Today was my birthday, and I had another $5,000 hit, which finally convinced my wife that it is OK for me to stop looking for a part-time job. Part of why I wanted to write was to thank you for your role in this.
My biggest win came keying one of those 3YO layoff pattern horses – one of your articles turned me onto them, and ever since, I’ve been adjusting any 3YO layoff pattern horse’s Sheet #s to give him shot for a 5 point move up (5 points is the amount a typical horse progresses over his entire 3YO year). I once told one of the Sheet-makers about this and he looked at me like I was crazy. I guess this is why this particular horse was 10-1, which was nice, but what made it a big score was incorporating some randomness in the 3rd & 4th positions in the Super. I singled the pattern horse over the one reliable decent figure horse for second, and boxed 5 horses (including some longshots with excuses or question marks) for 3rd & 4th. When one of the 25-1 shots closed late for 3rd, I was happy with the win, exacta & tri, but I didn’t have the hopeless 50-1 shot that somehow got 4th. But when they flashed the SF result, it was 5-3-8-A instead of 5-3-8-1. No one had that hopeless 50-1 shot, so they paid off anyone who had 5-3-8, and with my 5 horse box, I had it 4 times. That was a $13,000 race, and I invested all of $50.
My two most recent scores came on horses I would have never ever played until I read your research showing that a significant share of winning longshots don’t have any particular angle to them, but are just borderline contenders – horses that you can’t really throw out but give you no particular reason to bet on them. The reason I bet on some of them is when their odds are way high and the stronger contenders are overbet and have flaws or questions. I’ve started keying any contender at 20-1 or higher, and I usually find them in very open races where it is hard to throw anyone out (I’m not talking about maiden races, but races with some established form). One was Hope for Hal, who paid more than $200 to win on the day last month that Invasor came back at Gulfstream (I’m probably the only lunatic who had five of six in the P6, and had Hope for Hal, but not Invasor – I always try to beat Breeders’ Cup winners in their next race – leaving Invasor off the ticket did cost me a $45,000 pick 6). Hope for Hal was actually my 8th choice in what I saw as a totally open race, with many horses coming off polytrack, changing distances, etc. Today’s was Bazooka Bob in the 7th at AQ – 5th fastest of my 5 Sheet contenders – but way underbet, paying $51.50, and keying a $322 DD with a Jason Servis layoff shipper in the 6th (in the DRF, Servis showed up 1-16 with layoffs over 180 days, but when I delved in Formulator, I found that he had lots of big price winners a few years back shipping to NY with older horses off long layoffs). Anyway, sorry if this is coming off like bragging – I am excited, and there aren’t many people I know who understand any of this, so I’m filling your monitor.
I mean the thanks genuinely. I can’t be totally kinky – in fact, I don’t think I could handicap most races at all anymore without the Sheets. But your writing helped me to use Sheets and the rest of the info in a very different way.


from Brock
REPORT FROM CHICAGO
Here’s what one has to deal with at the Illinois circuit and other near-state tracks. Frank Calabrese is reported to have more than 100 million dollars in funds from a printing business he sold recently. He has Catalano as his trainer. Frank is only interested in winning and is reported to spend at least two million a year on the horses he owns with training and shipping costs.
Last year he won a race at the Breeders’ Cup at Churchill, so he probably did not lose anywhere close to the two million he invests in his racing business. His horses are bet down so low that you could say you should pass the race.
He usually ends up as the leading owner in number of wins when the meet is over at Hawthorne or Arlington. You would not want to work for him because if his horse does not win, he gets upset.
[Editor’s Note. This report from Chicago represents the opinion of a reader and does not represent an editorial view of C&X. We have had no contact with the Calabrese stable but before the Calalano horses got bet down, C&X identified this stable as a winning one. The question for Midwest players is: have we reached a point in Chicago where we have the same dilemma as Bay Area players do when facing the prospect of betting with or against the Hollendorfer stable?]