Mark Cramer
C & X Report

C&X 38

CONTENTS
Editorial
What’s Their Line: Meadow and Fierro
Odds Line Workshop
Betting Maidens and 2-year-olds: Bray, Callet and Illman
Basics or Beyond? Davidowitz and Free face off!
Tournaments: the Growth Sector of Racing?
Tested at La Teste: What would you do?
Notes from Ascot

EDITORIAL
As promised, on these pages we complete what we had begun in the previous issue: coverage of the Handicapping Expo, where several trends came up that served as vindication for C&X. For a long time I’ve been writing that “the best book on handicapping is the player’s own records”. At the Expo, guest speakers like Steve Davidowitz and Brad Free advised that the best information about horse race handicapping is found in the records that the player keeps of his betting (see “Basics or Beyond”). I would add that how records are kept is not a small issue. It’s more than turf or dirt, sprints or routes, fillies or boys, low-level claiming or middle claimers, etc. These are categories that the track decides for us. But our real categories relate to the type of handicapping puzzle, and in this issue, I define race categories, which for many of us will be the main defining trait of the subdivisions in our records (see Odds Line Workshop).
Another vindication came with statements from Beyer, Davidowitz and Illman. For years I’ve been arguing, along with Ed Bain, that the trainer is the most important factor in handicapping. In the beginning I was chided by experts exemplified by Howard Sartin: “The trainer can’t talk to the horse”. But now, the three experts I have listed all declared the same thing: the trainer is the most important factor.
Perhaps it’s time to be cautious. If too many people begin to repeat this mantra, the value of the trainer factor may decline. But what will never decline is the fact that some other factor that is not considered primary (in Callet’s presentation in was pedigree) will emerge as the leading primary factor for the discerning handicapper.
I can proudly acclaim that C&X has been on the cutting edge in many realms of handicapping and horse betting. But then humility steps in and reminds me that many of the best pages of C&X have been player profiles of others who have achieved remarkable success in this difficult game. A good number of these others are featured in this issue.
As the history of C&X enters its stretch drive, we are already assured of a good finish position. From time to time I receive letters from readers who have been with us since the inception, when we were C&O and working with Bill Olmsted. The whole project began with the suggestion from Olmsted back in the early 1990s. That’s quite a long trajectory for a print publication, especially during a period when the internet has been gradually taking over the market. It certainly has been fun, and we won’t let down until the final issue of this cycle, which should be around December. I do hope that the pages you are about to read will contain a few new surprises.mc

WHAT’S THEIR LINE? Meadow and Fierro
The Expo conference on Making Your Own Lines, moderated with critical precision by Mike Watchmaker, may serve to clarify what it’s all about and to highlight three different persuasions. I’ll try to come up with a short but thorough synthesis.
Watchmaker began by asking the panelists to define what a betting line actually is. Steve Fierro responded by recalling how so wrapped up he had been in the contender selection process that he was missing a vital component: how to decide what the value is of each contender.
“I know many handicappers who are far better than me but they don’t know how to bet.”
Whatever handicapping method you use, you would assume that your contenders will win 80 percent of the time, with your non-contenders winning 20 percent. Then you ascribe odds to each contender, based on the 80%. For example, 2-1 (33%), 3-1 (25%), and 7-2 (22%), which equals 80%. (Naturally, there is a 100 percent chance that some horse in the field will win the race.)
Watchmaker and Meadow added that one’s personal odds line has nothing to do with a Morning Line. Watchmaker, an accomplished ML maker, explained the program odds maker is only supposed to anticipate how the public will wager, and is not trying to outsmart the public.
Meadow agreed, giving an example. He might demote the odds of an ML favorite, because the horse has finished second twice in a row, assigning odds of 6-1 if he perceives that the horse lacks the winning spirit while the Morning Line maker, even if he agrees with Meadow, would have to make that horse the favorite, knowing that the public backs such a horse.
Meadow explained that he actually ascribes odds to each and every horse in the race, even 99-1 for 1% probability. He does this for maximum precision. He can do it this way because he plays only California and makes ratings on every single horse on the circuit, where Fierro plays many tracks and can’t possibly know the whole horse colony at each track. (Fierro has told us, though he did not mention it at the Expo, that he uses what C&X calls the “short form” method of handicapping, eliminating low percentage trainers and horses that are proven losers at the class level.)
Meadow explained that making one’s personal odds line is no different from shopping. You can love a house, but if it’s worth $800,000 and is selling for $900,000, it’s not worth buying. You can love a horse, but not necessarily bet it if the odds are below fair value.
He assured the audience that no football bettor would place a wager on the Chargers or Jets without looked at the point spread, which is like an odds line. So how is it that horseplayers bet on horses without caring about whether or not they are getting value?
Watchmaker chimed in appropriately that most horsesplayers intuitively have some notion of what odds a horses is worth, even though they do not quantify their intuition.
Quantifying seems to scare people off, but in essence, it’s much simpler than what you would expect. It’s not determinism, only probability. It’s an educated but subjective estimate, based on objective knowledge.
Meadow will only make a line if he knows all the horses in a field. Even then, he will bypass a race and save time in doing so. If you have, for example, bottom-of-the barrel claimers in a field with three layoff horses and one horse that just won a race after a long losing streak, there would be no way to judge such horses.
For Meadow, the procedure begins by going over the pluses and minuses of each horse, placing them in order of preference, and then giving each horse a projected fair odds. Using his odds/percentage table (which he’s long since memorized) he adds up the total percentage points. If the total is above or below 100%, he tinkers with the odds and makes appropriate adjustments, without changing the hierarchy of his preferences, until he gets the right total percentage.
Fierro warns us that we should not “create value” but find it: in other words, do not force it. Thus he advises that we handicap without seeing any official line. He doesn’t mind having a complete range of information, preferring to specialize on those factors that have worked well for him. He knows which factors these are because he has kept meticulous records and evaluated all bad outcomes, the way an engineer analyzes a plane crash or a collapsed bridge.
Fierro plays many more races than Meadow, while Meadow prefers to bet a lot of money on a very few races. Meadow is not ashamed to admit that his return on investment is not high, and he grinds it out. Fierro too admits that he’s primarily a win bettor and he too grinds it out.
Yes, Meadow plays to win, but he will move in on any pool where there is value. When Smarty Jones entered the Belmont and an extraordinary number of people bought extra win tickets as souvenirs or for sentimental reasons in case the horse won the Triple Crown, Meadow noticed that Smarty Jones was paying more in the place pool than he was for win. So Meadow bet $4,000 to place and collected a $3.30 payoff.
“I rarely do such things,” he explained. “But value is value wherever it can be found.”
Both Meadow and Fierro will pass a race if their odds line resembles that of the Morning Line. Both used the word “disparity” as the key to finding a value wager. There must be a disparity between the toteboard odds and their line odds.
That disparity should be at least 50%. If their contender is 2-1 in their odds line, they must be getting at least 3-1 for a wager. If their contender is 4-1 on their line, they would need 6-1 for a play. If the contender is 3-1, they would need 9-2 minimum.
“Barry, what if your line says 3-1 and the horse is 4-1 on the board? Would you be tempted to bet?” Watchmaker asked.
Barry exclaimed that it would be a no bet. There will be so many other opportunities. Why press?
“I’m working with a small margin of profit,” he added, “so I cannot afford to reduce my long-term advantage.”
Both Fierro and Meadow said they were perfectly willing to play a second choice. If their top choice was 8/5 on their personal line but going off at 6/5 on the toteboard while their second choice, 2-1 on their line, was 4-1 on the board, no questions asked. Pass the top choice and bet their second pick. (But 6-1 is the maximum line odds for a contender. For example, 8-1 would be considered a non-contender, which means that if the 8-1 were going off at 25-1, there would be no bet. The higher one’s line odds, the less dependable is the precision.)
Watchmaker asked Meadow how a slumping player should make adjustments on his lines. Meadow explained that you have to be emotionally calm when you make a line. You can’t make your lines in between races just after your longshot loses a photo. That would be too disturbing. You have to find the comfortable place and time. Years ago, when I went to the races with Meadow, I observed that he would arrive early, before the crowds, find a quiet corner, and finalize his lines. Now he usually plays from his home. He still loves the game, he says, but he prefers the most practical route, because the business of betting takes priority over the thrills.
Exotics
Meadow uses his odds tables for daily doubles, exactas and trifectas, though he rarely plays exotics. On the other hand, serial bets of three races or more cannot be bet in the same way because you don’t know the odds for sure. In such cases, Meadow uses his own line to imagine which horses might be going off at true overlays, the reason being that one should have more money on one’s greater overlays. [It’s the classic argument. If you box three horses, and you like your third choice much less than your top one, then you are overbetting your third choice in the box. And exotic should be constructed with preferences in mind.]
Fierro rarely goes beyond the win pool. If he does, it’s because he loves one of the three races in the pick 3 whereas the other two legs look like chaos events. In such cases, he’ll use the ALL. But for the most part, he’s a win bettor. So in essence, he would be converting the pick 3 into a win bet.
Watchmaker mentioned that in recent years, there are times when big late action flows in to change the odds significantly, AFTER the horses are off and running. Meadow tells us that he waits until the last moment to bet. (I wonder whether his action might change the odds.)
Fierro doesn’t care.
“What I lose occasionally when the odds go down at the last moment, I gain back when the odds jump up on another horse I’ve bet.”
Both players insisted on the vital importance of keeping records. Meadow explained that records of every bet serve validate when and how he’s performing at his optimum best with his odds lines. Separately, to me, he explained that he’d need to see validation that his 2-1s win more than his 3-1s and that his 3-1s win more than his 4-1,” etc., “because if this were not the case, there would be a fundamental flaw in my odds lines.”
Fierro is awed at how “so many players, even those who are businessmen and must keep strict records in their business fail to keep records with their horse race bets.”
But Meadow added that if you’re only doing this for fun and you don’t care about winning lots of money, you may not need to keep records.
“For me this is a business,” he added. He still loves the game, but I doesn’t do it as a fan.”
Fierro, on the other hand, loves every moment of it, and I can testify that this is true for I’ve been with him on winning days and losing days and he is totally at home grinding it out race after race. There are times when a horse Fierro has at 3-1 will go off at 15-1. He’s less conventional in his handicapping methods than Meadow, and there are times when a single strong factor may cause Fierro to forget everything else and make a horse 8/5.
For those of you who insist on not making yourselves comfortable with either Fierro’s or Meadow’s line making structures, Barry offers an alternative.
“Just rank your horses in order of preference,” he explains. “Then, if your second preferred horse happens to be the sixth choice of the public, you have identified an overlay [if your handicapping is proficient]. Both of these guys insist that you don’t have to be the most exceptional handicapper to win money at the races with good odds lines, and both are quick to say that they do not consider themselves as talented in the realm of handicapping as many of their colleagues.
Both Meadow and Fierro mention that a good odds line can help you pass a race as much as it can help you bet. (The odds are like instructions, and you only need to follow such instructions. No more fretting about “should I play him or not?” The line tells you what to do.)
It was good to here these two guys speak. Even if we’ve covered the line making subject before, many C&X issues have gone by without our focusing on this truly “valuable” subject.
So what should YOU put into your line. Fierro explains that no two line makers should come up with an identical line. That’s why it’s a personal odds line. Two guys with a radically different process can both win, as long as they are willing to learn as they go, validating what works and repudiating what doesn’t.
Even if you made lines for only six months and then gave it up, the experience would inevitable lead to improving your handicapping.
My final word is that, through the years, I’ve become pickier about which races I’ll make a line for. From the experience, I’ve learned to spot, almost immediately, when a race is not worth digging into. That alone has saved me a lot of capital.

ODDS LINE WORKSOP
Before we begin, a little history. I first began making my own odds lines after spending evenings at Los Alamitos with Barry Meadow and watching him do it. My racing partner at the time, Frank Cotolo, began making lines about the same time. (There’s a story in Scared Money based on an episode in Frank’s life. Frank applied the process professionally.) This was also the time when I met Dick Mitchell. He was a student in my Los Angeles City College (LACC) class called Probability Theory as Applied to Horse Race Handicapping, in the mid-1980s.
Dick registered for the class because he was an expert in probability and liked the races. It soon became obvious that Dick knew much more about probability than I did. With Dick Mitchell one could always speak directly and without the need for putting up a front. He was authentic. He was a good listener. He was the go-to person when a dilemma of probability was splitting the brain. Dick has passed away and his absence is felt profoundly.
When I first met Dick, I needed to explain to him, since he was the expert on probability, that the LACC administration had imposed the title for the course. They needed to fit the class offering with a title that would not be questioned by the academic establishment. Fair enough. This was also the time that the Handicapping Expos were developing, and I was a one-man lobby, unsuccessful, in trying to get them to hold the Expo at a university instead of a hotel. The university, I argued, would give our game the dignity it deserved.
Dick Mitchell filled in a lot about the theory behind what Barry Meadow was doing. It was a rich period in my life. People like Meadow, Cotolo, and James Quinn would be regular guest speakers at the class, and Mitchell’s presence added spice.
Dick and I went often to Santa Anita and Hollywood Park and he observed how I would put the line-making theory into practice. He suggested that I write about about line making and that he would publish it. That book became The Odds On Your Side, now out of print. The innovation of that book was to develop “handicapping categories”, which meant how different handicapping situations would trigger particular types of odds lines. To this very day, these categories remain valid.
Steve Fierro took it a step further, but in a different direction, creating his odds-line templates. In his The Four Quarters of Horse Investing, Fierro developed Mitchell’s idea of giving your contenders 80% of the probability of winning a race, all the while recognizing that in reality, it can be more or less than 80 percent. But thanks to this 80 percent, he could quantify a workable number of odds groupings, and reduce them to templates. Once the player had isolated his or her contenders, he merely needed to choose the most appropriate template. Fierro tells me that he was influenced by my work, but his templates are a revolutionary advance in that they reduce the labor time. I’m sure Dave would appreciate the innovation because Dave once wrote a review about my Value Handicapping (also out of print) in which he correctly pointed to a flaw: the amount of time that needs to be invested in the line-making process. Naturally, if you do it long enough, you learn to streamline the procedure.
I straddle between the Mitchell/Fierro 80% contenders and Meadow’s method of giving each an every horse an odds/percentage of winning. In theory, Meadow is right, since each race is different, and there will be some times when the combined chance of our contenders could equal 90% and others when we’d only reach 70% of the probabilities.
I labeled one of my “handicapping categories” the co-choice race. This is one time when the 80% rule is applicable and also within the spirit of the law of the Meadow method.
Co-choice workshop
The co-choice race emerges when the handicapper sees only two horses with an authentic chance to win. The Sunday Silence-Easy Goer bouts were the epitome of co-choice races. At that time, with separate pools, knowing the co-choice concept, you could play Easy Goer in California and Sunday Silence in New York and still make a profit.
A perfect example of this handicapping scenario was the Charles Whittingham Stakes, 9 June at Hollywood Park. We used this as part of the C&X Stakes Weekend, accompanying the Belmont Stakes, so most of you will have read my analysis. I’ll reprint it here:
WHITTINGHAM STAKES
LAVA MAN is back from his fiasco at Dubai, and he’s a California-only horse, 2-for-2 on the HOL turf course, including a win at the distance. Both he and AFTER MARKET (1 for 1 Hol turf) are fast enough to not allow the constantly improving Lang Field to steal the race. Lang Field’s trainer is hyper-dangerous in stakes races. But Shirreffs, the trainer of AFTER MARKET, has a high win percentage and flat bet profit in all categories. AFTER MARKET beat the same horse by 2 lengths that LAVA MAN beat by two lengths. Figuring that LAVA MAN will be favored, I’m going with AFTER MARKET.
In order for me to have decided whether or not this was a legitimate co-choice race, I needed to deal with the wise-guy horse, the hot and up-and-coming Lang Field. I read his fractions, which came from winning races versus lesser competition, and concluded that he did not have enough natural speed to get away from the field: in other words, not enough early speed to compensate for the fact that he was up against much stiffer competition. It was the opposite of the powerful early-speed class drop.
By excluding Lang Field as a contender, though not entirely excluding the possibility that he might win, I was able to apply my own co-choice “template”. As you can read from my commentary, I rated my two contenders equally. On separate occasions they had beaten the same horse by exactly 2 lengths. I figured Lava Man would be favored and that After Market would therefore inherit the overlay odds.
The co-choice line calls for the handicapper to make each contender 3/2. The odds 3/2 equals 40%. If both Lava Man and After Market had a 40 percent chance to win, that would be Mitchell/Fierro’s 80%. You’d give the rest of the field combined, including Lang Field, 20 percent collectively. You could see that other horses in the field, such as Obrigado, could not be totally eliminated, and therefore deserved some percentage-point probability of winning.
After Market 3/2, need 2-1
Lava Man 3/2, need 2-1
In this case I did not need to insert the line in the Stakes Weekend posting because I could reasonably assume that Lava Man would get considerably more action than After Market.
The “need” odds are greater than the line odds because the line odds represent fair value only, and we need to receive more than fair value in order to make money in the long run.
But was there any way to fear that the California public would make both horses less than the acceptable 2-1? In this particular case, seeing that the trainer of After Market had a flat-bet profit in every category, and seeing that there was a wiseguy horse in the mix, I could be reasonably sure that the odds gap between Lava Man, the publicity horse, and After Market would be significant, and that it would be unlikely for After Market to go off at less than 2-1.
Sure enough, Lava Man went off at 4/5 on the board (actually 9/10) and After Market was a hard 2-1 (nearly 5/2). In most occasions in co-choice races, we cannot be so sure, and we actually need to wait and see the toteboard.
In summary, when you come up with a co-choice race, when you’ve reduced your authentic contenders down to two, the line making process is remarkably simple. Bet the higher odds horse so long as you get 2-1 or more. After Market paid $6.80.
I like to begin workshops on personal odds lines with “the co-choice race” because even the greatest skeptics can visualize and actually feel that this is not at all complex. It’s easy to memorize the percentages and you don’t even need to write anything down on paper. It’s as clear as the point spread for a pro football game. That is, as long as you feel entirely comfortable that there is no third contender. Sure, Lang Field and Obrigado had some chances to win, but I did not perceive them as 6-1 or less on my line, so they were non-contenders. It is important to understand that the vast majority of non-contenders have some chance to win, and are not what we call ‘eliminations”. An elimination would receive 0% on an odds line.
In reading the C&X Stakes Weekend for 9 June, some people might say, “Hey, Cramer picked the winner of the Charles Whittingham.” But that is not the case. I simply picked out a bettable race. If After Market had been 4/5 and Lava Man 2-1, I’d have had to play Lava Man.
The co-choice race makes decision making easy. No more trying to split hairs about which horse might be slightly better.
PS. Allow me to provide you with the total context, by listing each and every one of my “handicapping categories”. Most players choose their categories by the class of the race, such as low-level claiming, route fillies, etc. These divisions are artificial. The intrinsic handicapping puzzle could very well be the same for different class categories. The intrinsic handicapping categories are much more difficult to identify but also much more authentic, because they relate to core handicapping principles. (In the next issue we’ll choose a race from another category.)
Co-Choice Race: when two evenly matched horses stand out above the rest
Contentious Race: when many horses have positive pp reasons in their favor
Lesser-of-evils Race (a negatively contentious race)
The Low-priced Overlay: a single horse towers over the rest of the field
The One-Factor Race: when one factor dominates all others (such as turf pedigree in a turf maiden race)
Apples and Oranges: when no comparables exist in the pps
The Legitimate Favorite Race: the favorite might be legit but an underlay; can we bet against?
The False Favorite Race: we know the favorite is not legit but we have no idea about the rest of the field
Action Stakes: we identify one or two “publicity horses” that figure to be overbet
The Basic Race: can nuts-and-bolts handicapping outdo the crowd?
Obviously, at times, some of these categories may overlap.
Odds-Percentage Conversion Table
Finally, here’s an abbreviated odds-percentage conversion table. Since our personal odds line is an intuitive estimate, no sense converting odds to that last decimal. Better to have an easily memorized list of most frequent odds.
1-2 / 67% 3-1 / 25%
3-5 / 62% 7-2 / 22%
4-5 / 55% 4-1 / 20%
1-1 / 50% 9-2 / 18%
6-5 / 45% 5-1 / 16%
7-5 / 41% 6-1 / 14%
3-2 / 40% 8-1 / 11%
8-5 / 38% 10-1 / 9%
9-5 / 35% 12-1 / 8%
2-1 / 33% 15-1 / 6%
5-2 / 28% 20-1 / 4%

Our line should add up to 100%. The Morning Line predicts the public’s odds and must include the approximate take and breakage. Therefore, the ML adds up to about 120%, which means that the odds are not inherently realistic and only reflect the potential toteboard reality, which is distorted in order to skim money from the pool.
By adding percentages to the probabilities of each horse, the ML maker is artificially reducing the odds. For example, what should be a 3-1 (25%) on a personal line based on 100 percentage points of probability might be reduced to 2-1 (33%) for an ML based on 120 points, depending on the number of horses in the race. The ML maker thus deludes the crowd as to what should be the true or fair value of a horse. By using a 100-percent line, we require ourselves to overcome the track take and we avoid the risk of deluding ourselves into thinking that a horse is an overlay when it is not!

BETTING MAIDENS AND 2 YEAR OLDS
This Expo presentation was wisely moderated by Caton Bredar and the panelists were Simon Bray, former trainer, Toby Callet, who has done the pedigree analysis at Calder Park, and Dan Illman, one of the DRF’s most eloquent experts.
If I were to synthesize this presentation in a few words, I’d write that handicapping maidens and 2-year-olds can be boiled down to pedigree and trainer intent. Callet listed those two factors in one-two order of priority, while Illman picked the same exacta factors in reverse. Bray did not disagree but added made it a three-factor quinella by adding the body language component.
We are looking for a horse that is mentally alert, he explained, and in races for the babies, the most mentally attuned will most often defeat their more talented but greener rivals. Bray emphasized a factor that we at C&X have often highlighted. Horses that run dreadfully in their first start can often turn it around second time out, and that one race of experience is worth six workouts.
Look for horses that are mentally attuned and well-behaved from the paddock to the post parade.
Pedigree
Illman touts us to check out the most updated lists of the best debut sires, some of whom are Carson City, Distorted Humor and Unbridled Song. Both Illman and Callet use the American Produce Record CD, published by Bloodstock Research for the handsome price of $375. Well, both of these guys get the CD for free through their jobs, but if you bet big money and play the baby races, it would seem that this product is indispensable. [My comment: We often get the primary tidbits from this product by reading the commentary in the Closer Look column, so at those circuits with a good Closer Look column, the DRF public handicappers are not keeping any secrets, and in fact, they’re acting as librarians, filtering in only those facts that seem crucial.]
Callet mentioned something that I had been urging a few years ago. The dam, he explained, has double the importance over the sire, because you have only one offspring per year from the dam. Knowing who the dam’s siblings are, and their habits, can help us immensely. [Please recall that the dam factor was my primary reason for making a confident top pick of Street Sense in the Derby.]
Callet takes his own notes on dams, recording tidbits of information on the dam’s of young horses who win at big prices.
As for turf maiden routes, Illman’s ranking of factors was: pedigree, trainer stats, workouts (if exceptional) and angles, such as second-time starter and the switch from polytrack to grass.
Callet’s factor priorities are, and I quote: “pedigree, pedigree and pedigree”. In fourth place was trainer intent, followed by the Z pattern, when a horse shows early speed, drops back and then makes a second move.
Workouts
All three experts zeroed in on one particular workout factor. When a maiden works out with a star stakes runner or a successful older horse, it’s particularly significant. Through Equibase, we handicappers can pick up the needed information about the work tab. Illman agreed entirely, pointing out the example of a longshot winner named Silver In Your Pocket. He had noticed that this horse had work times/dates/distances which were identical on four occasions with Curlin. He checked Equibase and sure enough, the two horses had worked in company. That allowed him to play and win with Silver In Your Pocket.
Callet chimed in his affirmation. Three fourths of all debut or 2-year-old maiden winners are horses that had worked out with other horses.
This is one of those few presentations where I can proudly claim that I agree with virtually everything these guys proclaimed. Both pedigree and “worked in company” are factors that the public underuses.
To conclude my coverage of this Expo presentation, I shall extract a list of extraneous angles that seemed important for our handicapping, though not in any order of preference.
On the second-time starter angle, Bray tells us we should watch the gallop out of the horse’s previous race. Often a green first time starter is learning as he goes along and after passing the finish line, he flies on and passes all the others.
Bray also tells us that we should not automatically discard trainers with poor records in the debut-horse category. Having worked with Mott, not known for his debut prowess, he could tell us trainers like Mott and Frankel usually don’t work their first-time starters in a fast time, and when one of their firsters breaks the pattern and glides quickly in the morning, it is a sign that this horse is well-meant for his debut race.
Callet mentions two red flag situations: too many gate works (a sign the horse has been a slow learner from the gate) and front bandages for the first time on a two-year old or maiden.
The three speakers agreed that maidens going from the rail were a big risk, especially in SoCal. An inexperienced horse on the rail will get too much dirt kicked in his face if he does not break on top. On the other hand, the rail is not a disadvantage for turf maiden races, where dirt doesn’t get kicked up. In fact, the rail could be a great advantage on the grass.
Callet likes the “graduated work pattern”, where a horse’s work tab shows added distance each time. At Calder he likes to see a 2-year old that has worked 5 furlongs in preparation for a 4 ½ furlong race.
As for the toteboard, Dan Illman mentioned an angle that was featured in the old C&O Report as well as in the out-of-print Kinky Handicapping. The only time he takes the toteboard seriously is when a horse with high morning line odds opens with heavy early action. He discounts late action. As we’ve written, the early openers usually drift up after their initial bet is diminished in importance but the normal volume of action.
Years ago, I saw this pattern and bet on it. The horse won after having opened at 3-1 and then drifted up to 15-1. I went and tracked down the owner.
“Was that your early action?” I asked.
“Sure was,” he said.
“Why’d you bet so early?” I asked.
“I was afraid I might not get the bet in because I often became sidetracked in the paddock.”
As for the second-time starter angle, Bray tells us to watch for a horse who raced dreadfully as a firster but then greatly improved his workouts subsequent to the schooling race.
If I were to highlight one particular factor, it’s the dam. Dam is you do, damned if you don’t. Are there any specialties in the dam’s racing record? Any previous full or half siblings that have shown a distinct specialty. Street Sense’s dam was a horse for course at Churchill Downs.

BASICS OR BEYOND:
DAVIDOWITZ VS. FREE, WHEN TWO NICE GUYS CLASH
The original title for this Expo presentation was “Back to the Basics”. Two panelists were invited: Steve Davidowitz, author of the classic Betting Thoroughbreds and Brad Free, DRF columnist in SoCal and author of Handicapping 101.
Even before they got near the gate, the potential clash materialized. Davidowitz was not comfortable with the title, “Back to the Basics”. It was he who insisted on adding “and Beyond”.
Davidowitz began his career at 10 years of age, when he saw Native Dancer get defeated by Dark Star.
Brad Free grew up in the shadows of Santa Anita, and first attended the races at the ripe age of 4, thanks to his dad.
Free went through a similar routine as most of us. His initial motivation was gambling. It looked like a game that could be beaten. At the age of 19, while working at McDonalds, he snuck out to Santa Anita and hit a daily double for $400 and change. Eventually he purchased systems and patronized touts. Eventually he ended up with a striking conclusion: in this game you can only depend on yourself.
Davidowitz went to college at Rutgers, where he studied the past performances more than his courses. He also played baseball in college and hoped for a professional career until he sprained his throwing arm in a boat accident. To drown out his sorrow, he went to Florida to play the races. He lost $1,200, money he didn’t have. He had to ask his dad to lend him the cash. There were strings attached. His old man made him promise he would never play a pony.
Then Davidowitz found a horse at the Big A. It was a sprinter named Flying Mercury. Davidowitz loved the bullet works. The horse would be a cinch to outrun the field. But he was entered in a route, and he was a sprinter. Davidowitz watched the jock. It looked like a stiff.
Flying Mercury was then shortened back into a sprint. Davidowitz won the money he owed his father. He handed the bills to his old man, admitting he’d caught up thanks to Flying Mercury.
Brad Free is no stranger to C&X readers. We’ve done a profile of Brad Free after he won a DRF handicapping contest.
Both Davidowitz and Free are good guys. But they disagree on the basics, and a clash was in the cards.
Free led off, referring to the Holy Grail of winning at the races: blood, sweat and tears, and most important, current condition, class, speed and pace.
We’ve heard about those things before. Form cycle, both Free and Davidowitz agreed, is the most dynamic of the four factors, and the most dramatically transformed. In the past the current horse had recency. Today the current form may be owned by a horse coming back after a layoff.
Be wary of conditioning, Davidowitz explained. As a former athlete, he is aware that sometimes conditioning comes from getting tired and not from being babied. Getting tired is a stage that creates more wind and greater energy.
Yes, form is extremely important, Davidowitz agrees, but it can be best interpreted through training methods. “The trainer is the most important factor in racing,” he asserts.
How things have changed, I reflect. Beyer has now declared the same thing. In the early 1990s, I was saying such things, and I branded myself as “kinky” just to pre-empt the inevitable attacks.
“I’m not willing to make that leap,” Brad Free now responded to Davidowitz. “Trainer could be the fifth factor.”
Free’s rationale comes from recent developments in California racing.
“California is now clean,” he noted, referring, I imagine, to the new drug testing and quarantine policies.
Davidowitz fired back, with several examples. We’ll mention one. Christophe Clement works a horse out regularly, not for speed but every six days, never missing a beat. The horse is coming back after a layoff and entered on the grass at 1 3/8. The horse wins. This, Davidowitz says that some trainers are simply better conditioners than others and that this is the new classic handicapping.
Davidowitz had Brad Free pinned, and didn’t let up. Relentlessly he went to another example. Tampa Bay: a 25,000 claiming race for 4-year-olds and up. One horse in the field had been claimed for 16,000. The horse had no numbers edge. But the trainer’s stat for first time claimed was 8 wins in 15 starts for a 53% record. The horse won.
Davidowitz kept firing, with more examples.
Finally, Free broke loose. He referred to a horse that had showed early speed against Lava Man and was now in a classified allowance. The trainer stats were good. But was it the trainer factor or was it a powerful form factor: early speed – class drop?
Free’s argument was that many trainer plays happen to coincide with form cycle or other factors of classical handicapping.
Free took the argument away from the trainer and referred to speed figure pars, available on DRF-plus. What does it take to win a race at a particular level? he asked. For Brad Free, a horse must have run withing 5 points of par for the level.
The match went on, and neither Free nor Davidowitz ceded. But in the end, they arrived at a common position. What is the most important aspect for winning at the races? Both Free and Davidowitz agreed on something we’ve often noted in C&X. I’ll quote from previous issues of this publication: “the best book on horse betting can be found in the player’s own records”.
You need to know where you are good and where you aren’t, agreed the two experts, and you won’t find out from the experts but you will know from your own daily records. [It is important to understand that Free and Davidowitz made the assumption that they were speaking to an audience of good handicappers. Record keeping can also help a bad handicapper, by telling him to either change his methods or stop playing the races.]
Free tells us that he keeps a record of every single bet he makes. Each December he does his house cleaning, in other words, his evaluation of his betting records for the year.
“What was right? What was wrong? No teacher can do this for you,” he insisted.
In 2006 he discovered he had lost a total of $3,000 from a combination of the Pick 6 and the Place Pick All, and that now he has eliminated these bets and has concentrated almost exclusively on win bets and exactas.
Free tells us of his bicycling with Andrew Beyer. Beyer with his thin-tire speed bike and Free with his mountain bike.
“I was not in his category,” Free confesses. “We have to know when we are not in our category.”
Davidowitz added fuel to the argument that this is an existential game where other people’s ideas will not work for us. There are other questions the player needs to ask, Davidowitz explains. For example:
“What kind of person are you?”
Without saying it, Steve D was referring to the six or seven different kinds of intelligence. If you’re visually gifted, you should be emphasizing the body language factor. If you’re mathematical, by all means get into figure handicapping. If you’re a problem solver, then trainer patterns could very well be your best approach.
In the beginning I was skeptical about anything called “back to the basics”. From different perspectives, both Steve D and Brad F gave us very worthy and intensely committed views on some of the things we can do in order to join the small minority: those who win at the races.

TOURNAMENTS: THE GROWTH SECTOR OF RACING?
Expo presentations by Richard Eng, Ken Kirchner, Noel Michaels and Tom Quigley.
Kirchner was the only one among the four who had not won a major tournament (he once finished third). Kirchner knows the game from both ends, since he’s a wagering and technology consultant for the NTRA and Breeders’ Cup, and has been a horseplayers’ advocate. Eng has won the Orleans tournament and is the author of Betting on Horse Races for Dummies. Michaels has been the director of player development for the Nassau County OTB. Quigley is the publisher of Horseplayer Magazine and has won two 6-digit tournament prizes.
Since the beginning of the publication of C&O / C&X, we’ve gone through three generations of tournament players. What baffles me is that the winners we profiled in the ‘90s are not the same as the ones in the early part of this not-so-new century, and in fact, the experts on tournaments who spoke at the previous Expo, whom I found to be brilliant, were not back to this Expo. Ever since Lee Rousso won two major tournaments in the 1980s and then virtually disappeared, I’ve begun to wonder if the “half life” of a tournament player is not considerably shorter than the “half life” of a horseplayer.
The distinction is not mine. All four Expo speakers highlighted the fact that playing a tournament is radically different from playing the horses as we know the game.
In many ways, tournaments seem more attractive than regular horse betting. My own return on investment is higher in tournament play than in regular betting, without even ever winning a first prize. And yet, I got burned out.
Quigley notes that there are different types of tournaments and most handicappers should be able to find one that suits their own style. This was a leit-motif of this session: all four presenters encouraged the attendees to try tournament play, if they hadn’t already tried. I know, on the other hand, that not all winning players would accept the conditions of horse race tournaments, nor do all players have the right handicapping style for any of the tournaments available. But if we are looking for a new edge, tournaments might be the answer.
Quigley noted that there are tournaments with no takeout. In other words, 100% of the entry fees are paid back to the players. Furthermore, he reminded us that, for a similar grand prize, the tournament player has to beat far fewer people (sometimes as few as 120) than the Pick 6 player, who has to defeat the whole national betting public.
So in theory, we should have a great edge if we choose the right tournament.
But Michaels insisted that tournament players are better as a group than the experts in the press box, the implication being that the competition is stiffer at a tournament than it is at the track. (I can testify that this is true. At one tournament, my partner Mike Helm and I had a $66 plus winner on our last bet, and this could have catapulted us into first place. However, several other leaders had the same horse and we ended up in fifth place.)
If Michaels is correct, what is it that brings tournament players to a higher level? He says: you need to know how to play the game and not handicapping. He paraphrases one of the big tournament winners, Tommy Castillo: I’m not a handicapper. That’s why I have an edge.
None of the other panelists objected. They all agreed that tournament play is totally different from everyday horse betting.
If I could synthesize the approach from all four presenters, they would advise that before we even look for a winner, it’s more important to identify a race with beatable favorites.
Kirchner explains from a mathematical perspective, referring to tournaments that restrict play to win-place, or win-place-show. If you are playing 3-1 horses, you’d need to hit on 7 of 10 in order to finish in the money. But if you are playing 12-1 horses, you would need only 2 of 10. For Kirchner there’s no question that the latter is easier to achieve than the former.
Richard Eng was the sole dissenter here. Early in a tournament, he explained, he’s not afraid to take lower-priced horses. But that’s only early in the tournament, in order to stay afloat and remain within striking distance.
The betting value of a tournament is not easy to calculate. For example, in some “free” internet tournaments, there are as many as a thousand participants, while at some NTRA qualifiers, there are as few as 120. Kirchner told us that some tournament sponsors only pay back 50% of the entry fees: a bad deal. Avoid it. Know what the return percentage is going to be.
In judging the value of a tournament, you should also be able to judge the requirements according to you handicapping skills. In a win-place tournament your should be able to multiply your bankroll by two. If the tournament is win only, then you should triple your bankroll to be in touch with the victory. For real money tournaments, you might need to quadruple your bankroll. The downside of real-money tournaments is that you need a certain amount of money management, so that there are more ways you can f—k up.
In general, to win tournaments you need to be able to pick longshot winners, and more than one. If you don’t pick frequent longshot winners, you would need to either change your style of handicapping (recommended by the panelists) or don’t enter.
In general, the panelists agree with what I’ve usually done: enter with a partner. I need a partner because I can’t usually find more than a few playable races per day. I’m too selective to go it alone.
The panelists ended on a bizarre note that distinguishes our game. They spoke of the comraderie amongst bitter rivals. How often do we encounter bitter combats engaged in with comraderie? Is this a quirk of horseplayers or some weird trait we have acquired?

TEST AT LA TESTE: WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
Friday, June 1. First race at La Teste, a second division French race track. It’s a 6-furlong sprint reserved for 2-year-olds. The winner is Liberty Island, paying 5.8 – 1 for trainer J.C. Rohaut. The race is made official and many of the winning players collect.
Later in the card, another horse of J.C. Rohaut is supposed to run. The horse, entered in Race 7, is eventually identified as none other than Liberty Island. In fact, the horse that won the first race was not Liberty Island, but a 3-year-old named Schicky Micky: Rohaut’s other horse. The veterinarian in charge of scanning the chip during the automatic anti-doping test following the first race realized that the horse that was supposed to be Liberty Island was really Schicky Micky. According to witnesses, the two horses looked nearly identical. Horses are supposed to be identified by a chip implant. Somebody goofed at two stages of the process. The racing association France-Galop charged both the stable and the pre-race vet with negligence.
There was a mistake, apparently quite an honest mistake, by the prestigious Rohaut stable. That was compounded when the horse identification process broke down. I can’t figure how this happened, especially on the part of the vet, since there are rigorous identification procedures. Neither the stable nor the pre-race vet could have dreamed of getting away with such shenanigans, since they would know for sure that if the ringer finished in the money, it would be subjected to a second identification during the doping test.
In summary, the winner of the first race was not a 2-year old and not Liberty Island. The racing association called it an “involuntary substitution”.
Now, you’re the track administrator. What would you do?
(1) Announce the truth to the crowd, and say you’re sorry to the players who had bought tickets on the 4/5 second-place finisher, while awarding purse money to the second-place finisher? This solution was discarded as unfair to the players. Besides, there were also players who would have collected on exotics wagers had the “involuntary substitution” been discovered before post time.
(2) Cover it up. Have the other half of the Rohaut combo scratched, and later publish that the winner of the first race was “disqualified from purse money”. This functional but dishonest decision was rejected by France Galop.
(3) Disqualify the winning horse and put a stop on payment. This solution was also discarded. Most players had already collected on their tickets. The others, who might be holding their “winner” or who may have played that winner off track in the morning would not like to learn that some players collected on the false winner while others would be latter barred from collecting on the same “horse”. This solution was unrealistic.
(4) Call for a refund for all players who bet on the second-place finisher. This too was not acceptable, since these same players knew that the horse that went across the finish line first had been DQed, and would clamor for a payout.
(5) Refund all pari-mutuel tickets on losing horses but pay out for both the false winner (including the exotic combinations that included him), and the real winner: the horse that finished second (with the exotic bets that included him). In other words, do a double payout and refund all losers.
This was the costly but decent way to resolve the dilemma, but even this please-the-customer solution was only partly successful. Players who had torn up their tickets on the second place finisher would have no way to collect. Mais beaucoup de parieurs avaient déja jeté leurs tickets, wrote Karine Belluteau for Paris-Turf (but many of the players had already thrown away their tickets).
It was one of those very rare days when the profession of stooper looked profitable!
Let’s come back home for an epilogue. How often, in the pps, have we seen the inscription “disqualified from purse money”? In American racing, a horse that tests positive loses his purse money but the players who backed him keep their winnings. Those who have bet on the second horse have no chance of collecting damages.
Here’s my question. What if you saved every single win ticket on horses that finish place. Then, when you discover that the first horse was disqualified from purse money, would you have a legitimate cause for demanding compensation from the track?

POLEMIC AND NOTES FROM ROYAL ASCOT
When Jimmy Fortune won a 2-year-old race in dramatic fashion on Winker Watson for the red hot stable of Chapple-Hyam, the two British commentators could not agree about whether the rider had done right in striking his horse five consecutive times with the whip. They showed the replay three times. I would not have wanted to be Winker Watson.
“It’s obscene in a civilized country that kind of ride,” said one of the commentators.
“I’m absolutely in favor of that kind of ride,” said the other, “but it’s illegal.”
It was explained that following the first movement of the whip, the best riders allow the horse to respond before going to the whip the second time. Fortune whipped five times without waiting for a response.
Market movers
In that race, the top two finishers were the “market movers” (bet-downs), while the “market drifters” (the ones who were pretty much dead on the board), finished like their negative betting action.
Once again, the two commentators disagreed amiably.
“A public gamble of immense proportions has been landed here,” said the one. The other responded dubiously, noting that the market movers often don’t live up to their action. “It’s a fickle game this betting market.”
In any case, Chapple-Hyam is a name we may see pop up at the Breeders’ Cup.
German bred
A short but strong field in the 1 ¼ Prince of Wales was won by the German-bred Manduro, trained by Fabre. C&X readers are aware from previous issues that I’ve been high on the German breds. But in spite of Manduro’s victory (we’ll hear from him at BC time), the cycle is near the end for the Germans. They’ve cashed out, selling many of their most valuable pedigree stars.
Dettori
As for the jockey colony, the dominant force the season has been Lanfranco Dettori. He accomplished what has been unheard of in the past, winning both the French Derby and the French Oaks after crossing the finish line first in the Epsom Derby.

C&X 38

CONTENTS
Editorial
What’s Their Line: Meadow and Fierro
Odds Line Workshop
Betting Maidens and 2-year-olds: Bray, Callet and Illman
Basics or Beyond? Davidowitz and Free face off!
Tournaments: the Growth Sector of Racing?
Tested at La Teste: What would you do?
Notes from Ascot

EDITORIAL
As promised, on these pages we complete what we had begun in the previous issue: coverage of the Handicapping Expo, where several trends came up that served as vindication for C&X. For a long time I’ve been writing that “the best book on handicapping is the player’s own records”. At the Expo, guest speakers like Steve Davidowitz and Brad Free advised that the best information about horse race handicapping is found in the records that the player keeps of his betting (see “Basics or Beyond”). I would add that how records are kept is not a small issue. It’s more than turf or dirt, sprints or routes, fillies or boys, low-level claiming or middle claimers, etc. These are categories that the track decides for us. But our real categories relate to the type of handicapping puzzle, and in this issue, I define race categories, which for many of us will be the main defining trait of the subdivisions in our records (see Odds Line Workshop).
Another vindication came with statements from Beyer, Davidowitz and Illman. For years I’ve been arguing, along with Ed Bain, that the trainer is the most important factor in handicapping. In the beginning I was chided by experts exemplified by Howard Sartin: “The trainer can’t talk to the horse”. But now, the three experts I have listed all declared the same thing: the trainer is the most important factor.
Perhaps it’s time to be cautious. If too many people begin to repeat this mantra, the value of the trainer factor may decline. But what will never decline is the fact that some other factor that is not considered primary (in Callet’s presentation in was pedigree) will emerge as the leading primary factor for the discerning handicapper.
I can proudly acclaim that C&X has been on the cutting edge in many realms of handicapping and horse betting. But then humility steps in and reminds me that many of the best pages of C&X have been player profiles of others who have achieved remarkable success in this difficult game. A good number of these others are featured in this issue.
As the history of C&X enters its stretch drive, we are already assured of a good finish position. From time to time I receive letters from readers who have been with us since the inception, when we were C&O and working with Bill Olmsted. The whole project began with the suggestion from Olmsted back in the early 1990s. That’s quite a long trajectory for a print publication, especially during a period when the internet has been gradually taking over the market. It certainly has been fun, and we won’t let down until the final issue of this cycle, which should be around December. I do hope that the pages you are about to read will contain a few new surprises.mc

WHAT’S THEIR LINE? Meadow and Fierro
The Expo conference on Making Your Own Lines, moderated with critical precision by Mike Watchmaker, may serve to clarify what it’s all about and to highlight three different persuasions. I’ll try to come up with a short but thorough synthesis.
Watchmaker began by asking the panelists to define what a betting line actually is. Steve Fierro responded by recalling how so wrapped up he had been in the contender selection process that he was missing a vital component: how to decide what the value is of each contender.
“I know many handicappers who are far better than me but they don’t know how to bet.”
Whatever handicapping method you use, you would assume that your contenders will win 80 percent of the time, with your non-contenders winning 20 percent. Then you ascribe odds to each contender, based on the 80%. For example, 2-1 (33%), 3-1 (25%), and 7-2 (22%), which equals 80%. (Naturally, there is a 100 percent chance that some horse in the field will win the race.)
Watchmaker and Meadow added that one’s personal odds line has nothing to do with a Morning Line. Watchmaker, an accomplished ML maker, explained the program odds maker is only supposed to anticipate how the public will wager, and is not trying to outsmart the public.
Meadow agreed, giving an example. He might demote the odds of an ML favorite, because the horse has finished second twice in a row, assigning odds of 6-1 if he perceives that the horse lacks the winning spirit while the Morning Line maker, even if he agrees with Meadow, would have to make that horse the favorite, knowing that the public backs such a horse.
Meadow explained that he actually ascribes odds to each and every horse in the race, even 99-1 for 1% probability. He does this for maximum precision. He can do it this way because he plays only California and makes ratings on every single horse on the circuit, where Fierro plays many tracks and can’t possibly know the whole horse colony at each track. (Fierro has told us, though he did not mention it at the Expo, that he uses what C&X calls the “short form” method of handicapping, eliminating low percentage trainers and horses that are proven losers at the class level.)
Meadow explained that making one’s personal odds line is no different from shopping. You can love a house, but if it’s worth $800,000 and is selling for $900,000, it’s not worth buying. You can love a horse, but not necessarily bet it if the odds are below fair value.
He assured the audience that no football bettor would place a wager on the Chargers or Jets without looked at the point spread, which is like an odds line. So how is it that horseplayers bet on horses without caring about whether or not they are getting value?
Watchmaker chimed in appropriately that most horsesplayers intuitively have some notion of what odds a horses is worth, even though they do not quantify their intuition.
Quantifying seems to scare people off, but in essence, it’s much simpler than what you would expect. It’s not determinism, only probability. It’s an educated but subjective estimate, based on objective knowledge.
Meadow will only make a line if he knows all the horses in a field. Even then, he will bypass a race and save time in doing so. If you have, for example, bottom-of-the barrel claimers in a field with three layoff horses and one horse that just won a race after a long losing streak, there would be no way to judge such horses.
For Meadow, the procedure begins by going over the pluses and minuses of each horse, placing them in order of preference, and then giving each horse a projected fair odds. Using his odds/percentage table (which he’s long since memorized) he adds up the total percentage points. If the total is above or below 100%, he tinkers with the odds and makes appropriate adjustments, without changing the hierarchy of his preferences, until he gets the right total percentage.
Fierro warns us that we should not “create value” but find it: in other words, do not force it. Thus he advises that we handicap without seeing any official line. He doesn’t mind having a complete range of information, preferring to specialize on those factors that have worked well for him. He knows which factors these are because he has kept meticulous records and evaluated all bad outcomes, the way an engineer analyzes a plane crash or a collapsed bridge.
Fierro plays many more races than Meadow, while Meadow prefers to bet a lot of money on a very few races. Meadow is not ashamed to admit that his return on investment is not high, and he grinds it out. Fierro too admits that he’s primarily a win bettor and he too grinds it out.
Yes, Meadow plays to win, but he will move in on any pool where there is value. When Smarty Jones entered the Belmont and an extraordinary number of people bought extra win tickets as souvenirs or for sentimental reasons in case the horse won the Triple Crown, Meadow noticed that Smarty Jones was paying more in the place pool than he was for win. So Meadow bet $4,000 to place and collected a $3.30 payoff.
“I rarely do such things,” he explained. “But value is value wherever it can be found.”
Both Meadow and Fierro will pass a race if their odds line resembles that of the Morning Line. Both used the word “disparity” as the key to finding a value wager. There must be a disparity between the toteboard odds and their line odds.
That disparity should be at least 50%. If their contender is 2-1 in their odds line, they must be getting at least 3-1 for a wager. If their contender is 4-1 on their line, they would need 6-1 for a play. If the contender is 3-1, they would need 9-2 minimum.
“Barry, what if your line says 3-1 and the horse is 4-1 on the board? Would you be tempted to bet?” Watchmaker asked.
Barry exclaimed that it would be a no bet. There will be so many other opportunities. Why press?
“I’m working with a small margin of profit,” he added, “so I cannot afford to reduce my long-term advantage.”
Both Fierro and Meadow said they were perfectly willing to play a second choice. If their top choice was 8/5 on their personal line but going off at 6/5 on the toteboard while their second choice, 2-1 on their line, was 4-1 on the board, no questions asked. Pass the top choice and bet their second pick. (But 6-1 is the maximum line odds for a contender. For example, 8-1 would be considered a non-contender, which means that if the 8-1 were going off at 25-1, there would be no bet. The higher one’s line odds, the less dependable is the precision.)
Watchmaker asked Meadow how a slumping player should make adjustments on his lines. Meadow explained that you have to be emotionally calm when you make a line. You can’t make your lines in between races just after your longshot loses a photo. That would be too disturbing. You have to find the comfortable place and time. Years ago, when I went to the races with Meadow, I observed that he would arrive early, before the crowds, find a quiet corner, and finalize his lines. Now he usually plays from his home. He still loves the game, he says, but he prefers the most practical route, because the business of betting takes priority over the thrills.
Exotics
Meadow uses his odds tables for daily doubles, exactas and trifectas, though he rarely plays exotics. On the other hand, serial bets of three races or more cannot be bet in the same way because you don’t know the odds for sure. In such cases, Meadow uses his own line to imagine which horses might be going off at true overlays, the reason being that one should have more money on one’s greater overlays. [It’s the classic argument. If you box three horses, and you like your third choice much less than your top one, then you are overbetting your third choice in the box. And exotic should be constructed with preferences in mind.]
Fierro rarely goes beyond the win pool. If he does, it’s because he loves one of the three races in the pick 3 whereas the other two legs look like chaos events. In such cases, he’ll use the ALL. But for the most part, he’s a win bettor. So in essence, he would be converting the pick 3 into a win bet.
Watchmaker mentioned that in recent years, there are times when big late action flows in to change the odds significantly, AFTER the horses are off and running. Meadow tells us that he waits until the last moment to bet. (I wonder whether his action might change the odds.)
Fierro doesn’t care.
“What I lose occasionally when the odds go down at the last moment, I gain back when the odds jump up on another horse I’ve bet.”
Both players insisted on the vital importance of keeping records. Meadow explained that records of every bet serve validate when and how he’s performing at his optimum best with his odds lines. Separately, to me, he explained that he’d need to see validation that his 2-1s win more than his 3-1s and that his 3-1s win more than his 4-1,” etc., “because if this were not the case, there would be a fundamental flaw in my odds lines.”
Fierro is awed at how “so many players, even those who are businessmen and must keep strict records in their business fail to keep records with their horse race bets.”
But Meadow added that if you’re only doing this for fun and you don’t care about winning lots of money, you may not need to keep records.
“For me this is a business,” he added. He still loves the game, but I doesn’t do it as a fan.”
Fierro, on the other hand, loves every moment of it, and I can testify that this is true for I’ve been with him on winning days and losing days and he is totally at home grinding it out race after race. There are times when a horse Fierro has at 3-1 will go off at 15-1. He’s less conventional in his handicapping methods than Meadow, and there are times when a single strong factor may cause Fierro to forget everything else and make a horse 8/5.
For those of you who insist on not making yourselves comfortable with either Fierro’s or Meadow’s line making structures, Barry offers an alternative.
“Just rank your horses in order of preference,” he explains. “Then, if your second preferred horse happens to be the sixth choice of the public, you have identified an overlay [if your handicapping is proficient]. Both of these guys insist that you don’t have to be the most exceptional handicapper to win money at the races with good odds lines, and both are quick to say that they do not consider themselves as talented in the realm of handicapping as many of their colleagues.
Both Meadow and Fierro mention that a good odds line can help you pass a race as much as it can help you bet. (The odds are like instructions, and you only need to follow such instructions. No more fretting about “should I play him or not?” The line tells you what to do.)
It was good to here these two guys speak. Even if we’ve covered the line making subject before, many C&X issues have gone by without our focusing on this truly “valuable” subject.
So what should YOU put into your line. Fierro explains that no two line makers should come up with an identical line. That’s why it’s a personal odds line. Two guys with a radically different process can both win, as long as they are willing to learn as they go, validating what works and repudiating what doesn’t.
Even if you made lines for only six months and then gave it up, the experience would inevitable lead to improving your handicapping.
My final word is that, through the years, I’ve become pickier about which races I’ll make a line for. From the experience, I’ve learned to spot, almost immediately, when a race is not worth digging into. That alone has saved me a lot of capital.

ODDS LINE WORKSOP
Before we begin, a little history. I first began making my own odds lines after spending evenings at Los Alamitos with Barry Meadow and watching him do it. My racing partner at the time, Frank Cotolo, began making lines about the same time. (There’s a story in Scared Money based on an episode in Frank’s life. Frank applied the process professionally.) This was also the time when I met Dick Mitchell. He was a student in my Los Angeles City College (LACC) class called Probability Theory as Applied to Horse Race Handicapping, in the mid-1980s.
Dick registered for the class because he was an expert in probability and liked the races. It soon became obvious that Dick knew much more about probability than I did. With Dick Mitchell one could always speak directly and without the need for putting up a front. He was authentic. He was a good listener. He was the go-to person when a dilemma of probability was splitting the brain. Dick has passed away and his absence is felt profoundly.
When I first met Dick, I needed to explain to him, since he was the expert on probability, that the LACC administration had imposed the title for the course. They needed to fit the class offering with a title that would not be questioned by the academic establishment. Fair enough. This was also the time that the Handicapping Expos were developing, and I was a one-man lobby, unsuccessful, in trying to get them to hold the Expo at a university instead of a hotel. The university, I argued, would give our game the dignity it deserved.
Dick Mitchell filled in a lot about the theory behind what Barry Meadow was doing. It was a rich period in my life. People like Meadow, Cotolo, and James Quinn would be regular guest speakers at the class, and Mitchell’s presence added spice.
Dick and I went often to Santa Anita and Hollywood Park and he observed how I would put the line-making theory into practice. He suggested that I write about about line making and that he would publish it. That book became The Odds On Your Side, now out of print. The innovation of that book was to develop “handicapping categories”, which meant how different handicapping situations would trigger particular types of odds lines. To this very day, these categories remain valid.
Steve Fierro took it a step further, but in a different direction, creating his odds-line templates. In his The Four Quarters of Horse Investing, Fierro developed Mitchell’s idea of giving your contenders 80% of the probability of winning a race, all the while recognizing that in reality, it can be more or less than 80 percent. But thanks to this 80 percent, he could quantify a workable number of odds groupings, and reduce them to templates. Once the player had isolated his or her contenders, he merely needed to choose the most appropriate template. Fierro tells me that he was influenced by my work, but his templates are a revolutionary advance in that they reduce the labor time. I’m sure Dave would appreciate the innovation because Dave once wrote a review about my Value Handicapping (also out of print) in which he correctly pointed to a flaw: the amount of time that needs to be invested in the line-making process. Naturally, if you do it long enough, you learn to streamline the procedure.
I straddle between the Mitchell/Fierro 80% contenders and Meadow’s method of giving each an every horse an odds/percentage of winning. In theory, Meadow is right, since each race is different, and there will be some times when the combined chance of our contenders could equal 90% and others when we’d only reach 70% of the probabilities.
I labeled one of my “handicapping categories” the co-choice race. This is one time when the 80% rule is applicable and also within the spirit of the law of the Meadow method.
Co-choice workshop
The co-choice race emerges when the handicapper sees only two horses with an authentic chance to win. The Sunday Silence-Easy Goer bouts were the epitome of co-choice races. At that time, with separate pools, knowing the co-choice concept, you could play Easy Goer in California and Sunday Silence in New York and still make a profit.
A perfect example of this handicapping scenario was the Charles Whittingham Stakes, 9 June at Hollywood Park. We used this as part of the C&X Stakes Weekend, accompanying the Belmont Stakes, so most of you will have read my analysis. I’ll reprint it here:
WHITTINGHAM STAKES
LAVA MAN is back from his fiasco at Dubai, and he’s a California-only horse, 2-for-2 on the HOL turf course, including a win at the distance. Both he and AFTER MARKET (1 for 1 Hol turf) are fast enough to not allow the constantly improving Lang Field to steal the race. Lang Field’s trainer is hyper-dangerous in stakes races. But Shirreffs, the trainer of AFTER MARKET, has a high win percentage and flat bet profit in all categories. AFTER MARKET beat the same horse by 2 lengths that LAVA MAN beat by two lengths. Figuring that LAVA MAN will be favored, I’m going with AFTER MARKET.
In order for me to have decided whether or not this was a legitimate co-choice race, I needed to deal with the wise-guy horse, the hot and up-and-coming Lang Field. I read his fractions, which came from winning races versus lesser competition, and concluded that he did not have enough natural speed to get away from the field: in other words, not enough early speed to compensate for the fact that he was up against much stiffer competition. It was the opposite of the powerful early-speed class drop.
By excluding Lang Field as a contender, though not entirely excluding the possibility that he might win, I was able to apply my own co-choice “template”. As you can read from my commentary, I rated my two contenders equally. On separate occasions they had beaten the same horse by exactly 2 lengths. I figured Lava Man would be favored and that After Market would therefore inherit the overlay odds.
The co-choice line calls for the handicapper to make each contender 3/2. The odds 3/2 equals 40%. If both Lava Man and After Market had a 40 percent chance to win, that would be Mitchell/Fierro’s 80%. You’d give the rest of the field combined, including Lang Field, 20 percent collectively. You could see that other horses in the field, such as Obrigado, could not be totally eliminated, and therefore deserved some percentage-point probability of winning.
After Market 3/2, need 2-1
Lava Man 3/2, need 2-1
In this case I did not need to insert the line in the Stakes Weekend posting because I could reasonably assume that Lava Man would get considerably more action than After Market.
The “need” odds are greater than the line odds because the line odds represent fair value only, and we need to receive more than fair value in order to make money in the long run.
But was there any way to fear that the California public would make both horses less than the acceptable 2-1? In this particular case, seeing that the trainer of After Market had a flat-bet profit in every category, and seeing that there was a wiseguy horse in the mix, I could be reasonably sure that the odds gap between Lava Man, the publicity horse, and After Market would be significant, and that it would be unlikely for After Market to go off at less than 2-1.
Sure enough, Lava Man went off at 4/5 on the board (actually 9/10) and After Market was a hard 2-1 (nearly 5/2). In most occasions in co-choice races, we cannot be so sure, and we actually need to wait and see the toteboard.
In summary, when you come up with a co-choice race, when you’ve reduced your authentic contenders down to two, the line making process is remarkably simple. Bet the higher odds horse so long as you get 2-1 or more. After Market paid $6.80.
I like to begin workshops on personal odds lines with “the co-choice race” because even the greatest skeptics can visualize and actually feel that this is not at all complex. It’s easy to memorize the percentages and you don’t even need to write anything down on paper. It’s as clear as the point spread for a pro football game. That is, as long as you feel entirely comfortable that there is no third contender. Sure, Lang Field and Obrigado had some chances to win, but I did not perceive them as 6-1 or less on my line, so they were non-contenders. It is important to understand that the vast majority of non-contenders have some chance to win, and are not what we call ‘eliminations”. An elimination would receive 0% on an odds line.
In reading the C&X Stakes Weekend for 9 June, some people might say, “Hey, Cramer picked the winner of the Charles Whittingham.” But that is not the case. I simply picked out a bettable race. If After Market had been 4/5 and Lava Man 2-1, I’d have had to play Lava Man.
The co-choice race makes decision making easy. No more trying to split hairs about which horse might be slightly better.
PS. Allow me to provide you with the total context, by listing each and every one of my “handicapping categories”. Most players choose their categories by the class of the race, such as low-level claiming, route fillies, etc. These divisions are artificial. The intrinsic handicapping puzzle could very well be the same for different class categories. The intrinsic handicapping categories are much more difficult to identify but also much more authentic, because they relate to core handicapping principles. (In the next issue we’ll choose a race from another category.)
Co-Choice Race: when two evenly matched horses stand out above the rest
Contentious Race: when many horses have positive pp reasons in their favor
Lesser-of-evils Race (a negatively contentious race)
The Low-priced Overlay: a single horse towers over the rest of the field
The One-Factor Race: when one factor dominates all others (such as turf pedigree in a turf maiden race)
Apples and Oranges: when no comparables exist in the pps
The Legitimate Favorite Race: the favorite might be legit but an underlay; can we bet against?
The False Favorite Race: we know the favorite is not legit but we have no idea about the rest of the field
Action Stakes: we identify one or two “publicity horses” that figure to be overbet
The Basic Race: can nuts-and-bolts handicapping outdo the crowd?
Obviously, at times, some of these categories may overlap.
Odds-Percentage Conversion Table
Finally, here’s an abbreviated odds-percentage conversion table. Since our personal odds line is an intuitive estimate, no sense converting odds to that last decimal. Better to have an easily memorized list of most frequent odds.
1-2 / 67% 3-1 / 25%
3-5 / 62% 7-2 / 22%
4-5 / 55% 4-1 / 20%
1-1 / 50% 9-2 / 18%
6-5 / 45% 5-1 / 16%
7-5 / 41% 6-1 / 14%
3-2 / 40% 8-1 / 11%
8-5 / 38% 10-1 / 9%
9-5 / 35% 12-1 / 8%
2-1 / 33% 15-1 / 6%
5-2 / 28% 20-1 / 4%

Our line should add up to 100%. The Morning Line predicts the public’s odds and must include the approximate take and breakage. Therefore, the ML adds up to about 120%, which means that the odds are not inherently realistic and only reflect the potential toteboard reality, which is distorted in order to skim money from the pool.
By adding percentages to the probabilities of each horse, the ML maker is artificially reducing the odds. For example, what should be a 3-1 (25%) on a personal line based on 100 percentage points of probability might be reduced to 2-1 (33%) for an ML based on 120 points, depending on the number of horses in the race. The ML maker thus deludes the crowd as to what should be the true or fair value of a horse. By using a 100-percent line, we require ourselves to overcome the track take and we avoid the risk of deluding ourselves into thinking that a horse is an overlay when it is not!

BETTING MAIDENS AND 2 YEAR OLDS
This Expo presentation was wisely moderated by Caton Bredar and the panelists were Simon Bray, former trainer, Toby Callet, who has done the pedigree analysis at Calder Park, and Dan Illman, one of the DRF’s most eloquent experts.
If I were to synthesize this presentation in a few words, I’d write that handicapping maidens and 2-year-olds can be boiled down to pedigree and trainer intent. Callet listed those two factors in one-two order of priority, while Illman picked the same exacta factors in reverse. Bray did not disagree but added made it a three-factor quinella by adding the body language component.
We are looking for a horse that is mentally alert, he explained, and in races for the babies, the most mentally attuned will most often defeat their more talented but greener rivals. Bray emphasized a factor that we at C&X have often highlighted. Horses that run dreadfully in their first start can often turn it around second time out, and that one race of experience is worth six workouts.
Look for horses that are mentally attuned and well-behaved from the paddock to the post parade.
Pedigree
Illman touts us to check out the most updated lists of the best debut sires, some of whom are Carson City, Distorted Humor and Unbridled Song. Both Illman and Callet use the American Produce Record CD, published by Bloodstock Research for the handsome price of $375. Well, both of these guys get the CD for free through their jobs, but if you bet big money and play the baby races, it would seem that this product is indispensable. [My comment: We often get the primary tidbits from this product by reading the commentary in the Closer Look column, so at those circuits with a good Closer Look column, the DRF public handicappers are not keeping any secrets, and in fact, they’re acting as librarians, filtering in only those facts that seem crucial.]
Callet mentioned something that I had been urging a few years ago. The dam, he explained, has double the importance over the sire, because you have only one offspring per year from the dam. Knowing who the dam’s siblings are, and their habits, can help us immensely. [Please recall that the dam factor was my primary reason for making a confident top pick of Street Sense in the Derby.]
Callet takes his own notes on dams, recording tidbits of information on the dam’s of young horses who win at big prices.
As for turf maiden routes, Illman’s ranking of factors was: pedigree, trainer stats, workouts (if exceptional) and angles, such as second-time starter and the switch from polytrack to grass.
Callet’s factor priorities are, and I quote: “pedigree, pedigree and pedigree”. In fourth place was trainer intent, followed by the Z pattern, when a horse shows early speed, drops back and then makes a second move.
Workouts
All three experts zeroed in on one particular workout factor. When a maiden works out with a star stakes runner or a successful older horse, it’s particularly significant. Through Equibase, we handicappers can pick up the needed information about the work tab. Illman agreed entirely, pointing out the example of a longshot winner named Silver In Your Pocket. He had noticed that this horse had work times/dates/distances which were identical on four occasions with Curlin. He checked Equibase and sure enough, the two horses had worked in company. That allowed him to play and win with Silver In Your Pocket.
Callet chimed in his affirmation. Three fourths of all debut or 2-year-old maiden winners are horses that had worked out with other horses.
This is one of those few presentations where I can proudly claim that I agree with virtually everything these guys proclaimed. Both pedigree and “worked in company” are factors that the public underuses.
To conclude my coverage of this Expo presentation, I shall extract a list of extraneous angles that seemed important for our handicapping, though not in any order of preference.
On the second-time starter angle, Bray tells us we should watch the gallop out of the horse’s previous race. Often a green first time starter is learning as he goes along and after passing the finish line, he flies on and passes all the others.
Bray also tells us that we should not automatically discard trainers with poor records in the debut-horse category. Having worked with Mott, not known for his debut prowess, he could tell us trainers like Mott and Frankel usually don’t work their first-time starters in a fast time, and when one of their firsters breaks the pattern and glides quickly in the morning, it is a sign that this horse is well-meant for his debut race.
Callet mentions two red flag situations: too many gate works (a sign the horse has been a slow learner from the gate) and front bandages for the first time on a two-year old or maiden.
The three speakers agreed that maidens going from the rail were a big risk, especially in SoCal. An inexperienced horse on the rail will get too much dirt kicked in his face if he does not break on top. On the other hand, the rail is not a disadvantage for turf maiden races, where dirt doesn’t get kicked up. In fact, the rail could be a great advantage on the grass.
Callet likes the “graduated work pattern”, where a horse’s work tab shows added distance each time. At Calder he likes to see a 2-year old that has worked 5 furlongs in preparation for a 4 ½ furlong race.
As for the toteboard, Dan Illman mentioned an angle that was featured in the old C&O Report as well as in the out-of-print Kinky Handicapping. The only time he takes the toteboard seriously is when a horse with high morning line odds opens with heavy early action. He discounts late action. As we’ve written, the early openers usually drift up after their initial bet is diminished in importance but the normal volume of action.
Years ago, I saw this pattern and bet on it. The horse won after having opened at 3-1 and then drifted up to 15-1. I went and tracked down the owner.
“Was that your early action?” I asked.
“Sure was,” he said.
“Why’d you bet so early?” I asked.
“I was afraid I might not get the bet in because I often became sidetracked in the paddock.”
As for the second-time starter angle, Bray tells us to watch for a horse who raced dreadfully as a firster but then greatly improved his workouts subsequent to the schooling race.
If I were to highlight one particular factor, it’s the dam. Dam is you do, damned if you don’t. Are there any specialties in the dam’s racing record? Any previous full or half siblings that have shown a distinct specialty. Street Sense’s dam was a horse for course at Churchill Downs.

BASICS OR BEYOND:
DAVIDOWITZ VS. FREE, WHEN TWO NICE GUYS CLASH
The original title for this Expo presentation was “Back to the Basics”. Two panelists were invited: Steve Davidowitz, author of the classic Betting Thoroughbreds and Brad Free, DRF columnist in SoCal and author of Handicapping 101.
Even before they got near the gate, the potential clash materialized. Davidowitz was not comfortable with the title, “Back to the Basics”. It was he who insisted on adding “and Beyond”.
Davidowitz began his career at 10 years of age, when he saw Native Dancer get defeated by Dark Star.
Brad Free grew up in the shadows of Santa Anita, and first attended the races at the ripe age of 4, thanks to his dad.
Free went through a similar routine as most of us. His initial motivation was gambling. It looked like a game that could be beaten. At the age of 19, while working at McDonalds, he snuck out to Santa Anita and hit a daily double for $400 and change. Eventually he purchased systems and patronized touts. Eventually he ended up with a striking conclusion: in this game you can only depend on yourself.
Davidowitz went to college at Rutgers, where he studied the past performances more than his courses. He also played baseball in college and hoped for a professional career until he sprained his throwing arm in a boat accident. To drown out his sorrow, he went to Florida to play the races. He lost $1,200, money he didn’t have. He had to ask his dad to lend him the cash. There were strings attached. His old man made him promise he would never play a pony.
Then Davidowitz found a horse at the Big A. It was a sprinter named Flying Mercury. Davidowitz loved the bullet works. The horse would be a cinch to outrun the field. But he was entered in a route, and he was a sprinter. Davidowitz watched the jock. It looked like a stiff.
Flying Mercury was then shortened back into a sprint. Davidowitz won the money he owed his father. He handed the bills to his old man, admitting he’d caught up thanks to Flying Mercury.
Brad Free is no stranger to C&X readers. We’ve done a profile of Brad Free after he won a DRF handicapping contest.
Both Davidowitz and Free are good guys. But they disagree on the basics, and a clash was in the cards.
Free led off, referring to the Holy Grail of winning at the races: blood, sweat and tears, and most important, current condition, class, speed and pace.
We’ve heard about those things before. Form cycle, both Free and Davidowitz agreed, is the most dynamic of the four factors, and the most dramatically transformed. In the past the current horse had recency. Today the current form may be owned by a horse coming back after a layoff.
Be wary of conditioning, Davidowitz explained. As a former athlete, he is aware that sometimes conditioning comes from getting tired and not from being babied. Getting tired is a stage that creates more wind and greater energy.
Yes, form is extremely important, Davidowitz agrees, but it can be best interpreted through training methods. “The trainer is the most important factor in racing,” he asserts.
How things have changed, I reflect. Beyer has now declared the same thing. In the early 1990s, I was saying such things, and I branded myself as “kinky” just to pre-empt the inevitable attacks.
“I’m not willing to make that leap,” Brad Free now responded to Davidowitz. “Trainer could be the fifth factor.”
Free’s rationale comes from recent developments in California racing.
“California is now clean,” he noted, referring, I imagine, to the new drug testing and quarantine policies.
Davidowitz fired back, with several examples. We’ll mention one. Christophe Clement works a horse out regularly, not for speed but every six days, never missing a beat. The horse is coming back after a layoff and entered on the grass at 1 3/8. The horse wins. This, Davidowitz says that some trainers are simply better conditioners than others and that this is the new classic handicapping.
Davidowitz had Brad Free pinned, and didn’t let up. Relentlessly he went to another example. Tampa Bay: a 25,000 claiming race for 4-year-olds and up. One horse in the field had been claimed for 16,000. The horse had no numbers edge. But the trainer’s stat for first time claimed was 8 wins in 15 starts for a 53% record. The horse won.
Davidowitz kept firing, with more examples.
Finally, Free broke loose. He referred to a horse that had showed early speed against Lava Man and was now in a classified allowance. The trainer stats were good. But was it the trainer factor or was it a powerful form factor: early speed – class drop?
Free’s argument was that many trainer plays happen to coincide with form cycle or other factors of classical handicapping.
Free took the argument away from the trainer and referred to speed figure pars, available on DRF-plus. What does it take to win a race at a particular level? he asked. For Brad Free, a horse must have run withing 5 points of par for the level.
The match went on, and neither Free nor Davidowitz ceded. But in the end, they arrived at a common position. What is the most important aspect for winning at the races? Both Free and Davidowitz agreed on something we’ve often noted in C&X. I’ll quote from previous issues of this publication: “the best book on horse betting can be found in the player’s own records”.
You need to know where you are good and where you aren’t, agreed the two experts, and you won’t find out from the experts but you will know from your own daily records. [It is important to understand that Free and Davidowitz made the assumption that they were speaking to an audience of good handicappers. Record keeping can also help a bad handicapper, by telling him to either change his methods or stop playing the races.]
Free tells us that he keeps a record of every single bet he makes. Each December he does his house cleaning, in other words, his evaluation of his betting records for the year.
“What was right? What was wrong? No teacher can do this for you,” he insisted.
In 2006 he discovered he had lost a total of $3,000 from a combination of the Pick 6 and the Place Pick All, and that now he has eliminated these bets and has concentrated almost exclusively on win bets and exactas.
Free tells us of his bicycling with Andrew Beyer. Beyer with his thin-tire speed bike and Free with his mountain bike.
“I was not in his category,” Free confesses. “We have to know when we are not in our category.”
Davidowitz added fuel to the argument that this is an existential game where other people’s ideas will not work for us. There are other questions the player needs to ask, Davidowitz explains. For example:
“What kind of person are you?”
Without saying it, Steve D was referring to the six or seven different kinds of intelligence. If you’re visually gifted, you should be emphasizing the body language factor. If you’re mathematical, by all means get into figure handicapping. If you’re a problem solver, then trainer patterns could very well be your best approach.
In the beginning I was skeptical about anything called “back to the basics”. From different perspectives, both Steve D and Brad F gave us very worthy and intensely committed views on some of the things we can do in order to join the small minority: those who win at the races.

TOURNAMENTS: THE GROWTH SECTOR OF RACING?
Expo presentations by Richard Eng, Ken Kirchner, Noel Michaels and Tom Quigley.
Kirchner was the only one among the four who had not won a major tournament (he once finished third). Kirchner knows the game from both ends, since he’s a wagering and technology consultant for the NTRA and Breeders’ Cup, and has been a horseplayers’ advocate. Eng has won the Orleans tournament and is the author of Betting on Horse Races for Dummies. Michaels has been the director of player development for the Nassau County OTB. Quigley is the publisher of Horseplayer Magazine and has won two 6-digit tournament prizes.
Since the beginning of the publication of C&O / C&X, we’ve gone through three generations of tournament players. What baffles me is that the winners we profiled in the ‘90s are not the same as the ones in the early part of this not-so-new century, and in fact, the experts on tournaments who spoke at the previous Expo, whom I found to be brilliant, were not back to this Expo. Ever since Lee Rousso won two major tournaments in the 1980s and then virtually disappeared, I’ve begun to wonder if the “half life” of a tournament player is not considerably shorter than the “half life” of a horseplayer.
The distinction is not mine. All four Expo speakers highlighted the fact that playing a tournament is radically different from playing the horses as we know the game.
In many ways, tournaments seem more attractive than regular horse betting. My own return on investment is higher in tournament play than in regular betting, without even ever winning a first prize. And yet, I got burned out.
Quigley notes that there are different types of tournaments and most handicappers should be able to find one that suits their own style. This was a leit-motif of this session: all four presenters encouraged the attendees to try tournament play, if they hadn’t already tried. I know, on the other hand, that not all winning players would accept the conditions of horse race tournaments, nor do all players have the right handicapping style for any of the tournaments available. But if we are looking for a new edge, tournaments might be the answer.
Quigley noted that there are tournaments with no takeout. In other words, 100% of the entry fees are paid back to the players. Furthermore, he reminded us that, for a similar grand prize, the tournament player has to beat far fewer people (sometimes as few as 120) than the Pick 6 player, who has to defeat the whole national betting public.
So in theory, we should have a great edge if we choose the right tournament.
But Michaels insisted that tournament players are better as a group than the experts in the press box, the implication being that the competition is stiffer at a tournament than it is at the track. (I can testify that this is true. At one tournament, my partner Mike Helm and I had a $66 plus winner on our last bet, and this could have catapulted us into first place. However, several other leaders had the same horse and we ended up in fifth place.)
If Michaels is correct, what is it that brings tournament players to a higher level? He says: you need to know how to play the game and not handicapping. He paraphrases one of the big tournament winners, Tommy Castillo: I’m not a handicapper. That’s why I have an edge.
None of the other panelists objected. They all agreed that tournament play is totally different from everyday horse betting.
If I could synthesize the approach from all four presenters, they would advise that before we even look for a winner, it’s more important to identify a race with beatable favorites.
Kirchner explains from a mathematical perspective, referring to tournaments that restrict play to win-place, or win-place-show. If you are playing 3-1 horses, you’d need to hit on 7 of 10 in order to finish in the money. But if you are playing 12-1 horses, you would need only 2 of 10. For Kirchner there’s no question that the latter is easier to achieve than the former.
Richard Eng was the sole dissenter here. Early in a tournament, he explained, he’s not afraid to take lower-priced horses. But that’s only early in the tournament, in order to stay afloat and remain within striking distance.
The betting value of a tournament is not easy to calculate. For example, in some “free” internet tournaments, there are as many as a thousand participants, while at some NTRA qualifiers, there are as few as 120. Kirchner told us that some tournament sponsors only pay back 50% of the entry fees: a bad deal. Avoid it. Know what the return percentage is going to be.
In judging the value of a tournament, you should also be able to judge the requirements according to you handicapping skills. In a win-place tournament your should be able to multiply your bankroll by two. If the tournament is win only, then you should triple your bankroll to be in touch with the victory. For real money tournaments, you might need to quadruple your bankroll. The downside of real-money tournaments is that you need a certain amount of money management, so that there are more ways you can f—k up.
In general, to win tournaments you need to be able to pick longshot winners, and more than one. If you don’t pick frequent longshot winners, you would need to either change your style of handicapping (recommended by the panelists) or don’t enter.
In general, the panelists agree with what I’ve usually done: enter with a partner. I need a partner because I can’t usually find more than a few playable races per day. I’m too selective to go it alone.
The panelists ended on a bizarre note that distinguishes our game. They spoke of the comraderie amongst bitter rivals. How often do we encounter bitter combats engaged in with comraderie? Is this a quirk of horseplayers or some weird trait we have acquired?

TEST AT LA TESTE: WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
Friday, June 1. First race at La Teste, a second division French race track. It’s a 6-furlong sprint reserved for 2-year-olds. The winner is Liberty Island, paying 5.8 – 1 for trainer J.C. Rohaut. The race is made official and many of the winning players collect.
Later in the card, another horse of J.C. Rohaut is supposed to run. The horse, entered in Race 7, is eventually identified as none other than Liberty Island. In fact, the horse that won the first race was not Liberty Island, but a 3-year-old named Schicky Micky: Rohaut’s other horse. The veterinarian in charge of scanning the chip during the automatic anti-doping test following the first race realized that the horse that was supposed to be Liberty Island was really Schicky Micky. According to witnesses, the two horses looked nearly identical. Horses are supposed to be identified by a chip implant. Somebody goofed at two stages of the process. The racing association France-Galop charged both the stable and the pre-race vet with negligence.
There was a mistake, apparently quite an honest mistake, by the prestigious Rohaut stable. That was compounded when the horse identification process broke down. I can’t figure how this happened, especially on the part of the vet, since there are rigorous identification procedures. Neither the stable nor the pre-race vet could have dreamed of getting away with such shenanigans, since they would know for sure that if the ringer finished in the money, it would be subjected to a second identification during the doping test.
In summary, the winner of the first race was not a 2-year old and not Liberty Island. The racing association called it an “involuntary substitution”.
Now, you’re the track administrator. What would you do?
(1) Announce the truth to the crowd, and say you’re sorry to the players who had bought tickets on the 4/5 second-place finisher, while awarding purse money to the second-place finisher? This solution was discarded as unfair to the players. Besides, there were also players who would have collected on exotics wagers had the “involuntary substitution” been discovered before post time.
(2) Cover it up. Have the other half of the Rohaut combo scratched, and later publish that the winner of the first race was “disqualified from purse money”. This functional but dishonest decision was rejected by France Galop.
(3) Disqualify the winning horse and put a stop on payment. This solution was also discarded. Most players had already collected on their tickets. The others, who might be holding their “winner” or who may have played that winner off track in the morning would not like to learn that some players collected on the false winner while others would be latter barred from collecting on the same “horse”. This solution was unrealistic.
(4) Call for a refund for all players who bet on the second-place finisher. This too was not acceptable, since these same players knew that the horse that went across the finish line first had been DQed, and would clamor for a payout.
(5) Refund all pari-mutuel tickets on losing horses but pay out for both the false winner (including the exotic combinations that included him), and the real winner: the horse that finished second (with the exotic bets that included him). In other words, do a double payout and refund all losers.
This was the costly but decent way to resolve the dilemma, but even this please-the-customer solution was only partly successful. Players who had torn up their tickets on the second place finisher would have no way to collect. Mais beaucoup de parieurs avaient déja jeté leurs tickets, wrote Karine Belluteau for Paris-Turf (but many of the players had already thrown away their tickets).
It was one of those very rare days when the profession of stooper looked profitable!
Let’s come back home for an epilogue. How often, in the pps, have we seen the inscription “disqualified from purse money”? In American racing, a horse that tests positive loses his purse money but the players who backed him keep their winnings. Those who have bet on the second horse have no chance of collecting damages.
Here’s my question. What if you saved every single win ticket on horses that finish place. Then, when you discover that the first horse was disqualified from purse money, would you have a legitimate cause for demanding compensation from the track?

POLEMIC AND NOTES FROM ROYAL ASCOT
When Jimmy Fortune won a 2-year-old race in dramatic fashion on Winker Watson for the red hot stable of Chapple-Hyam, the two British commentators could not agree about whether the rider had done right in striking his horse five consecutive times with the whip. They showed the replay three times. I would not have wanted to be Winker Watson.
“It’s obscene in a civilized country that kind of ride,” said one of the commentators.
“I’m absolutely in favor of that kind of ride,” said the other, “but it’s illegal.”
It was explained that following the first movement of the whip, the best riders allow the horse to respond before going to the whip the second time. Fortune whipped five times without waiting for a response.
Market movers
In that race, the top two finishers were the “market movers” (bet-downs), while the “market drifters” (the ones who were pretty much dead on the board), finished like their negative betting action.
Once again, the two commentators disagreed amiably.
“A public gamble of immense proportions has been landed here,” said the one. The other responded dubiously, noting that the market movers often don’t live up to their action. “It’s a fickle game this betting market.”
In any case, Chapple-Hyam is a name we may see pop up at the Breeders’ Cup.
German bred
A short but strong field in the 1 ¼ Prince of Wales was won by the German-bred Manduro, trained by Fabre. C&X readers are aware from previous issues that I’ve been high on the German breds. But in spite of Manduro’s victory (we’ll hear from him at BC time), the cycle is near the end for the Germans. They’ve cashed out, selling many of their most valuable pedigree stars.
Dettori
As for the jockey colony, the dominant force the season has been Lanfranco Dettori. He accomplished what has been unheard of in the past, winning both the French Derby and the French Oaks after crossing the finish line first in the Epsom Derby.