Mark Cramer
C & X Report

C&X 44

CONTENTS
Editorial
BC Lessons
Groundbreaking research from Professor John Sember
Surprising results of French takeout survey
The form cycle factor
Reality check: research from Ed
More of Don’s wisdom

EDITORIAL
C&X readers are the stars of this issue. Two very different but equally brilliant research projects, one more optimistic, the other that might trigger an awakening, have come from John and Ed respectively, with Don adding a fine “last word”. Some of you may remember John as Professor Sember from Hastings.
John’s research mines a new and more complex lode for the informed minority method. In fact, the complexity comes from John’s background as a math prof (he’s also a horseman). But in the end, he makes it simple for us. That’s the usual formula. In order to come up with splendid simplicity (rather than being fatefully simplistic) we need to pass through a phase of complexity.
Ed has responded to our call for follow-up research on the potential trainer-stat method. He uses rigorously conservative tests to review the dominant trainer method and his findings have triggered an awakening that has caused me to go back to the drawing board.
Both John and Ed have come up with new ideas in research. Ed’s has to do with removing 5 percent of the winners from a positive sample: a type of reality check. After his reality checks, many otherwise profitable samples end up looking more like random betting.
John’s research finds a crafty new way to improve upon the “informed minority” method, first by limiting it to contentious races (his way of defining a contentious race is pure mathematical elegance and a considerable advance in racing research) and then by expanding into what exactly that minority might consist of, something that has eluded us for a long time. John’s research comes on the heels of a BC when the “informed minority” finally struck out. Statistically it was bound to happen, but just when it did, John gives us some great cause for optimism.
John sent me his research article hand-written so I had to type it word by word. It was one of the greatest 5 hours in my life, because it forced me to contemplate the elegance of his analysis.
Ed had the courage to be the messenger of bad news. My original research just seemed too easy to be true. But now, thanks to Ed, I’ve come up with a revision that should enhance the method, though that too requires more research.
Horse racing is a great avocation, but it’s not just the racing itself, it’s the players. People like John and Ed are the reason why the whole project of C&X is really worth it, and at the end of this issue you will see yet another letter from Don which I would call handicapping haiku, though a different genre than what we used to get from Joe Coleville. Don’s paragraphs contain inspired ideas in poetic format. Don is the author of one of the best all-time articles in C&X, a narration on his horse Eximir.
Bravo, then, to the readers of C&X. I’ve appreciated meeting many of you in person and receiving letters from others. I know that all C&X readers, even the silent ones, contribute to making this a real community of horseplayers. My dream is to find some way where we can all get together in person to brainstorm on the search for the automatic bet.
Mark

BC LESSONS
First let’s take a look at the performance of my recommended key horses. I passed the two baby races, and luckily so. I do not fare well when the favorites win. In the F&M Turf, my key Passage of Time finished third, a neck from the place, but at only 2.8-1. That was an underlay, but I played him anyway because I had recommended him. In the Sprint, my very lukewarm key, Idiot Proof, was a hot second at 5.8-1. I did not play the exacta, but the winner certainly figured as one of the main contenders. In the Mile, I had two keys: Jeremy, who was off the board (watch the replay on Youtube and you will see a most horrendous trip) and Kip Deville, who won, paying 18.40, with a perfect trip. Kip Deville got me out for the day unscathed, only because I followed my own advice and played to win rather than the exotics.
In the Distaff, my key Lear’s Princess, one that I particularly liked, was unable to challenge. Looking back, the error may have been that she was not used to large fields. Her lack of seasoning went against her when I had figured the opposite: that being lightly raced, she had the most reason to improve. I was not alone in making this mistake, as she ended up as the 9/2 favorite. My attraction to this belle was in part because she was not supposed to be the fave. But she was. And I played her, putting my money where my mouth was.
Then I could say that my best call of the night came in the Turf. I argued against Dylan Thomas on several counts, especially since he was without his 6-for-6 rider, Fallon but only 4 for 12 with other riders. I also saw that English Channel was a lone presser, and that was the key, at 3-1. English Channel won easily. The pace was oh so slow and the unexpected participant in the early going, Shamdinan, was able to hang in there til the end.
Finally, I blew the Classic, not realizing that Curlin came from a Mr. Prospector line, the best of the mud breeding. But even if it had been a dry track, it looked (after the fact) as if Any Given Saturday was not cut out for the extra eighth of a mile. Furthermore, after English Channel’s victory, the odds in favor of another Pletcher winner decreased.
In the end, if you played each of the keys to win, doubling up on the two preferred keys that lost, you’d have invested, in pari-mutuel statistical terms, $18, with a return of 26.40.
My profit was reduced by one other wager: the “collective” side bet on the Informed Minority, which ended up as a complete dud, producing only three ITM finishers among 20 starters: Kodiak Kowboy, third at 11.9-1, Octave, a fast-closing third at 7.8-1 and Hard Spun, a courageous place at 8.1-1.
We know that any system with a 10% hit rate will have inevitable losing runs of considerable length, so there was no surprise. There were a couple of occasions when we never found out what our horse could have done. In the F&M, Simply Perfect was making a sharply competitive effort when she bolted. And then there were two horses in the mile, both with entirely distressing trips: Jeremy, who repeatedly took up along the rail with absolutely nowhere to go, and Trippi’s Storm, steadied sharply on the first turn while in traffic, and then steadied again when lacking room on the last turn, where he seemed to drop back in frustration. He really came athunderin’ in the stretch, but it was too late by then.
Okay for us, since we had the eventually winner Kip Deville with much more on him. Regarding Kip Deville, I wrote: “KIP DEVILLE skipped a workout because of a physical problem but this always seems to happen to Dutrow horses and then they win anyway. Can’t get past his 9 6-1-0 record on turf at the distance.” And I also referred to his condition as an overachiever: “And above all, look at the odds that this horse wins at, going from present to past: 9/2 (13Apr), 9-1 (3Mar), 7-1 (26Dec06), 9/2 (15Oct06), all dirt mile races! He then tailed off in May and June, but has had two meaningful preps following his layoff.”
Before I let this get to me, I must admit that Kip Deville was a lucky horse. Had Excellent Art gotten off cleanly and from a more favorable post, the result may have been reversed.
This BC was not a spectacular one in the realm of roi for yours truly, but I did notice an objective gain in my horseplayer consciousness. Normally I tend to overestimate the Euro horses, especially in the Mile. That I was able to choose two American horses in the Mile and especially the Turf, is a new milestone. My comment on English Channel was:
“ENGLISH CHANNEL, a horse I’ve always played against, is now in a race with a perfect set-up: lone presser with faves having to close wide on tight turns, and EC is 2 for 2 on the Monmouth turf.
“My heart wants me to choose BTN but ENGLISH CHANNEL will have first shot at the cheap speed horse, and in reality, EC is the lone F in relation to the rest of the field.”
In my own horseplayer psychology I had to overcome lots of subjective emotion. Better Talk Now is an old favorite of mine, and I’ve always preferred him over English Channel. But the pace was just too strong a factor in favor of EC, and for this one time I overcame my subjectivity.
In the end, what saved me was staying out of the exotics, though the Mile-Distaff-Turf pick three was winnable, if you used all 9 legit contenders in the Distaff. It’s not that I’m strictly a win bettor, but I pick and choose my spots. There were too many uncertainties, and too many fields where I could not eliminate half the field. I wrote: “One point. Most experts rave about exotics. For me, the BC offers good win bet opportunities, and there are often too many legit outsiders to construct exotic tickets. As in the past, we often recommend multiple win possibilities.”
Among the C&X readers there will be a few who saved the day with one big exotic, and made a much healthier profit than the skimpy one I had to accept. We are not all the same. I admire those who can consistently score from the exotics trenches. For me it’s a question of picking and choosing spots. I set out a strategy and kept to it.
Big mistake: (there always is one, isn’t there?) is to have not picked up on the Mr. Prospector mud breeding in Curlin.

A STUDY OF THE INFORMED MINORITY: CONTENTIOUS RACES AND BETTING FROM A DISTANCE
by
Professor John Sember
Intrigued by several ideas discussed in recent C&X Reports, I decided to play the following GAME:
Associate with each horse in a race the ordered triple of integers (abc), when a denotes the number of times the horse is selected as a first choice, b the number of times as a second choice, and c the number of times as a third choice, by the experts of the Daily Racing Form.
(This, if the imagined horse Cottontail is chosen by one of the experts as his or her 2nd choice, by another as a 3rd choice, and is not mentioned by either of the other two, Cottontail is a (011). Similarly, a (200) would be a horse chosen as a top pick by two of the experts, and not mentioned in any position by the other two. A (100) would be the “informed minority” horse as explained by Mark when you do not have a large grid of handicappers: picked to win by one guy and not mentioned in first, second or third by the others.
At a track with 4 DRF experts analyzing, there are 35 different possibilities for (abc), one of them being (000).
I then asked the following question (i): Does any subset of the set of 35 ordered triples (abc) stand out above the rest with respect to ROI?
As things would have it, the game turned into more than a game, and became a very enjoyable intellectual challenge. I added two more questions:
Question (ii): Can races that are more playable, or more contentious, than others be identified by studying the DRF array of triples (abc) for the horses in the race?
Question (iii): (RIDICULOUS) If the answers to questions (i) and (ii) are both YES, is it possible to combine the subset of triples found in (i) with the type of races found in (ii), so that a positive ROI is obtained by betting all the resulting horses to win?
My answers to the questions are (i) YES, (ii) YES, and (iii) YES.
I first studied all non-maiden, non-stakes races with at least 8 betting interests and no longer than 1 1/8 distance, at Hastings Park over the 5-year period 2002-2006.
Letting hA denote the horses mentioned at least once by any expert, and using the DRF point scale (without bonus points), here are the results of betting all horses to win in the 907 races:

hA equal or more than 7 pts
1714 horses, 390 winners (22.75%)
total return $2 win bets: $2816.80
return on each $1: .821
ave payoff: 7.22
loss: -611.20

hA less than 7 points
3190 horses, 369 winners (11.56%)
total return $2 win bets: 5550.10
return on each $1: .869
ave payoff: 15.04
loss: -829.90

(000)
Remember that these are horses that no one picked in the top 3 slots)
3153 horses, 148 winners (4.69%)
total return $2 bets: 4456.30
return on each $1: .706
ave payoff: 30.11
loss: -1849.70

Total of all horses bet in 3 categories
8057 horses, 907 winners
total return $2 bets: .795
return on each $1: .795
ave payoff: 14.13
loss: -3290.80

COMMENT: The results are quite consistent with the way the public usually bets, and this partitioning of the horses does not seem to yield any useful information.

[Mark intervenes for 2 comments. First, the subset where horses got fewer points from public pickers had a better roi than the subset where horses got more points from public pickers. This tilts in the direction, conceptually, of the informed minority. Second, the loss for the composite of all horses (fourth group of figures), equivalent to random betting, shows a return of .795, or a loss of 20 and a half cent on the dollar, which is more than the track take plus breakage, confirming my theory that random betting is worse than the takeout because random playing includes more underlays than overlays. This is important to grasp as context for what follows. Sorry for the interruption. Back to John.]

Sember continues:
COMMENT:
Notice what happens, however, if we attack question (ii) and make the following definition of a contentious race.
DEFINITION: A race is contentious (with respect to the DRF expert array) in case: (1) it contains at least 8 betting interests, and (2) there are at least 3 different horses named as a top selection by the four DRF experts, and (3) the total number of horses mentioned by the DRF experts is: (a) at least 6 in an 8-or-9 horse race; (b) at least 7 in a 10-or-11 horse race; (c) at least 8 in a 12-horse race. Being able to define a “contentious race” is vital for the very nature of handicapping and horse betting, as you will see. In the past, “contentious” was in the subjective eye of the beholder. Here it is defined mechanically. Here are the results for the same 5-year sample of races, using this contentious, non-contentious split.

CONTENTIOUS

hA more than or equal to 7 points
383 horses, 69 winners (18.01%)
total return $2 bets: 559.00
return on each $1: .729
ave payoff: 8.10
loss: - 207

hA less than 7 points
962 horses, 116 winners (12.05%)
total return on $2 bets: 2035.00
return on each $1: 1.057
ave payoff: 17.54
PROFIT: 111.00

(000)
479 horses, 26 winners (5.42%)
total return on $2 bets: 775.40
return on each $1: .809
ave payoff: 29.82
loss: 182.60

Total of all horses bet in 3 categories
1824 horses, 211 winners (11.56)
total return $2 bets: .3369.40
return on each $1: .923
ave payoff: 15.96
loss: -278.60

[Mark intervenes again with two points: First, as you can see, in contentious races, playing the informed-minority subset, you end up with a profit. Thus, it appears as if the informed minority concept should work better in contentious races than in non-contentious races. Second, amazingly, the return per dollar for ALL horses in contentious races is .923, which loses much less than the track take. We learn, thus, that in contentious races, there are more overlays, but we do not learn the mysterious workings of this process. We can expect, considering the above, that the random betting in non-contentious races below will score even worse than it has in ALL races.]

NON-CONTENTIOUS

hA more than or equal to 7 points
1331 horses, 321 winners (24.11%)
total return $2 bets: 2257.80
return on each $1: .848
ave payoff: 7.03
loss: -404.20

hA less than 7 points
2228 horses, 253 winners (11.35%)
total return $2 bets: 3515.10
return on each $1: .788
ave payoff: 13.89
loss: -940.90

(000)
2674 horses, 122 winners (4.56%)
total return $2 bets: 3680.90
return on each $1: .688
ave payoff: 30.17
loss: -1667.10

Total of all horses bet in 3 categories
6233 horses, 696 winners (11.16%)
total return $2: 9453.80
return on each $1: .758
ave payoff: 13.58
loss: -3012

Notice that in contentious races the average payoff is more than $2 higher, and the favorites (hA, equal to or greater than 7 points) do very poorly. Perhaps most striking is the fact that random full-field betting in contentious races loses less than 10 cents per dollar.
Hastings is a relatively minor track, a 5/8 mile bullring, and so I decided to do a second, independent sample of contentious races from major tracks.
Beginning on the opening day of Saratoga (July 25, 2007), I purchased both AM and PM versions of the DRF about twice a week, and went through the above procedure of identifying contentious races for all tracks having a 4-person expert array, and which I could bet through my HPI Woodbine account. (I actually bet real money on the subset of triples called S, below, to keep the experiment “live”.)
I obtained a 100 race sample of contentious races in about 2 ½ months, loosening the requirement of playable races to include stakes races (there are hardly any contentious stakes at HST), and I played all surfaces, and all distances equal to or greater than 5 furlongs. The sample contained races from 12 different tracks, a high of 29 claiming races from (DMR), 16 from (WO), 15 (SAR) … Here are the results.

SECOND SAMPLE (THE WORLD): CONTENTIOUS RACES

hA more than or equal to 7 pts
167 horses, 25 winners (14.97%)
total return $2 bets: 224.20
return on each $1: .67
ave payoff: 8.96
loss: -109.80

hA less than 7 pts
499 horses, 62 wins (12.42%)
total return $2 bets: 1013.30
return on each $1: 1.015
ave payoff: 16.34
PROFIT: 15.30

(000)
225 horses, 14 wins (6.22%)
total return $2 bets: 364.10
return on each $1: .809
ave payoff: 26.00
loss: 85.90

Total of all horses in the 3 categories
891 horses, 101 wins (considered 100, since there was one DH) (11.22%
total return $2 bets: 1601.60
return for each $1: .898
ave payoff: 16.01
loss: -180.40

Notice that the overall pattern of the two samples of contentious (Hastings and World) is identical. I was startled at the closeness of some of the numbers. [And so was I. Beautiful symmetry.mc]

IMPROVEMENTS
Here are two simple ways to improve the betting results, still without handicapping horses or looking at odds.
(1) The universal filter approach. Using either of the two measures of trainer win % given in the form (i.e., meet or year) requires the trainer to have at least 10 starts and a win % of at least 7%. Bet all horses in the set hA less than 7 (middle category) to win, for which the trainer meets this rather underdemanding standard. Using this filter, the results at Hastings are bolstered to a 1.145 roi and the results for the “world” sample yielded a 1.143 roi.
(2) The “favorable subset of triples” approach. We finally address question (i) from the beginning of this article. Yes, some triples (within hA less than 7) do consistently better than others. My favorite set, at present is:
S, = {(101), (100), (003), (002), (011), (001)}

Betting all horses in S, to win yielded the following results: HST: a 1.181 roi in 697 races; WORLD: a 1.116 roi in 361 races.
Final comments. This has been one of the most stimulating horse racing studies I have ever done and I am looking forward to enlarging the “World” sample this winter. The number of contentious races at HST has been diminishing drastically over the last two years and the track has serious problems.
Several of the more memorable plays I made in the “World” sample included:
(SAR), 8th, 7/25. The winner, a (001), paid $16.90, trainer 21% on the years. This was the first race in my trial.
(MTH), 4th, 8/15. The winner, a (100), trainer 20% on the year, paid $46.10.
(MTH), 5th, 8/15. I bet six horses to win in this race. They all lost!

SURPRISING RESULTS OF FRENCH TAKE-OUT SURVEY
The question is: does the crowd react unconsciously to modifications in the take-out? One point of view says that the betting public has its ways and that you can’t change them. From the other perspective it is believed that the public is hypersensitive to changes in the takeout because it “feels” the difference without even thinking about it.
It is not part of French culture to speak about money, at least not publicly. So when the takeout for straight betting was reduced last spring, the story made the French version of the DRF, the Paris-Turf, for only two days.
Most French players cannot tell you what the takeout is, so any change in behavior subsequent to the change in takeout would be mainly unconscious, based on the feel of receiving higher or lower returns.
In fact, the takeout percentage is not even published in the daily program or pps. If you telephone the track and ask for the take information, the answer will be “I’m not sure”, and you will be asked to hold, and eventually another person will answer and tell you he is looking for an answer to the question and he will put you on hold, and eventually you will give up.
Through an inside contact I was able to get my hands on a printout of comparative year-to-date handle figures from 2006 and 2007. The 2007 figures included the handle subsequent to June of 2007, when the takeout for straight bets was reduced by 5 percentage points, from 20% to 15%. I was curious to see whether the decrease in take would increase the handle.
It did. Among off-track players, the once moribund win pool handle had increased by 52.48%. The “place” pool, which at European tracks is really show (no American style place betting), increased by 42.7%. The next best OTB handle increase for any major bets was the quinella, but that was only a 16.7% increase.
Perhaps more revealing is the tumbling at-track wagering. In France, the average player at the track is a smarter bettor than those who go to the OTB. At-the-track wagering was actually down in seven categories, so we can assume that some of the extra action in the OTB has come from previous at-track wagerers. However, in the straight win category, handle was up by 21.6%. Clearly, the 5% reduction in straight-wager takeout had a considerable impact in increasing the handle.
On the other hand, at-track players reduced their show handle by 8.08 percent. Given that there is so much less action at the track than off track, the show handle still exhibited a large increase overall. On the other hand, the loss in quinella handle for at-the-track wagerers was roughly equivalent to the increase in quinella action off track.
Clearly we see that by decreasing the handle, French race tracks are now picking up much more revenue in the straight pools. However, I would not overstate the case, because one other wager increased dramatically without the stimulation of a drop in take. That bet was the MULTI, precisely the wager that I have been writing about as the best bet in French racing. The MULTI is a 4-horse quinella in which the player must pick the first four finishers in any order in fields of no less than 14 horses.
The MULTI, whose takeout is roughly 25%, got a special boost from the fact that players can buy a piece of the action, somewhat like the 10-cent superfectas. MULTI handle increased by 65% at the track and by 7.46% off track.
Before you argue that the 25% takeout is obscene, please realize that there is no extra tax nor any withholding no matter what the odds of the payout are. The MULTI is a solid wager if you can get either of the top two choices out of the top four finishers. Especially attractive for longshot handicappers, if you can get a 60-1 to finish fourth in the MULTI, that’s just as good as getting the same horse to finish first. No wonder the at-the-track players have been so impressed by this wager.

THE FORM CYCLE FACTOR
On the C&X stakes weekend website, I wrote the following about the Clement Hirsch Memorial Turf Championship (words in brackets added here):
“The Clement Hirsch Memorial Turf Championship at Oak Tree Once again, The Tin Man, surely an odds-on fave, will inherit a huge pace advantage. The only other speed horse in the field is Republican Hawk, and his speed does not come from classy races. Even if he gets the lead, The Tin Man would be the lone presser.
The Tin Man has a similar advantage in the Arlington Million but failed to hold off a Canadian horse in the stretch. My feeling is that the Tin Man is not quite the same competitor he has been in previous years (even though the third Arlington Million finisher came back to win).
”The longshot chance is Artiste Royale. In this same race last year, Artiste Royale lost by only a half length to The Tin Man. This year, The Tin Man has lost a bit of his competitive edge while Artiste Royale has gone form a low percentage barn to that of Neil Drysdale.
”This convergence of changes could make a difference. Artiste Royale came back after 9 months off to finish close to the winner in a troubled trip. He's not a win type and the pace scenario does not favor him but you could have said the same for the winner for the Arlington Million … [in other words, at Arlington, The Tin Man lost to a horse that he should have defeated easily if he were at the top of his form.]
My feeling is to use Artiste Royale in second place under The Tin Man in the exacta, with a backup win bet on Artiste Royale. Republican Hawk is the X horse, with everything in the pp sequence pointing to this horse moving up.
In summary, the horse to use is Artiste Royale.”
When do you get off?
It was easier to get on Artiste Royale than to get off The Tin Man. As with all investment market cycles, the biggest winners are those who know when to get off at the right time, a much more difficult decision than that of getting on.
We got nearly 6-1 on Artiste Royale, and the form factor stands out as having made the difference. In particular, it is very hard for the betting public to get off a publicity horse. I’m thinking, for example, of how Skip Away, even when he was definitely over the hill, continued to take in heavy action in the BC Classic that became his unfortunate farewell. Legendary horses are hard to set aside. When the publicity horse has been dipping slightly below expectations, we can afford to pass him by if his odds are too low (which is usually the case), especially if there is a lay-low out-of-the-limelight horse that is moving on the up escalator. This is the time when we can bet the improving horse against them.

TRAINER SPECIALTY STAT RESEARCH: A READER FOLLOWS UP
Before we read our contributor’s letter and research notes, let’s refer to the original hypothesis, where I had called for independent samples:
Rules for the Dominant Trainer Method (rules researched prior to revisions)
(1) The horse must have at least one set of DRF trainer stats (listed underneath pps) which show (a) a return on investment of at least $2.00 for $2.00 invested, and (b) with at least 15% winners within that subset.
(2) Bet all qualifiers to win. (Exactas may also be considered, and more research will be forthcoming.)

Now the letter:
Hi Mark,
I've been a subscriber since the C&O days and have eagerly looked forward to each and every issue. Your insights, different perspectives, interest in the wider world, lack of BS, love of the sport and and love of handicapping provided articles that were a akin to a continual refreshing breeze that has steadily lifted me higher. Thank you for all you've contributed to my growth and understanding of this tough game.

Regarding the Dominant Trainer Method:
I have a handicapping database that includes trainer data from 2 sources - Bain and HTR. It has some minor "holes" in the form of very small amounts of missing data but it is essentially 1 year of data complete from mid-June 2006 to mid-June 2007 and pretty much all the tracks available through HDW. This summer's data has not yet been added so it does not overlap with your sample from the recent C&X issue. (It will take me about a month or so to add the more recent data because I have some pressing work-related commitments.)
I believe the Bain stats are based on a rolling sample that I believe covers 3 years (I can dig and get the exact time frame) and, of course, Bain stats are only provided for those horses that fall under one or more of the following subsets: debut, layoff return, or
claim and then only within the first 4 starts of one of those categories. Bain stats checked include (these are technically subsets of the major categories): trainer for past 365 days, dirt, turf, dirt to turf, turf to dirt, exact distance as today's race, sprint to route, route to sprint, up 2 in class, up 1 in class, down 1 in class, down 2 in class, in claim, in alw/stk, in starter, in mcl, in msw, and others. The attached Excel file [not reprinted in this issue] shows the very few that showed any promise but, by my standards, are not likely to go forward.
I think the HTR stats are based on a rolling 365 day sample (again, I can get the exact time frame) and have no inherent debut, layoff or claim limitation. The attached Excel file shows the very few that showed any promise but are not likely to go forward.
I have no knowledge of the time frame or stats provided by the DRF Formulator files. The sense I got from your article is that as long as one Formulator trainer stat had the >=15% wins and >= breakeven ROI you considered it a wager whether or not any other stats were good, fair or poor. So, if the horse was first off the layoff with a trainer stat of 17% wins and a breakeven ROI and was also going from a route last time out to a sprint today with a trainer stat of 3% wins and an roi showing a 50% loss, this would be still be a wager. It is on that basis that I queried my database. What I have not yet done, however, is check solely on summer racing. The only screen I used was that the purse had to be $10,000 or higher.
By not "likely to go forward" I mean that after adjusting the ROI by removing the highest mutuels, etc. the resultant ROI's more or less hover around what you'd expect considering the track take. It takes subsets of subsets to get some positive results. Besides those included in the attached Excel file, I tried many more and the vast
majority had ROI's - before removing the highest mutuels - more or less in the neighborhood of what you'd expect considering the track take.
That said, I'm not the sharpest tack in the box on databases and I could be making some sort of inherent error affecting my results that I'm too "thick" to catch. Secondly, I try very hard to be conservative. For example, the ROI for the first stat in the XLS
file shows a positive 1.08 (for a $1.00 wager) but my program not only gives me that result but provides 2 others as well. The ROI if the highest mutuel was removed (w_roi2 in the spreadsheet) and the ROI if the top 5% of winning mutuels was removed (w_roi3 in the spreadsheet). So, as an example of w_roi3, that first sample showed 700 races and 15.71% of the horses won; i.e., there were 110 win mutuels. I calculate ROI3 based on 665 races (700 x .95) and 104 winners with those 104 winning mutuels being from the bottom 95% of the sample. If I have a very small sample, I never remove fewer than
2 of the highest mutuels. Is this too conservative? I don't know, but those spot plays that still show a positive ROI for w_roi3, win percentages of at least 19%, good handicapping logic, and support from the place and show results should have a reasonable prospect of
going forward.
If you happen to not have Microsoft Excel, I believe this link will take you to a free viewer you can download:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c8378bf4-996c-4569-b547-75edbd03aaf0&displaylang=EN

[Mark intervenes to summarize the spreadsheet. Ed took a number of trainer specialty categories from both Bain and the ones C&X has used, that appear at the bottom of the pps. There were a few categories in which Bain or the DRF-generated C&X-research stats showed a flat bet profit. However, if you applied Ed’s (C&X’s Ed and not Bain)
roi2 stat (the one that excludes the highest payoff), precious few of these stats remained profitable. The best one among those that we have used for our research was “Stretching Out for the First Time”. Demanding a minimum 20-race sample for each trainer included, this factor resulted in a $1.13 roi for Ed’s roi#1 category, which includes all payoffs. The sample was 610 wagers. But then, excluding the highest payoff (Ed’s roi2 category), the results yielded a $1.03 positive roi. So far so good. But then apply Ed’s roi3 parameter, where you exclude the top 5% of winning payoffs, and this factor returned $0.82, for a negative return. I suspect that Ed’s roi2 is probably not conservative enough but that his roi3 is too Draconian. I feel that we need something in between. In fact, none of the winning trainer specialty categories, neither those from Bain nor those we used in our Dominant Trainer research from the DRF, have come out with a positive roi when the roi3 parameter is applied, and they did not come near.]

Ed continues:
So the bottom line for what I did was pretty far from your results and those of Dr. Billy M. It would be a mistake for you to use my results for anything other than to act as confirmation for others from those you know to be more knowledgeable than I when it comes to databases if they happen to results similar to mine. If folks you have some faith in get results more in line with yours, would you kindly put me in touch with them (with their permission of course) so I can try to track down the error of my ways?
I'm interested to learn what other feedback you get.
Thanks again.
Ed

From Ed’s spreadsheet, I extracted what looked like the most promising subsets and fired back some questions:
Hi Ed,
First, thanks for the good words. Now to your research. I am really thrilled. Here are a few questions, some of which expose my ignorance of certain annotations.
(1) Am I assuming correctly that the HTR is the DRF stat source?
(2) What is the the difference between "greater than or = 20 trainers" and "greater than or = 10"? Are you talking about 20% overall trainers vs. 10% overall trainers?
Comments:
For statistical purposes, your roi3 parameter is valid, but if a particular method is supposed to pick longshots rather than favorites, then excluding the top 5% of the payoffs seems too Draconian. I would argue instead to make a random exclusion of 5% of the payoffs. Otherwise, 5% exclusion seems unfairly top-heavy.
I say this as a man who is willing to put his money into this research by playing a statistic with real money, if the logistics can be worked out.
The two first-time route stats, especially the second one with the 20 trainer, seem encouraging.
Looking forward to your response.

Ed’s response regarding explanation of HTR, HTW, etc.
My understanding is that all data starts with Equibase. They then sell to various entities known as "authorized re-sellers" who do their own error checking and repackaging for sale. Handicappers Data Warehouse (HDW - www.horsedata.com ) is re-seller as is, I believe, DRF. HDW repackages the data for a variety of software and report sellers. It is the company that used to make Ed Bain's reports available and the company I believe Ed is suing. HDW has an excellent reputation for data integrity and customer concern, Ed Bain's argument with them not withstanding. HTR is a software program owned by Ken Massa. One of the files HDW creates for HTR software is a trainer stat file which I wrote a program to parse and the information gets placed in one of my databases. I believe DRF is also considered a re-seller but it has a different business model than HDW. They both distribute data that starts with Equibase in a form not very usable by most people. So, HTR gets its data from HDW and I believe DRF gets their direct from Equibase. HTR and DRF I am certain have no connection.

Ed’s response to the difference between "greater than or = 20 trainers"
and "greater than or = 10".
Sorry for the confusion. The 10 and 20 refer to minimum sample sizes for the individual trainers that were required for a trainer to be considered part of the stats I sent you. So, for example, if trainer John Smith had 15% winners and a breakeven ROI but that was based on only 8 starts in his stat, he would not have been part of the calculations I sent you. I tried 2 different minimum requirements, at least a 10 start sample and an at least 20 start sample.

Then came my suggestion regarding Ed’s roi3 parameter, which would exclude the highest 5% of the payoffs from the results of the sample. My argument is that: if a particular method is supposed to pick longshots rather than favorites,
then excluding the top 5% of the payoffs seems unfair and that instead you could make a a random exclusion of 5% of the payoffs.
Otherwise, 5% exclusion seems unfairly top-heavy.
Ed responded that he “understood this particular point”, which doesn’t tell me if he fully agreed with it, and he added:

You are welcome to share anything I've sent with your readership but I'm not certain that what I've sent you is worth a damn. Again, I sent this to you this in the hopes you will get some other data that - in the best outcome - would corroborate what you published which would give me a clue that I need to do some digging to find out what I'm doing wrong in analyzing my data (but will be profiting from your research while I do so). The other outcome, that my analysis is correct, would be good from the standpoint of knowing that I did not screw up in analyzing the data but it would mean that your theory is much weaker than your early results show.

Those who read Ed Bain’s newsletter will appreciate what Bain confirms month after month. The statistical win percentage of the trainers he uses for qualifying bets is never equalled in the collective results each month. In practice, the percentage is always less than in theory, and this is probably because most positive trainer win percentages are due to longshot winners than will not be repeated forever. Thus, the high roi’s will be diluted. Win percentage may also be diluted because a trainer’s stock is volatile from season to season.
We are left with probably the greatest question regarding dominant-trainer betting and research: how can we distinguish between a positive trainer stat that will erode and one that will have longevity. For example, Carla Gaines and Michael Maker, year after year, show both a profit and at least a 15% win rate in nearly every specialty category. Can I be sure that their stats will remain in the long run? Frankel used to have such positive stats but they have now eroded to below the flat-bet profit level. So have the stats of Wayne Catalano.
My hypothesis is that a stat is more likely to continue so long as the trainer is able to maintain a low profile. As far as the Dominant Trainer method is concerned, Ed’s research suggests that we need to raise the bar with respect to minimum win percentage, minimum sample and minimum profit.
Let’s raise the minimum sample to 20, as he has done. His minimum-20 sample trainers did better than his minimum-10 sample trainers. Then, let’s raise the minimum acceptable DRF-stat roi to $2.20 instead of $2.00. And finally, let’s raise the minimum win percentage from 15% to 18%.
And then, let’s start all over again with a new batch of races, remembering that the most promising category of “stretching out for the first time” held its profit with more than 600 races even when excluding the highest payoff.

From Don:
whenever i read your articles it triggers my mind. This tidbit is for you to put in the back of your mind because you didn't know if the trainer entered with the weather in mind as part of a pattern match. I had a horse whose name was diamond nase. he had 3 white feet. he could run a half in :46 but couldn't finish and would run out of the money. I think he was 3 maybe 4 when i had him. I came to find, through Purdue U. that he developed a problem diagnosed as "heaves". It wasn't advanced so don't think i was being cruel to him. But, the point is--i learned to enter him when the forecast was for rain. If it did so on that day the air would be "cleaned" and he could make it to the wire. He won 3 races like that and I stopped with him. Almost everyone thought that he stopped on fast tracks because his white feet would sting.
your trainer thing is the essence of my handicapping. that is the factor, after the short form, that keeps me in the black. If 2 or 3 18% trainers have short form contenders that means none of the 2 or3 horses are proven losers. If one of them is favored i look at the other 2. The value is if i can get $10 and up on either of them it's a play because they aren't proven losers either and the 18% trainer/longshot angle is in play. The only difference between what i do and what you printed is that i use a 20% win rate and if the trainer has 8 wins to go with the angle it's as powerful as one can imagine. check out this past saturday/sunday at belmont. Saturday was phenominal. on sunday there were 11 contenders that met the odds thing. one won (11.20) and 5 seconds. (4 of them at healthy place prices). that was a losing day which i'll accept.

C&X 44

CONTENTS
Editorial
Beat the Favorite and other Lessons
The Market Place
Also Eligible Vacations: Go right now!
The Return of Sigmund Fraud, C&X Staff Psychiatrist
Small Track Turf Sires, the Artisan Researcher
C&X Café
Notes from the Fringe: The Next Secretariat?; The Empire Strikes Back versus the Phantom Plunger; Polytrack: Where’s the Debate?
Benchmark: a CaseHistory

EDITORIAL
On my visit to Saratoga during the first week of the meet, I was told that they were having problems filling the backside with horses. Evidently, immigration laws were cluttered with new constraints … sort of like what happens when we decide to do something on our computer and a screen pops up: “Are you sure you want to do this?” and we say yes, and the screen pops up again: “Are you absolutely sure you want to do this operation?”
As a result, legal documents for many backstretch workers, mainly grooms, were held up.
The problem was later resolved, though not without a few casualties along the way: guys who lost their chance to work 7 days per week and be on call 24 hours per day, horses that did not get shipped to the Spa on time for their race, and probably a few very disappointed horse owners.
It was a ripple effect that began at the very bottom and affected people at the top.
If you ever spend some time in the stable area, you quickly learn that a majority of the employees are of Spanish-speaking origin, mainly Mexicans and Central Americans. Try to get an American to take one of these thankless but indispensable jobs of caring for those magnificent thoroughbreds that bring beauty and meaning to our lives.
At some rural tracks, not only is the job without reprieve but there’s nowhere to go anyway during the weekend even if a day off were possible. It’s not a question of mistreatment. I’ve witnessed a great respect and consideration by trainers for their grooms. The problem is the nature of the fragile beast (who demands attention at ungodly hours and needs to eat and be cared for every day, including Sundays) and thus the nature of the job itself.
How many people in need of a job would take such work? It’s not only the incessant labor rhythm. If you have a family, it would be physically impossible because grooms must travel from meet to meet and thus cannot provide household stability. And yet many grooms are from family-oriented cultures who must endure lengthy and sometimes tragic separations in order to take on this labor, out of pure necessity.
The above situation hit home in the Cramer household because my 22-year-old son decided to do a job that few people would want to do: pick grapes. It’s seasonal labor and requires displacement. He’s a graduate student at a French university. He has this universal need to be economically independent, even though he knows he can depend on his folks.
In France, a grape-picking job at a vineyard pays reasonably well. Two types of people take such work: students and immigrants. It comes just before the new school year and is considered a rewarding and character-building experience for students.
My son’s application was immediately accepted on line and by telephone, but the owner of the vineyard had failed to notice that he’s an American citizen, which means he’s an immigrant with an American passport. When he arrived at this hamlet literally in the middle of nowhere, the Beaujolais region southeast from Paris, he learned that his working papers were not in order. He’s “only” been a student in France for the past eight years, and you’d think that would have been enough.
But because of a fervent application of immigration laws under the new French government, to the strict Letter of the Law, the farm owner needed to have contacted the Paris immigration office where my son has his papers, just for verification, confirming that he’s studied here at least two years.
My son had already invested in his train ticket. But more important, he’d decided to take this job over other short term work possibilities, and those other jobs would no longer be available. Prior to the crackdown, the owner could have said, “I believe you, and you can start working now while we wait for the response from the immigration department.”
When I heard from my son over the phone, I immediately recalled the groom situation at Saratoga. If the groom is missing from duty for a day, the horse could suffer dire consequences. Where can a trainer find a substitute groom within a few hours?
Grape picking is also dependant on its own intrinsic rhythm. Grapes cannot wait on the vine the way papers can wait on a secretary’s desk. If grape pickers do not work for 10 consecutive and long days, the timing of the harvest is lost and the wine, essentially an artisan product, will suffer the consequences.
Fortunately, the vineyard owner’s e-mail to the immigration department in Paris was answered immediately, confirming my son’s legal status. Had that immigration bureaucrat not been at his desk that particular day, my son could have lost his job even though his labor was desperately needed for France’s nationally “strategic” industry.
There are certain types of labor that defy all sensible rules. No matter how much new technology makes our lives easier, many tasks will forever remain labor intensive. When I learned that my son’s job was intact and that he would have this truly magnificent though excruciating experience, I celebrated by ordering a glass of the best Côtes du Rhone. I sipped the wine, remembering how much intense and loving labor had brought it to fruition.
Whenever I bet on a winner, I think back to the similar loving care that this beautiful horse has had to receive from its groom.
When we bet on a horse, knowing the whole process enhances the experience. Without the labor of grooms, the whole industry would cave in. Many of these grooms, parallel to the situation of my own son, are laboring on foreign soil, doing work that most of us would not wish to do, and dependant on immigration laws whose essence is to assure that targeted labor is available from afar when it is locally scarce.


BEAT THE FAVORITE AND OTHER LESSONS
The Grade I Kings Bishop for 3-year olds at 7 furlongs, at Saratoga on 25 August, is only one race but contains many lessons. Yours truly was wrong in trying to beat the favorite, and knowing the reason why can help in future handicapping expeditions.
There’s a cliché among the experts that if you can find a vulnerable favorite, then even if you don’t have a good latch on the other horses in the field, the race becomes playable. I’m not sure this is a universal truth. I’ve noticed from my meticulous records, that I’ve actually done better when betting against favorites that can be considered legitimate. In the Kings Bishop, Hard Spun was definitely a legit fave, but I thought he could be beaten for a price.
I wavered between two upset possibilities. The first one was based on an argument that would have been accepted by the American Bar Association. FIRST DEFENCE was moving from route to sprint and had already won with the same move. His trainer, Robert Frankel, showed 81 rs moves with a 31 percent hit rate and a $1.11 cent return for every dollar wagered. This particular stat is especially meaningful because very few trainers have ever excelled when shortening up a horse from route to sprint. The opposite move, sprint to route, is usually easier to accomplish. Route races are run at a slower pace, and going from route to sprint requires a notable increase in acceleration, which can take a lot out of any athlete, horse or human. I for one am a natural router. I’d rather run 10 kilometers than 100 yards. Sprinting for me is easier at the end of a slow-paced route, but agonizing if I had to start out fast right from the block. So I can identify with the plight of routers who are shortening up.
FIRST DEFENCE also showed the fastest time of any horse for the 7f distance, 1:20.4 at Belmont, with a 1:09 interior fraction. His formidable rival HARD SPUN had to return to the shorter distances after making a name for himself at the long classic distances in races such as the Kentucky Derby.
I was also looking hard at another possible upsetter. TEUFLESBERG, famous for having set the s-l-o-w fractions in the Blue Grass Stakes and nearly surviving on a track that was brutal against wire-to-wire pretenders, had also been successful at the 7-furlong distance. In fact, this competitor was 2-for-2 at the Kings Bishop distance, had won 4 of his last 5 sprint races, and was 4-for-7 with Albarado in the saddle. Here was a natural sprinter versus two horses that seemed more like natural routers.
TEUFLESBERG’s Belmont 7f time was nearly as fast as that of FIRST DEFENCE: 121.2, and also with a 1:09 fraction. So First Defence finished off faster than Mr. T but did so after having been a lone front runner. Beyer gave FD a 100 and Teuflesberg a 104, based on the impression that the Belmont strip was faster for FD’s race and slower on the day of the Teuflesberg score.
Nevertheless, the comment about Frankel’s First Defence was: “on own courage”. Not only did he win by daylight but the second horse was more than 6 lengths ahead of the third place finisher.
One last note here: Teuflesberg had been trounced twice by Hard Spun, but he had also once defeated a 1-2 Hard Spun, and I felt that Teuflesberg was a more natural sprinter than the favorite.
You can only have so many arguments. But sometimes a single factor rises to the surface and eclipses all the others. In the case of the Kings Bishop, that factor was class. We have an impression that class rules with a stronger hand in route races than in sprint races. For me this cliché comes from anecdotal evidence. There are more route stakes than there are sprint stakes, and hence, anecdotally we think that the class factor is more important in routes.
This is simply not so. Hard Spun had raced competitively against a particularly resilient 3yo crop. Usually, in the past decade, the three year olds from May have been pretty much out of the picture by September. But in this particular crop we still have Street Sense, Curlin, and Any Given Saturday. I suspect that after a number of years of faltering 3-year-old crops, trainers have gotten wise to more sustainable training methods.
Neither First Defence nor Teuflesberg had held their own against the best. In the face of First Defence, he had not yet had the chance, and was perfectible. Teuflesberg had been trounced by the best 3yos, but these defeats were in longer route races and now he was at his preferred distance, or so I thought.
In the Kings Bishop, the class factor kicked into gear. The 7/5 Hard Spun won impressively. Not only did he put away another speed horse that was essentially functioning as an undeclared rabbit, but then he got headed in the stretch and regained the lead before going into cruise control.
First Defence finished second, 4 ½ better than the rest, at 6-1. The 5-1 Teuflesberg had a few minor excuses, failed to show enough early foot, and finished fourth in the 11-horse field. Had I done a trifecta as place-show bet under the legit fave, I still would have lost.
The first lesson here is that the class factor is alive and well and that a horse like Hard Spun, in the same league as Street Sense, cannot be demoted because of mere handicapping argumentation. Street Sense is the first horse ever to have won both the BC Juvenile and the Kentucky Derby. Don’t penalize him for having had to work a little to defeat a poor Travers field. After all, the best ones defected from the Travers. Street Sense scares ‘em away.
Hard Spun is in the same league as Street Sense. In the Kings Bishop, no other handicapping factor mattered.
Which leads us to the Great Dilemma of when to play “Beat the Legitimate Favorite”. Even $2.10 to show on Street Sense in the Travers is 5% on your money in less than 2 minutes. We cannot be iconoclasts against legit favorites.
Yes, we can often play against them. But “Beat the Favorite” should not be a knee-jerk response to ALL races, even for the kinkiest of handicappers.
The second lesson regards the form factor. First Defence, the eventual second-place finisher, was the lightly-raced product with a margin for improvement. Even if you believed the Beyer figs rather than the raw final times, First Defence was more likely to move up than the oft-raced Teuflesberg, who dances every dance.
Hard Spun’s impressive win in the Kings Bishop, even though it was at low odds, came against some very solid horses. Hard Spun is another indicator that this year’s 3-year-old crop should be reckoned with in the upcoming Breeders’ Cup.

THE MARKET PLACE
For years now I have been studying a particular pattern that seems inexorably linked to the inherent contradictions of the market place. I once called this the “bet-down overlay”, in order to illustrate that you could have two opposite movements within one single item in the betting economy. I am now in the process of continuing my research on this method.
Consider the betting public to be a number of rivers, tributaries, streams and brooks, all going in different directions. We want to find a way to float with the right streams. In other words, go along with part of the public but not all the public. In this way, we benefit from a smaller internal betting public without getting destroyed by the takeout that penalizes the grand public.
When the sub-prime mortgage crisis hit the stock market, I must have read the opinions of at least 40 different experts. There were two major streams of thought, one that said “sell” and the other that comforted us with a “hold tight, it’ll be all right”. Within those two currents there were various other flows of opinion. The betting public in the stock market was not monolithic. Similarly, there are different currents in any one betting public at the race track.
The bet-down overlay strategy tries to pick out the wiser flow of thought within the race track public consciousness. Therefore, it is based on two opposite principles. The first says that we need a horse that has finished out of the money and at least four lengths behind in its last race. In other words, we have defined the type of race that is perceived to be negative in the public consciousness.
The second principle is to watch the action from last race to today and look for the odds on this poor finisher to be going down to at least half of what they were in the race represented by his bad performance line. We want to see that the bad race only deters some of the potential backers (enough to insure a fair price) while it seems to encourage other backers who probably know something about this horse.
The past performances of a four-year-old gelding named Midnight Duel highlight the principle.

Midnight Duel
21 May07 Del Clm (open) 10000 62 1st 10.00
9 Jan 07 Pha (S) Clm 15000 50 4th 15 back 22.90
16 Dec06 Pha Md 8000 55 1st 5.40 (odds dropped to 1/2 of last race)
29Oct06 Del Md 16000 -0 7th 69 lengths back 11.00 (odds – 1)

In the race following each poor finish, the horse was bet down to half of its previous odds, winning at 5-1 and 10-1. None of us would reject such odds. Getting generous odds at the same time when a horse is being bet-down seems to be the very best of both worlds.
It is true that many of these bet-down overlays involve some sort of a class drop. But not every class dropper is going to get any action after having finished 69 lengths behind. Midnight Duel’s second drop on 21May was probably marginal, since the horse went from statebred to open company. On both occasions, Midnight Duel went from bad race to good race, and the change was accompanied by a halving of the odds.
Sometimes this pattern is accompanied by a legitimate handicapping factor, as was the case with Mug of Love:

Mug of Love
20Mar07 Pha Clm 5000n1y 67 finished 1st at 5/2
21Feb07 Pha Clm 7500n2y 59 early speed for 4 furlongs, fin: 5th by 5 lengths at 69-1

Essentially this was a double drop, first in class and second in conditions, from non-winners of 2 for the year to non-winners of 1 for the same period. Those sectors of the public that were not dissuaded by the poor finish made the right betting decision. However, enough bettors did not like the low Beyer rating from 21Feb so that Mug of Love paid off at a better-than-fair 5/2.
Please note that in all three of the winning races thus far illustrated, the horse’s Beyer figure jumped considerably. This is in keeping with C&X research that has shown that winning horses with no distance or surface change improve their Beyer rating on the average of about 8 points. If the betting public had been projecting such improvement, Mug of Love would have been 3/2 rather than 5/2.
In other words, the bet-down overlay pattern takes advantage of the narrow-mindedness rigid figures players.
I have not been typing in the distances or surfaces of these races since there has been no change in distance nor in surface from the losing races to the winning ones, and I do not want to clutter my illustrations with non-factors.
Such was the case with 6-year-old gelding Power in Prayer, who went from a poor race at 5 furlongs to a winning one at 5 ½, and paid $22.40. The winning race was second after a layoff.

Power in Prayer
15Nov06 Lrl Clm 7500 n2L 56 1st, wire-to-wire 10.20
9Oct 06 Lrl Alw 29000 n1x 26 5th by 20 in a 5-horse field at 53.20 odds

Going back deeper in Power in Prayer’s past performances, you would have seen three straight finishes in the back of the field, losing by margins of 19, 22 and 13 lengths. Thus, contrary to the case of Mug of Love, here there was no particular handicapping factor that would have pointed to a win for Power in Prayer, other than the huge class drop from all the other pp lines.
The action on the odds drop illustrated that it was a positive and not negative class drop. If there had been no action whatsoever, we could have assumed that the drop was negative.
But not all bet-down overlay plays are class drops. Consider the case of the six-year-old gelding No Stall for Me.
He was going from claiming 5,000 open company at Monmouth to claiming 7,500 non-winners of 3 lifetime at Colonial, from a mile and 70 yards to a mile (essentially no distance change).
In his losing race at 5,000, he went off at 11-1. The comment for that race was no factor.
The Beyer fig was 50. So in the subsequent race, there was no apparent reason for his odds to come plummeting to 5-1. As with all the previous examples, No Stall for Me increased his Beyer fig by a significant margin, up to 59. Some players might have seen the 5-1 odds as an underlay, but my long-term research on this pattern keeps coming up with flat-bet profits, so we would have to perceive it as an overlay.
In the odds market place it’s not only the bet-down that tells us something important. It is also the fact that when the horse ran poorly, his odds were high. This means he was not expected to run well. Had the poor performance been at low odds, he would be looking more suspicious to us.
As is always the case with any handicapping method, the bet-down overlay method has more losers than winners. This is the nature of horse racing. Even betting favorites give us more losers than winners. This reality is mentioned here so that the reader does not form the false impression that this method is like making withdrawals from an infinite bank account.
Let’s also get rid of another possible misconception. I have purposely chosen examples where there was no significant distance or surface change, in order to highlight the jump in Beyer figs of the winning horses without any other variable that could have provoked the big increase.
Just Say Boo
However, this method works independently of other variables such as surface or distance changes. On June 24, 2007, yet another 6-year-old gelding, Just Say Boo, was moving from dirt to turf, stretching out from 7 furlongs to 1 1/8, and vanning from Charles Town to Colonial. His previous:
24May nw1 alw 28,000 7furlongs CT, 51 Beyer, 5th, 13 lengths behind at 11-1
a month earlier may have been roughly equivalent to the 30,000 claiming level at Colonial. (It boggles the mind to see such high purse levels at CT. Too bad all those slot players are not in the pari-mutuel pools anymore.)
Just Say Boo’s losing race at Charles Town came after a long layoff, so finishing 5th by 13 lengths in a 7-horse field had its excuses. Now he was switching to turf. His previous turf performance record was spotty to say the least (1 for 17), with one third-place finish at 12-1 suggesting that on a given day he was capable of overachieving on the grass. But there was no obvious reason why JSB’s odds should have gone from 11-1 at CT to 9/2 at Colonial.
24June 30,000 clm, Cnl, 1 1/8 turf, 69 Beyer, finished 1st at 9/2
Thus we see the power of the odds drop. As was the case with No Stall for Me, Just Say Boo was getting a large portion of his action from insiders. He got out of the gate neatly and stalked from a third place position, taking the lead in the stretch and holding on by a neck. He paid $11.20. Was he an overlay or an underlay? From a handicapping perspective, he looked like an underlay. But from the long-term performance of the bet-down overlay method, he was an overlay. In such cases, the bet-down in odds from the previous race to today’s race becomes a handicapping factor in and of itself.
My research rules say that this method should not be bet at above 19-1. In other words, a drop in odds from 40-1 to 20-1 is not considered to be all that significant. In the lower odds echelons, a halving of the odds is also a big drop percentagewise. But 40-1 to 20-1 is only a 2 percentage-point difference.
The jury is still out on the longer odds horses. It’s more difficult to come up with a large enough sample at those high odds levels. There is always the fear that one of those toteblasting winners might be distorting my sample and making it look much better than it is.
Nevertheless, you do see big bombers with this method. One example is that of Phantastic Peace dropping from maiden special weight at Laurel, where he finished 6th by 17 lengths in a 7-horse field with a Beyer fig of 34. His odds were 60-1, so he ran just as expected.
So then he dropped in class to maiden claiming 25,000. He’d been at that level before, having finished 3rd at 31-1, so he had proven his ability to become an overachiever at the right level of competition.
On January 17 of 2007, his odds dropped to 22-1. By the spirit of the law, he qualified under the rules of this research. But the letter of the law said that at this odds level, the odds drop is less meaningful. Whatever, he won the race by 11 lengths and paid 47.20.
I would call this a very marginal example, not to be used for sensationalizing. But one thing is clear. In the market place of horse race wagering, just as in any other stock market, there is a hidden message in the betting action, and sometimes that message is so strong that the action itself becomes an independent handicapping variable.
In theory this method should work better at tracks with smaller pools where insider action can play a greater role in forming the odds. But my findings show it to be equally successful at large-pool tracks. Space does not allow for a whole batch of examples I’ve collected from Southern California.
Give me one more month to tinker with the method, and churn out a statistical sample. In the meantime, how about hearing from some research-minded readers. All you need to do is go through past performances, spotting all finishes of fourth or worse, at least four lengths behind, followed by an odds drop of at least half. Write down each loser and each winner, jotting in the payoff of the winner. Then make a final tally, with percentage of winners, amount invested, amount returned, and return on investment. I am in the process of doing the same.
Before betting on this we need several finished samples, including mine. All of my previous research samples have been profitable but I’m only half way through this one. Stay tuned for the next issue for results, and hopefully we can publish my tallies juxtaposed with yours.

ALSO-ELIGIBLE VACATIONS: GO RIGHT NOW
Here’s the first free AE racing vacation. No uncomfortable flight. No long miles to drive. Yet you can cover every continent and even do successful time travel, landing back in the present with not a bump … but perhaps with a few good recovered memories.
Have a seat at your computer, and go to Google. Then type in the track, race and even horse of your choice, followed by the word “Youtube”, and then it will all unfold before you.
I decided to begin my journey by traveling with John Henry, to Hollywood Park, Santa Anita and Arlington. (I almost named my son John Henry. That decision was vetoed by my wife, even though all my horse race buddies rallied to my cause.)
Next, I traveled with Sunday Silence, making a repeat stop at his thrilling Preakness victory over Easy Goer.
I also followed Northern Dancer, even visiting him at his stud farm. You can watch him prance around with those three white stockings (the fourth leg is bare).
I zoomed back to contemporary times to watch the slow-paced Blue Grass Stakes in 2007 and the victory of Street Sense at Churchill Downs.
Visually, my journey was enhanced by a European sequence. Horse race filming in Europe includes the surroundings. Thus I could follow Montjeu in his Prix du Jockey Club victory, watching the field gallop in front of a magnificent Chantilly castle. Then I traveled to his Irish Derby win where you can see the magnificent green countryside of Ireland around the Curragh. I remember wondering why Santa Anita replays do not show a view of the St. Gabriel mountains, or why the Fort Erie monitor does not provide a view of the magnificent infield. European replays pan around the surroundings as the horses gallop by.
At Longchamp you can watch various Arc de Triomphes, with the beautiful windmill in the background. The French footage is more aesthetic than the numerous Japanese versions you find on Youtube.
You’ll have no trouble understanding the British race callers at Royal Ascot as they use their own unique jargon for the local flavor, as you can gawk at the horses with the forest behind the backstretch.
There are numerous possibilities for your time travel and continent hopping. You can see Seattle Slew, Danzig, Sadler’s Wells and Mr. P. You can jump from the Melbourne Cup to Hong Kong races, with no jet lag, and admission to any Kentucky Derby you choose is for free. Dr. Billy M can revisit the scene of his Derby triumph.
Here’s one also-eligible vacation that will lift your heart.

THE RETURN OF SIGMUND FRAUD
C&X Staff Psychiatrist
[Editor’s Note: Dr. Fraud has been absent from these pages for quite some time. His departure was related to his Great Pari-Mutuel Tribulation. Following a considerable pick 6 score, Dr. Fraud raised his bet, thinking in terms of “percentage of bankroll” and slowly pissed away most of his profits, in a remarkably short time. Before his bottom line had returned to its pre-pick 6 level, he decided to take an odyssey of reflection, in order to reconsider all his previous pronouncements on money management and betting psychology. He even considered renouncing his profession as horseplayer shrink. Now he’s back, and he has some stories to tell. He had asked to title this column “Pissing Away”, but the C&X Editorial Board rejected the title, on the grounds that it might be confused with various medical problems and get Dr. Fraud in trouble with the AMA.]
Money Management Clichés
By Sigmund Fraud, C&X Staff Psychiatrist
You’ve all heard this most prominent cliché: bet more when you’re winning and less when you’re losing. A variation on the cliché is the percentage-of-bankroll method. Most experts agree that any bet greater than 4 percent of bankroll is far too bold.
Let’s look at the 4-percent theory. If your bankroll is a hundred dollars, it means you can wager four bucks per race. If that same bankroll is a thousand, then you can wager $40. In order to wager $400, you would need a bankroll of $10,000.
A bankroll of $10,000 does not mean that you are holding that amount in your pocket. It means that you have that amount as an employable investment source, something that does not blend in with the mortgage money or food-and-vacation budget.
If you were to begin with a $100 bankroll and bet four per race, if the bankroll were to shrink to a lower plateau, say $50, you could only wager two bucks on each race. In theory, if the bankroll sunk to $25 you’d be betting a buck.
Money management theorists consider this method as a way of holding one’s own through a losing streak. I consider it prolonging the agony. If your bankroll has plunged to such a sorry depth, then it becomes necessary to reconsider the whole handicapping methodology you are using. On the other hand, if you are simply getting beat by a neck here and a head there and your handicapping is reasonable, you don’t want to be in a situation where you would break your slump at 30-1 but have such a puny amount of money on the horse that it provides neither consolation nor padding for the bankroll.
Let’s look at the other side. What if you are betting $40, with a thousand bankroll and you hit a pick 3 for $9,000. Suddenly you have a bankroll of $10,000. Does this mean you should suddenly hike the wager to $400, keeping the letter of the law for the 4-percent-of-bankroll method?
My friends, this would be utter foolishness. The $9,000 score did not come from a sudden surge in proficiency of handicapping. It may have been helped by a horse you did not want in the money getting blocked in the stretch. It may have been fueled by a poor start of another front runner that would have pressured your horse. No matter how brilliant your handicapping, one race or bet does not change your status and cannot suddenly mean you should pour such a higher amount of money through the mutuel machines.
Mark Cramer once wrote of the story of Barry Meadow finding himself behind by $18,000 at the Los Al harness meet. Cramer asked Meadow what he was going to do. Surely he should be reducing his bet. Meadow responded that he had reviewed his handicapping and found it to be no different than it had been from his previous winning years when he was supporting himself from his betting. He had also looked back at the meet in order to check whether strange trend had been altering the outcomes, a bias, hankypanky, or different horse colony. He’d found absolutely nothing different from previous meets.
Therefore, with cold analytical blood, Meadow decided to keep his bet at the same level. He eventually hit a few double digit winners and then mentioned to Cramer that if he had reduced his bet size, his winners would have helped his bankroll recovery. By the end of the meet he had broken even (in other words caught up from a significant deficit).
Following my own pick six score, I succumbed to a psychological situation I call invincibility. I did not raise my bet the whole nine yards, but I did suddenly add significantly to the amount of my wager. Following a noticeable erosion of my profits, my bet was still way above what it had been before hitting the pick six. But then, a new wrinkle in human psychology wove into the fabric of my mind. I began to bet with less boldness, shying away from certain longshots that I would have easily embraced at lower bet level. In other words, the bigger bets did not really represent a bolder betting strategy. I had been willing to take greater risks when my bets were at a lower amount.
The worst part of this all is that I am trained to see such frailties of human psychology and yet I could not stop what was happening. I had been hit hard by two gusts of winds from opposite directions: one a gust of overconfidence and the other one of meekness.
My colleagues in the profession would have argued that deep down inside I wanted to lose, a self-destructive trait they link to compulsive gamblers. That trait does exist, but I can testify that the vast majority of horseplayers really do want to win. A psychiatrist who has never bet on a horse cannot understand this reality.
By the time that 80 percent of my pick six profits had been eroded, I decided to take a long break with plenty of time for reflection. I went to a California beach, went surfing every day, and engaged in a few other activities which, as a family man, I cannot mention here, things that are entirely unrelated to the theme of the article. The point is: I took a total break from whatever life I was leading at the time, and the resulting reflection was just as total.
Following such inner searching, my conclusion is that no matter how capable we are of self-examination, the amount of our basic wager and its relation to our true comfort level has a great effect on how we handicap and how we bet, even when we are trying to follow some prescribed method of money management. The farther we stray from our comfort level, the more apt we will be to make subconscious mistakes.
In other words, any big score, with its psyche-altering consequences, carries with it the possibility that the winner will piss away his suddenly earned fortune. Following such a score, the amount of each wager and the frequency of bets should not change from what they were prior to the score. On the other side of the coin, if a player finds himself in the midst of a slump, he should neither press with bigger bets (a suicidal scenario) nor lower bets to a minute level.
However, if the losing streak is really a sign of poor handicapping, rather than lower the bet, the player should stop playing altogether and reconsider his handicapping methodologies, returning to the drawing board and handicapping platonically until some new discovery is made.
If a player has a few winners and then loses for several months, that has nothing to do with a losing streak. A losing streak implies that there has been some degree of consistency of winning prior to the reversal. A long string of losers, if it has not been preceded by regular winning, is the result of poor handicapping and a lack of both methodology and discipline.
If I can stop when I’m pissing away profits, then you should be able to stop and reflect for a long time before you start betting again, especially if your losing period is more than just a streak.

SMALL TRACK TURF SIRES
The Artisan Researcher
The great pedigree researcher Mike Helm once made a noteworthy discovery, and only he followed up on it. The turf sires that do so well at large racing circuits are not nearly as dependable at small tracks, where classy pedigree is not expected unless there has been a serious physical condition problem of the royally-bred horse.
On the other hand, small track turf winners seemed to have a whole new set of sires that, in many but not all cases, will not produce turf winners at large tracks. Helm decided to eliminate low-class racing from his pedigree stats, so as to not add clutter to his tallies.
I’ve decided to move in where Helm left off. In an effort to seek an edge in a time of diminishing advantages, we now unveil a list of small track turf sires that have produced unexpected winners, judged by mutuel prices of $12 and up. This handy alphabetical list may serve the small track player.
There is no way that we can accumulate a sire sample which would be large enough to point to an automatic wager. However this list may be used in two ways. First, if you already have found a particular redeeming past performance trait in the pps of a small track turf longshot, you would then consult the list. If the sire’s name pops up on this list, this would lend a few extra points of confirmation for the handicapping you’ve already done.
Second, even without redeeming traits of a particular horse, if you are playing a small track turf race and one of these sires pops up, it would indicate that you should throw the horse into your exotic mix.
So now let’s display this handy small track turf sire list. Note that an “s” means sprint distance.
Alphabet Soup
Anziyan
Barathea (Ire)
Blumin Affair
Bugatti Reef (Ire)
Canyon Creek
Chester House (had two turf wins on a single card)
Concerto
Confide (s)
Deputy Wildcat
Dixieland Band (what’s he doing here?)
Doc’s Leader
Double Honor (s)
Elusive Quality
Fly So Free
Flying Chevron
Flying Continental
Formal Gold
Fort Chaffee
Friendly Lover
Glitterman (s)
Halo’s Image
Helmsman
High Yield (reels off many longshot wins on sod)
Honor Glide
Inca Chief
Irish River (Fr)
Joe Who (Brz)
Lion Cavern
Macho Uno
Marlin
Middlesex Drive
Mizzen Mist (recent win cluster in routes)
More Than Ready
Nines Wild (s)
Partner’s Hero
Peaks and Valleys (recent win cluster, any distance ok)
Private Interview
Saint Ballado
Sandpit (Brz)
Sir Eric
Skimming
Sky Classic
Sunny’s Halo
Tactical Cat
Talk Is Money
Tribal Rule
Victorious
Wild Escapade (s)
Yes I’m Blue

C&X CAFÉ
Longshot Jockey Standings
Mark,
I'm coming off a great Saratoga meet. The first few days of the meet I wrote down the jockeys who brought home horses over 5 to 1 and then began to ride their coat tails. As the list grew I confined my plays to these jockeys going off at 10 to 1 or higher and incorperated the exacta as a place bet with a twist. Instead of the favorite, I saved with a jockey from my list going off at the lowest odds but not the post time favorite. Its been a month of box car payoffs and triple digit exacta's.
Frank
Mark responds:
Just to refresh everyone’s memory, for either longshot-jockey or trainer standings, at the beginning of a target meet, every time a horse wins at 5-1 or up, write down the name of the rider and trainer. As soon as any name comes up twice, it is considered to be “hot”. We use 5-1 or up in order to exclude winning horses that figured to win. We want only those that win when they were not supposed to. This tells us that either the rider or the trainer made the difference.
I’m more apt to apply this to trainers, but as we’ve often mentioned, at the beginning of unique meets you can get a hot apprentice or new face at a meet who’s riding a hot wave and we want to ride with him.
Shorter meets with target destinations are preferred. Oak Tree would be more interesting than Santa Anita, for example, since Oak Tree is shorter and less likely to go through different waves of hot and cold.
Both Saratoga and Del Mar are natural for this strategy, but Saratoga, or any other meet that specifically draws in people from other racing circuits is especially prone to the hot trainer or rider factor.
Frank has added his own twist to such tallies. That’s what it’s all about.
mc

NOTES FROM THE FRINGE
The next Secretariat?
Whenever a horse wins by 40 lengths, we need to sit up and take notice. Could we have a new star on the near horizon?
In fact, recently a race was won by 40 and ½ lengths (why bother to calculate the half?) at Ellis Park, but it is doubtful that the winner will be seen anywhere near Monmouth on Breeders’ Cup day.
Almost as rare as a 40-length margin of victory is the marathon race at an American track. The game is all about speed, and this influence is even spreading across the ocean, mainly through breeding programs that are already diminishing the average distance of races.
On September 3, third race, Ellis Park made a bizarre decision to card a race at the distance of 2 miles and a quarter. It was a starter allowance for horses that had started at least one race for $5,000 within the last two years. The race only attracted four horses, and appeared to have been written for one of the four, who eventually went off as the ½ favorite, but only managed to finish second.
The race was won by the 4-1 horse named Sir Dorset, by an incredible 40 ½ lengths. Remember that name right now because you may never see it again.
The Empire Strikes Back versus the Phantom Plunger
As most of you are aware, the Phantom Plunger, who is probably several different bettors, looks for a sure bet in a short field and places an enormous amount of money to show on this can’t-lose proposition. He feels he is assured of a $2.10 payoff which means a 5% gain within the space of a minute and twelve seconds. Sometimes such horses lose, and an eerie silence envelopes the grandstand.
The Phantom Plunger probably gains a perverse pleasure in impacting the pari-mutuel pool, and perhaps in causing the race track to lose money thanks to the mandatory 5% payout. The negative pool he creates would amount to something like a 1% payout if the true odds criteria were abided by. Race track managements do not appreciate negative pools, but they are usually impotent when facing the Phantom Plunger.
Not so at Suffolk Downs. On September 3, race eight, there was a six-horse stakes field for Massachusetts bred fillies and mares. I’ve heard of no show betting in four or five-horse fields but usually a six-horse field is exempt from such a Draconian measure.
In this case, faced with the 1/5 likely winner Ask Queenie, the Suffolk management not only canceled show betting but place betting was eliminated as well. The Phantom Plunger had been disarmed.
In this 1 1/16 turf race, Ask Queenie took the lead as expected. However, she was headed at the 6-furlong fraction. She eventually put away her challenger but a late runner was closing ground with great energy in the stretch. Ask Queenie prevailed by a half length and paid $2.20 to win.
The Phantom Plunger may have traveled all the way to Suffolk for nothing. The Empire had defeated one of its few viable opponents.
Polytrack: where’s the debate?
I am not usually intimidated. I don’t shy away from a debate. But when it came to polytrack and its variations of artificial surfaces, I now see that I was bombarded into silence by the constant flak of hype about the importance of horse safety. Who wants to speak up when it may seem like he is accepting the possibility of crippling injuries at the track. And when a horse breaks down, the jockey, a human being, is also at risk.
In an August column, Andrew Beyer wrote that “Some owners and trainers may be reluctant to criticize Polytrack because the company that makes the surface is half-owned by the Keeneland Association, whose racetrack and sales company make it one of the great powers in American racing.
“Nobody wants to rock the boat,” Baffert told Beyer. “You get vilified if you talk against Polytrack.”
It appears as if many Kentucky trainers and owners were quite pleased with the Polytrack and its variations at Keeneland and Turfway. However, there was a problem at Turfway with the surface “bawling up” in horses’ hooves during winter racing. The track intends to add more wax to the mixture, in order to eliminate the effect. Polytrack is made up of a combination of carpet fiber, recycled rubber bits, silver-coated sand and a polymer-based wax.
My first reaction to the new surface was positive. I have seen children’s playgrounds which use artificial surfaces of recycled rubber bits and other cushiony material, and these places seemed safer to me. This year’s Del Mar meet with the polytrack will have a better safety record than last year’s dirt meet that saw more than the average number of horses breaking down. However, one could also ask whether the Del Mar dirt surface could have made safer before the fateful summer of 2006. After all, dirt surfaces greatly vary from track to track, and I would expect that there could be an effective way of providing a more natural cushion for horses to run upon.
In other words, was it absolutely necessary to create artificial surfaces rather than re-engineering the dirt surfaces that have been with the sport for more than a century? Did horse breakdowns relate specifically to the surface or does the use of bute and other painkillers and muscle builders make thoroughbreds more vulnerable?
Where are the statistical comparisons between different dirt surfaces, for example. What if the dirt surface at a particular track has been especially effective in thwarting breakdowns? If so, what if the engineering of that surface could be applied to tracks where breakdowns have been more frequent?
These are questions that should be asked. There should be a debate on the subject. When Michael Dickenson spoke on the theme of artificial surfaces at the Expo, there was a feeling in the room that if you asked the slightest question, you’d get thwacked with a rod inscribed with the words IT’S THE SAFETY, STUPID. In fairness, Dickenson appeared profoundly concerned about rider and horse injuries.
Consider a similar argument with a much more substantial statistical advantage? What if I flashed the comparative traveler safety stats between trains and cars. Trains would win hands down. There is virtually a zero risk in train travel. The only fatality-causing accident I know of from California’s Metrolink was caused by a car. A guy wanted to commit suicide by parking himself in a car on the train track. At the last moment he got cold feet and jumped out, leaving the car on the track. You can guess what happened.
Compare the Metrolink safety record with SoCal traffic fatalities. There’s no contest. Every day of the year, motorists die on SoCal roads. Trains are safer by every standard applied. The French “fast train” has never had a fatality in its nearly three decades of service. Even the British railroads are safer than car traffic in Britain.
So if we were to apply the same Polytrack argument to commuting, then we should totally transform the commuter system, install train tracks on the freeways, and require all people who live near a commuter train station that would take them to their work to use the train instead of their car.
I happen to be a train lover, but this would be a preposterous proposal, even if safety statistics supported it entirely. The legal mandate for poly- or cushion tracks seems to be equally authoritarian.
One reason that little debate has occurred regarding the new artificial racing surfaces is that we horseplayers are not interested in debate, except if it will improve our return on investment. But many of us may eventually feel that betting the horses on the Polytrack transforms the game so much that it might become less attractive to make wagers.
Players may already be entering the debate as consumers. With cross country simulcasting we will be able to measure the impact of artificial racing surfaces on the game itself, precisely because players still have a choice.
This summer, players had a choice between betting on the artifical surface at Del Mar or the real dirt at Saratoga. I took six consecutive days of racing at both establishments and compared the handle, also including attendance as a variable. The days I chose were between August 29 and September 3.
During this period, Del Mar had the advantage of a huge pick 6 carryover while Saratoga probably has a certain advantage regarding the time difference. For players on the east coast, the Del Mar card begins after their bankroll has already been depleted. On the other hand, once the east coast tracks finish, Del Mar has a virtual OTB monopoly, with no big track competition.
For the normal racing days in my limited study, Saratoga’s mean attendance was about 10 percent higher than that of Del Mar. On one day, August 31, when both of these tracks had virtually identical attendance, the Saratoga handle outdid Del Mar by $800,000 rounded off, mainly due to off-track players. On none of the six days tallied did Del Mar handle outdo that of Saratoga. On four of the six days, Saratoga handle was more than a million higher than that of Del Mar.
Of course I do not have last year’s stats to compare with, when both tracks were running on real dirt, so we may not be learning a whole lot from the above stats. But I’ve heard an argument from a number of horseplayers, that if given the choice between playing a polytrack card or a regular dirt card, they would choose the dirt.
As players, we may find it rewarding during this transition period to adjust to the polytrack. First, we can favor horses that have already raced well on artificial surfaces. Second, we can add points for horses that have been working out reasonably well on the same artificial surface as today’s card. Third, we can automatically consider a favorite vulnerable if the surface is artificial and he has no race over that surface, and this would be especially true if he is a front runner. Finally, keep your own statistics on trainers and sires on the poly or cushion tracks. For example:
In the final week of Del Mar, there were four longshot debut winners over the artificial surface, paying 12.60, 15.80, 23.40, and 36.80. When something unusual happens, take note. The sires of these first-time-starter winners were, respectively: In Excess, El Correador, More Than Ready and French Deputy.

BENCHMARK: A CASE HISTORY
On November 23, 2006, the filly Kalamata, sired by Benchmark and bred in California, went into the fifth race at Hollywood Park with a 0 for 3 record in maiden races. She was switching from Santa Anita dirt to the Hollywood Park cushion track. Not only did she win at 7/2 but went into allowance nw1 and won her next cushion-track race at 7/2. The Kalamata left the artificial surface. She had back-of-field out-of-the-money finishes on the Santa Anita turf and dirt.
When the horses traveled across town for the Hollywood cushion track meet, Kalamata went off at 23-1. She left from the 10 post in an 11-horse field and led most of the way, finishing a close-up third: what we would call an overachieving performance. From the dirt to the artificial surface, her Beyer fig went from 58 to a career high 85.
Most surely the surface plays an important role in her performance, and thus it is vital to take note of her sire, Benchmark.
In the last week of Del Mar, leading up to the moment of this writing, Benchmark has produced two longshot winners on the artificial surface, one paying $18.60 and the other returning $58.20.
Wouldn’t you say that we have enough evidence that Benchmark should be considered a potent sire factor for Cal-bred horses racing on the artificial surface? It’s one thing to harbor feelings of nostalgia for the good old days on California dirt. But at the same time we need to collect every bit and piece of information that can help us during the transition period to the artificial surface.
Memorize the sire’s name: Benchmark.

POSTSCRIPT
I hope you’ve enjoyed this issue. Every time I ask myself why I’m doing this, I get back to the drawing board and truly enjoy exploring and writing about this infinite game. mc

C&X 43

CONTENTS
Scanning and Mining: Opposite Approaches
Odds Line Workshop I
Odds Line Workshop II
Revisiting Six Secrets of Successful Bettors
Who Beat Who?
Is the surface a bona fide handicapping factor?
Two Portraits on our Untitled “System”
Also-Eligible Vacations: Small Track USA
The Younger Brother System

EDITORIAL
SCANNING AND MINING:
OPPOSITE APPROACHES
Have you ever opened up the past performances and suddenly everything looked new and strange, as if you had never learned to handicap? The first horrific reaction is: “All these years of analyzing racing, and here I am beginning from scratch!”
After the initial shock, you might sense that this is a good thing, a rare chance to shed all preconceived notions. It could be the opportunity to enter a different mine and discover new and sparkling lode.
Mining the past performances involves approaching a race with a sense of discovery. At the same time it must be so detail oriented that it requires an investment in time. You are searching for an unknown comparable, something that might elevate an unexpected horse to the position of legitimate contender when cursory handicapping would have eliminated that same horse. Often in this process, the key to the discovery is found in an earlier race, way back when, and you discover that the last three, four or five races are really prep races leading up to THIS MOMENT.
Mining involves sifting through unrepresentative races, performance lines when a horse really had less of a chance than its inherent ability, as a result of a poor pace scenario, bad post, unrealistic level of competition, or the need to race into fitness and form.
Mining requires time for reflection. Everyday players may cut this process short by trying to handicap too many races with not enough time. Premature decisions are made, and the result is disaster, compounded by the fact that the discovery occurs after the race is over.
Taking a shortcut will usually bypass the mother lode. On the other hand, there is a structured process I call scanning, in which the player is looking only for three or four key factors which immediately pop off the page. Every handicapper will develop his or her own scanning method, but it must be based on rigorous findings and validated experience.
In my case, some of these best performing scan factors include:
Workout is faster or equal to the final real race times of the other horses …
Horse is lightly raced and facing proven losers at today’s class level …
Field is full of no-win trainer-rider combinations, excepting those of one or two horses …
Only one horse has a performance box advantage for distance/track/surface …
Once the horse is discovered, the handicapper has the right to intervene and readjust according to other factors, what we might call “filters”.
In successful scanning, the discovery happens before the analysis. In successful mining, the analysis occurs within an entirely open “mind shaft”.
The ideal scenario occurs when we can discover a delicate balance between the two opposite approaches, mining and scanning. But too often time imposes its horrible constraints, extraneous to racing itself: things intervene, like a salaried job, ignored children, mundane errands, a broken faucet, a needed oil change, or even a wife who would appreciate if we remembered our wedding anniversary.
In some of my best moments of horse betting, I have found the needed focus by having dumped the car, let the children run unattended, and forgotten my wife’s birthday (and my own as well).
Mining is probably the most effective method but it is the least efficient time-wise, and in most periods of our life, we may be obligated to adapt our own form of scanning.
If we do, it had better be based on rigorous findings and solid experience. Otherwise it can lead to disaster, for cutting corners has nothing really to do with structured scanning.

ODDS LINE WORKSHOP I:
THE BEVERLY D
This race was part of a Stakes Weekend so I imagine you either have or at least have seen and studied the past performances, so that we do not have to use precious space to reprint the pps.
The key to getting value in this race was to not overestimate the favorite, Citronnade. I made her 2-1 (33% chance). She had the best on-paper record, so I could have made her less than 2-1. If I had made her 3/2 (40% chance), for example, I would have had to take her at 2-1 on the board.
However, mainly, there were other very accomplished horses in the field, which would have to take away percentage points from Citronnade’s odds. Also, there was the nagging feeling that all so often the turf form of Southern California horses does not translate to success at other racing venues. No matter how good a horse may look, part of the probability of winning, as translated into odds, considers the potential an accident of nature, which in fact happened when Citronnade got banged by starting gate. On another afternoon, it might have been different for Citronnade.
And that, my friends, is the reason we make odds line, because this is not a deterministic game. The rudimentary functioning of the odds line calls for no bet unless you get 50% higher on the board than on your odds line. That estimated 50% is the edge, what is referred to as an overlay. Why not 30% or 20%: because the odds line is not a precision instrument, and we are obligated to play it on the safe side. So, in keeping with this formula, which I learned from Barry Meadow and Dick Mitchell, I could not take Citronnade unless I got 3-1.
The next probable winner was Honey Ryder, with proven class and Gomez to guide her. By making her 3-1 (requiring 9/2 for a bet, as I noted on the Stakes Weekend line), I had effectively “eliminated” this mare from a bet, without eliminating her from being a contender. She deserved points for having raced competitively against the best turf boys. However, I had noticed that this great mare had defeated the consistent Safari Queen by a length while ROYAL HIGHNESS had defeated the same Safari Queen twice, by 5 and by 3. Furthermore, previous to these talented performances, Royal Highness had lost by half length to Safari Queen, so I wrote on the C&X website that she had the look of an improving horse.
My exact words were:
“This is the longshot possibility. There are signs that this German-bred mare is getting better. She knows how to travel and win.”
Who beats who is not a dominating handicapping factor, so I could not use Safari Queen to throw out Honey Ryder, who, after all, had finished second to none other than English Channel while beating out Better Talk Now. In any case, Honey Ryder went off at 2-1, way below the 9/2 I needed.
I wanted to make Royal Highness the third choice on my personal odds line but there was also Lady of Venice, from the same trainer-owner combo that had two consecutive victories in this same Beverly D Stakes. Lady of Venice was 7 for 10 lifetime. At first, Lady of Venice stood out like a first choice, based on her win-type character. However, she would be coming from off the pace in an event whose pace did not chart to be fast.
The kicker for me was that trainer Biancone was being investigated after snake venom (a doping substance?) was found in a refrigerator at his stable. That information, along with the pace factor, caused me to demote Lady of Venice to 4-1 on my personal odds line, requiring 6-1 for a play. No way was I gonna get 6-1.
But with the above three horses getting points, and Irridescence also having some chance, which means some points in the line, I could only make Royal Highness 9/2, which, I noted, would require 7-1 minimum odds.
As we have often repeated, any horse that’s 6-1 or less on a personal odds line is considered a contender. Each and every contender could turn out to be a bet, if that contender’s track odds are 50% or more above its line odds. In the same way that you might purchase a house that was your fourth choice because it is a better bargain, rejecting your top three because the price is not right, you can also pick a fourth choice in a horse race.
I was not so sure what Royal Highness’s odds would be but figured there was a good chance for a play. At 9-1, she was 100% over the 9/2 personal line odds I had given her, clearly reason to bet her to win, and also to key her in exotics.
Basically, I had been studying the odd spacing of races for Royal Highness (which implied that only now was she really ready). I had also remembered her Euro class, and had seen marked improvement in her previous two tries. The fact that she was not coming back after a layoff, after having had so many layoffs in the past, was a sign that finally, her condition problem (whatever it was) had disappeared.
What I am trying to illustrate here is the thought process: how pluses and minuses in “narrative language” form are “translated” into probabilities, and thus percentages. Numbers on an odds line are simply representations of logic, so there is nothing mysterious about it. It is not mechanical numbers crunching. It is artistic attribution of a number to an idea.
For this reason we call it a personal odds line, and that means that we are dealing with a balance between artistic intuition and the weighing of objective factors. It also means that three professional line makers might come up with three different lines for the same race. It has nothing to do with determinism.

ODDS LINE WORKSHOP II:
“THEY ONLY BET WHEN THEY HAVE AN EDGE”
The quote comes from the book Six Secrets of Successful Bettors (see later article in this issue) and is the fundamental principle behind the personal odds line, which lately, people have been calling a “value line”.
Let’s look at the Alabama. We did this race for the Stakes Weekend so you will have studied the pps.
My personal odds line read as follows:
Lear’s Princess, 7/2. Need 5-1.
Lady Joanne, 4-1. Need 6-1.
Octave, 4-1. Need 6-1.
Panty Raid, 4-1. Need 6-1.
If you have a horse at 4-1 on your value line and he’s going off at 4-1, this is not only a no-value bet but it is also an underlay. The reason is simple. Odds of 4-1 on the board are really odds of 9/2 by the public, since the board odds reflect the track takeout as it artificially diminishes the public odds on each horse.
This is precisely the reason why the minimum odds we need are boosted higher than the odds on our value line. The minimum odds we need in order for a bet reflects the minimum amount that would be considered an edge over the public. This edge could be an information edge (we know something the public has not fully digested or is unaware of) or an analytical edge (we are “clever” enough to use the available information in a different way).
As the pro player Barry Meadow has said, “You cannot bet unless you feel you have an advantage. I have never had any problems sitting out races because I’m not going to play unless I believe I have an advantage. If you have no advantage, you can’t bet. So that’s the most important thing.”
What would Barry have done?
Now let’s consider the final tote odds for our four contenders.
Lear’s Princess was a hard 9/2 and we needed 5-1.
Lady Joanne was 9/2 and we needed 6-1.
Octave was 5/2 and we needed 6-1.
Panty Raid was 2-1 and we needed 6-1.
Both Lear’s Princess and Lady Joanne we horses I projected to improve and both had finished exactly a half length behind Octave in different races. Never mind that the Beyer figs were different for those races. Octave runs ‘em all alike and can be used as a dependable yardstick. The difference in my line was that I had projected Lear’s Princess to improve slightly more than Lady Joanne, because LP had only raced four times in her entire career.
In theory, there should have been no bet. But one could summon the rationale that this could be a smaller “action” bet, since there was an advantage on Lear’s Princess (though less than the minimum required odds). According to some pros, action bets serve to keep the player in rhythm, concentrating on what’s happening, and learning more for later opportunities.
Barry’s response:
“I never make an action bet. You can learn something from watching the race. You don’t have to make a bet on every race.”
If you had watched the race, you’d have seen that Octave had a terrible trip, and there was even a steward’s inquiry investigating whether Lady Joanne had come in on Octave blocking her path. If that inquiry had been certified as legitimate, Lear’s Princess would have been declared the winner.
You may ask, well, just how accurate was Cramer’s odds line? After all, Octave may have been the best horse after all.
True, but when you have such evenly matched horses and you know that trouble can happen in a race, all these things affect the probabilities, and the probabilities are what translate into odds.
The big question
The most significant question here is whether or not we should have bet Lear’s Princess anyway. You could argue that Lear’s Princess could have gone back up to a playable 5-1 in the final odds which are posted after the start of the race. She was that near being a value bet! In essence, she was going off at clearly above my value line.
A similar question was posed to Barry Meadow at the Handicapping Expo. Meadow is the person who is most responsible for bringing the personal odds line to the forefront as an important strategy that unifies handicapping with money management, and usually takes the anguish out of decision making. In the case of Lear’s Princess, we had the only existential dilemma faced by players who make their value line.
Meadow responded (and I paraphrase from my notes) that there will always be other bets and that we should not tamper with our line. In no circumstance would he fudge the line, he explained, and bet on a horse that was not providing the minimum acceptable odds. And he would have no regrets if that horse won, because he knows that more often than not, it would lose, and in the long run, he wants a real and meaningful edge before betting on a race.
But I am not such a purist. I played Lear’s Princess, primarily because I suspected that some C&X readers would play the horse, using the spirit of the law and not the letter of the law, and I did not want to end up in an arrogant position of declaring, “You see, you shouldn’t have played her!”
I did what Barry Meadow recommends. The greater the edge, the bigger the bet. So in this case, the edge was slim and I reduced the size of my wager. The filly was well-meant and alive, and I feel, even in the narrowest of defeats, that she was a good play.
I’m happy to have chosen a race in which all seven horses had some sort of chance to win. It was a challenge in making the odds line. It was only at the last moment that I reduced Lear’s Princess from 4-1 to 7/2. She certainly did improve a great deal, if you consider her previous Beyer figs.
So I lost a bet but I feel vindicated in the process. The line prevented me from playing the more obvious two horses.
PS. For exacta players, the only two horses that were above my value line odds, Lady Joanne (4-1 my line; 9/2 at post time) and Lear’s Princess, combined for a reasonably generous $57 exacta payoff. Back to Barry Meadow, he also uses a line on exactas and other exotics, based on an acceptable-odds grid. He will exclude underlay combinations. On paper his procedure really looks good, but as a slow thinker, I have not been able to do it in practice. Too many combinations to scan and act upon, especially when you have to wait ‘til the last moment to bet. However, Meadow’s concept is right on target and has certainly allowed me to be more selective and restrictive in my exacta play. Just eyeballing it, if you considered my four contenders as roughly equal, you’d have seen a significant odds differential: that the exacta combinations with Octave or Panty Raid were paying much less than the one with Lady J and Princess L. The concept behind Meadow’s procedure is to bet only the overlay combinations. When you see all your contenders with equal odds, it’s much easier to see which combinations are the overlays.
Or, as the late Dick Mitchell declared, always putting his money where his mouth was, “if you think several horses have an equal chance, just play the highest combinations in the exactas.”
For more on these ideas, check out Meadow’s Money Secrets at the Race Track (TR Publishing). Also see Steve Fierro’s works.

REVISITING SIX SECRETS OF SUCCESSFUL BETTORS
Written and compiled by Frank R. Scatoni and Peter Thomas Fornatale and published by the DRF Press, this volume will have a long shelf life in the Cramer household. It is one of those books where new things are discovered with each reference.
We can reprint the six “secrets” here without giving away the substance of the book, since each secret is pretty much public domain, and within each secret, the book goes into varying points of view, and sometimes radically conflicting arguments from some of the best players in the USA, including several previously interviewed or profiled by the C&X and the previous C&O Reports: Andrew Beyer, Steve Davidowitz, Brad Free, Len Friedman, Dave Gutfreund, Barry Meadow, James Quinn, and others we have referred to on these pages.
Sifting through the variety of opinions of these players is a real treat and always provokes new thoughts within the reader’s horseplayer consciousness.
The six secrets are:
They’re not really gamblers; they’re entrepreneurs whose business is betting;
They make the best use of available resources & process information in an elegant way;
They only bet when they have an edge;
They manage their money to maximize their advantage;
They know how to handicap themselves;
They know how to handle their emotions as well as their money.

(I’m pleased to list the last two, for they vindicate the reasoning behind my book of fiction, Scared Money, which also refers to the other four qualities. For example, the story “Bumps and Grinds” is about a real player who actually follows these principles long before they were published as such, with a disturbing ending about the human consequences of a successful return on investment.)
I have used bold letters for “process information in an elegant way” to highlight that ten players can use the exact same information with eight of them losing, one of the breaking even, and only one of them ending up with a positive bottom line. In other words, we cannot underestimate the artistic component of betting the races, as it interacts with objective analysis. Furthermore, it is good to see that handicapping itself (processing information) is given an important role at a time when many authors are emphasizing how to construct tickets.
In keeping with the pragmatic “function” of my own work of fiction, I would like to take special note of the fifth “secret”, which may be the least understandable for most players. I have called this one the existential component of horse betting. Authors Scatoni and Fornatale have synthesized the complex fabric of opinions within this section, with their introduction, as reproduced here:
Handicapping is both an art and a science. Like art, it’s purely subjective – some aspects of the game, like pace or paddock inspection, have more or less importance depending on the type of player you are.
[And for this reason, C&X calls it a “personal” odds line.]
Like science, there are certain immutable laws, or hard-and-fast facts, that can’t be ignored when you’re handicapping a race – like how fast a horse is, or a trainer’s record with turf horses. It’s the handicapper’s job to mix art with science in order to pick winners and profit from those selections over the long haul. This chapter concerns itself with the subjective aspect of the game, i.e., the proficiency with different elements of handicapping that each player brings to the table.
Since there are so many elements to handicapping and betting, it’s important to figure out which of those elements of the game work best for you. How long should you take to handicap? Should you go to the track or stay at home and play on the computer? Should you bet exactas and trifectas or stick to sequential bets like pick threes and pick fours?
[Or, as C&X adds, should you stick to the straight pools?]
Is it better to play dirt or turf? Is it okay to make action bets? All successful gamblers have a comprehensive approach toward handicapping and betting that works best for them – and that’s why they’re able to win in the long run.
This isn’t something you can figure out right away – it takes years to understand all the nuances of the game, and then to figure out which elements you understand more than others – and most important, it takes courage and fortitude to be honest with yourself, especially when you’re losing and making mistakes. There are so many different ways to play the game that you need to be systematic and honest with yourself in figuring out what works best for you.
As Dave Gutfreund said, “Self-analysis is the key to success.”
The authors are so convinced that this is the core of what is needed, that they passionately repeat their assertion, and you can count the number of times they use the word “honest” in order to understand the enormous weight of opinion from the majority of players they interviewed:
There’s no sense in playing this game if you can’t sit back after a long day of racing and analyze your play. If you can’t learn from your mistakes or accentuate your strengths, then there is just no way you can be a winning horseplayer. In horse racing, honesty really is the best policy. If you are deceiving yourself – either in terms of your handicapping ability, your proficiency at making smart bets, or your money ledger at the end of a meet – then you’re destined to the poorhouse. To win consistently over time, you need to be honest and analytical about the way you play the game. As Dave Gufreund aid, “Be aware of what you’re doing. Handicap yourself.”
These pages from Six Secrets of Successful Bettors validate the oft-preached method in C&X where each player should keep a diary called the Book of Why (an idea that originally came from a subscriber). In the Book of Why, for each bet, you note the reason for the bet: both handicapping reason and what led to the betting decision. You accumulate a digest of “reasons” and then you easily see where your reasoning is good, where it’s bad, and where it’s simply irrelevant.
The subtitle of this worthy Six Secrets of Successful Bettors is Winning Insights into Playing the Horses.
If you’ve already read this book, please send your own review opinions to C&X.

WHO BEAT WHO? AND THE DISCOURAGEMENT FACTOR
In the Stakes Weekend notes, in reference to Papi Chullo entry in the Iselin at Monmouth, I wrote:
“By the way, there’s an interesting handicapping lesson to be learned from the Iselin at Monmouth. In the Whitney at Saratoga, the red hot Papi Chullo was too overmatched, and essentially is dropping to a more proper level. But sometimes, horses become discouraged when asked to run their eyeballs out against superior competition when they are at their peak. Then they drop and lose their competitive instinct.”
Sure enough, Papi Chullo went off as the 2-1 second choice and ran sixth.
In the past I have often referred to trainers who mention to me that they are dropping a horse in order to restore his courage. I’ve often referred to examples where such droppers win at a price.
It stands to reason that if you place a horse above his normal position in the pecking order, he could become discouraged and that could affect future performances.
The most-maligned factor
In reference to the same Iselin, the winner of that event illustrates the evolution of a handicapping factor.
Who beat who was once a primary factor among handicappers. Then they learned about the form factor (performance cycle), the pace factor, and the trip factor, all three of which could easily reverse an order of finish. The “who-beat-who” factor gradually lost prominence, and has often been pooh-poohed by the cleverest of experts.
Today, if I were to get up in front of an audience and mention the significance of the who-beat-who factor, I’d be laughed off the stage. And yet, last week’s 9-1 Beverly D winner, as we noted, had defeated the same horse twice, and by a larger margin, than the well-bet Honey Ryder.
Of course, who beat who is not a playable factor at low odds. But when it leads to an overlay, why not? In the Iselin, there was another illustration of this factor, in Gotcha Gold, who had defeated Lawyer Ron in the Grade 3 Salvator by a neck. Lawyer Ron had then gone on to dominate a decent field in the Whitney, where the same Papi Chullo had been outrun.
Whenever you beat a horse that goes up in class and wins, you’d better think you’d have a chance next time out. Regarding Gotcha Gold, the crowd did not value the fact that Gotcha Gold had defeated one of the “who’s who” members of racing’s horse establishment, and GG went off at 15-1, partly due to the over-exuberant action on Papi Chullo.
I had tried my best to demote Lawyer Ron’s Whitney performance based on the fact that it was a biased track favoring close up runners, L. Ron being one of them. Not being the best of Monmouth handicappers, and fearing that Lawyer Ron’s victory in the Whitney was a circumstantial study in opportunism, I decided to not get all worked up about Gotcha Gold, and passed the race. Gotcha Gold won, paying $32.30.
However, two good lessons should be duly noted. Once more, the discouragement factor was validated, and once again, the “who-beat-who” factor, when in the context of overlay odds, was not as shabby as the experts have made it out to be.
In the past, I felt that class was the most-maligned factor. Today, class is still not a subject that you’ll hear a lot about at horse race seminars, but it is making a mild comeback in the collective minds of handicappers.
Who beat who, on the other hand, seems to have been maligned so much by the smartasses as to now be reborn as a strategic handicapping factor.

IS THE SURFACE A BONAFIDE HANDICAPPING FACTOR?
When you hear the experts talk about primary handicapping factors, surface is never one of them. Back when turf pedigree was an unused factor, the turf itself, for me, became a dominant factor. That was during a window of time that lasted about 7 years.
Now, another window has opened up. Synthetic surface has become a primary factor. Leading up to the Pacific Classic, experts were murmuring that Lava Man would not be helped by the Del Mar synthetic surface because he races too close to the lead and this new surface is not kind to early runners.
Until the Pacific Classic, Lava Man had been near perfect in SoCal, we can now say following his failure that it is not geography alone that had led to his excellence, and that race track surface could also lead to a mediocre performance.
I had noted that AP Xcellent, under normal circumstances, would have been a lone-front-runner candidate, but on the Del Mar synthetic track, no horse wanted to inherit the lead, even at slower fractions.
Now we learn, after the race, that the $48.40 winner Student Council was purchased privately prior to this big race by Ro Parra precisely because of the advice of Jerry Brown, or Thoroughgraph, based on the horse’s previous good efforts on the polytrack. Suddenly, the surface factor becomes the core of a major equine investment.
Another similar story “surfaced” with the longshot third place finisher, the French horse, Hello Sunday. HS seemed to have been going absolutely nowhere in the USA after a half dozen mediocre performances, until he switched to the Del Mar synthetic surface and won impressively.
Student Council’s trainer, Vladimir Cerin went into the race with 20 percent victories for the year. Within that broad stat, going into the Pacific Classic, Cerin had 86 races on synthetic surfaces with 26 percent winners and a roi of $2.80 for each $2 bet. That’s a 40 percent roi. That stat would have made Cerin qualify by my still questionable automatic trainer research (other trainers in the same race would also have qualified).
The point is that synthetic surfaces are radically changing the game. I have gone and interviewed a few French race track managers to get their take on their own synthetic surfaces. The consensus is that such surfaces are safer when you confront bad weather. For this reason, Deauville, in Normandie, has a synthetic surface for winter dirt racing. However, they do not seem to think it makes any difference in good weather.
I am prompted to wonder why an emporium like Del Mar, where it never rains, should have a synthetic surface to begin with. We’d have to look back at two decades of horse injury records at Del Mar and compare them with parallel records from other tracks, in order to discern whether this track really needed a change of surface.
I have heard Michael Dickenson’s impassioned plea, in the name of safety, for such synthetic surfaces, but he trains on the east coast, where the weather is much more volatile. The racing industry needs to publish comparative statistics on horse injuries, as well as jockey injuries resulting from horse breakdowns.
In the meantime, the synthetic surface in itself has become a primary handicapping factor. The game will never be the same.

TWO PORTRAITS OF OUR UNTITLED “SYSTEM”
In last month’s issue, I purposely left the researched trainer system untitled. In fact, the title of the article asked for your research samples, implying that we needed more study and more observation.
The Stakes Weekend that included the Pacific Classic and the Alabama illustrates the dilemma of this research.
Let’s take two snapshots of the system, using both of these races, in order to study how our research can evolve.
In the Alabama, three of the seven horses were eliminated. The trainers had no flat-bet-profit specialty categories, at least not combined with the required minimum 15 percent hit rate within those specialties. Horses eliminated were Moon Catcher, Tough Tiz’s Sis, and Octave. Octave did not have enough days off to qualify within one of Pletcher’s few positive lay-1 categories.
That left four horses. The trainer of Lear’s Princess, McLaughlin, qualified in every specialty category. For example: Dirt: 505 .23 $2.27 and Route: 380 .19 $2.31. Lady Joanne’s trainer, Nafzger qualified under Routes: 89 .21 $3.04 and Won Last Start: 24 .25 $2.07. Two other horses qualified.
By the tentative rules, you would have had to invest $8 betting each of the four qualifiers to win. Lady Joanne paid $11.00, so there was a profit. But the great dilemma here is that we cannot presume a flat-bet-profit over the long term in races where we must play more than half the field.
The exacta paid $57. The box of the four would have cost $24.
A similar circumstance emerged in the Pacific Classic. There were 12 horses in the field and only four could be eliminated by the research parameters: Lava Man, Alberto Maximus, Salty Humor, and Arson Squad.
That means you would have had to make win bets on the remaining eight horses, for a $16 basic investment. The return was $48.80.
The exacta box of eight horses would have cost $112. The return was $355.20.
In viewing these two snapshots, we must ask if there could have been an extra factor to shave down the number of qualifying horses, or, if a long-term extended picture of the “system” would show that it is indeed profitable to play so many horses. The question is: were these two races typical or atypical within this system. I suspect that they are typical in some ways, but atypical in the average payoffs of the winners.
Thus, my initial suspicion is that this method looks like it would encounter serious difficulties during periods when low priced horses are dominating.
Another atypical aspect of the snapshots is the number of qualifying trainers. These were top end stakes races, and therefore collected some of the most successful trainers. In more ho-hum fields we might expect there would be a greater number of unprofitable trainers, and thus fewer qualifiers. This seems like good news.
I could churn through more samples, but it seems that at this point, the independence of the samples is necessary, so it is best to receive samples from people without any vested emotional interest.
The above two races might be illustrative of what we would get in the Breeders’ Cup. Tote-blasting longshots Thor’s Echo and Miesque’s Approval both qualified by this system.
One thing for sure. Previous C&X research has shown that higher percentage trainers get more of their fair share of longshot winners while lower percentage trainers get less than their fair share of longshots in the winners’ circle. This new research can gain energy from the earlier findings. But ultimately, we may need one more filter.

SMALL TRACK USA:
ALSO-ELIGIBLE VACATIONS
This trip has two sources of inspiration. First, my own cross country race track voyage by car, a number of years ago, that took me to Finger Lakes, Penn National, Charles Town, Fairmount and Albuquerque, plus a few other tracks that were not racing. And then, my more recent French race track tour, by bicycle. (See the previous C&X.)
French country tracks are in a sad state, barely surviving with subsidies based on the rationale of historical heritage. Small track USA, on the other hand, is thriving, partly thanks to slot machines, another sad state of affairs in which mindless coin chuckers in a capital intensive industry subsidize one of the last labor intensive industries to survive in the USA: the race tracks. But even before the incursion of the slots, these tracks have been survivors and have kept the sport alive at its most primeval level.
What I would like to plan, in the future, is a bicycle trip from one live racing venue to another, defying the trend towards at-home wagering. (If we were ever able to organize a group tour of C&X readers, I’d be willing to cheat and take a charter bus.) For both bicycle or charter bus purposes, it would be in our interest to find the maximum concentration of race tracks. This is a daunting geographical task that would force us into a northeastern geographic preference, even though we love places like New Mexico and the Northwest.
The methodology
In search of a most intense racing experience, not only did I look for the densest concentration of American small tracks but also areas where we could attend the Tbreds by day and then find solace at the harness races by night.
Not only did this task require map checking but also date validation, for there’s no sense in hopping from one track to another if most of them are closed. I needed to choose a time of the year when contiguous racing venues would be open simultaneously.
The region I chose is between west central New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio. The optimal season is early August. When all eyes gaze upon Saratoga, Del Mar and Monmouth, we would be discovering the more discreet pleasures of $2,500 claimers non-winners of two races lifetime.
The handicapping method is reduced to its basics. Find race conditions that attract proven losers (nw2 lifetime, nw1 in last 6 months, etc.) and then play the lightly raced horse that is not a proven loser.
The voyage would begin at Canandaigua in the beautiful Finger Lakes region of New York, where we would also savor some underappreciated local wines with our meals. In the first race of the inaugural FL card on May 23, 1962, Pure Village won a 6 furlong event in 1:17.3, certainly a final time that brings sighs of nostalgia. In 1981, Fio Rito, FL’s all-time champion, surprised the racing world by winning the Whitney Stakes at Saratoga. Fio Rito won 19 of 27 races at Finger Lakes. Fio Rito is the only horse to be buried under the Finger Lakes infield. The newest innovation at FL came in 2002; since then, Finger Lakes trainers can take their horses for swimming therapy with a fine backside facility.
I’ve measured 50 miles between Finger Lakes and Batavia Downs, America’s oldest lighted harness track. It’s doable by bicycle, but I might not make it until the late double. By our chartered bus it would be an easy trip. The best strategy would be for our group to stay over for a second day of racing at FL, and those of you who wish to make it to Batavia by bicycle would set off in leisurely fashion in the morning, over flat farming country, getting there early enough to pick up a program and study the evening’s card, then meeting up with the group bus in time for first post.
Thanks to elegantly banked turns, the half-mile Batavia Downs does not punish trotters and pacers on the outside. Speed has become the primary factor, as the stone-dust surface has been running exceedingly fast of late. Handicappers will have to contend with the Bill Gates of Batavia, driver James Morrill Jr., who gets nearly 40 percent winners. The next best driver has 17 percent wins.
After a night of trying to beat James Morrill, we’ll get a well-deserved rest. Perhaps they can put us up at nearby Attica. It will be only about 35 miles from Batavia to Fort Erie race track over the river from Buffalo, in Ontario, so those of us insisting on cycling can have time for an early breakfast and still make it in time for the early double.
The winner of the inaugural race at Fort Erie in 1897 received a purse of $300. Today’s bottom-of-the-barrel purses have not increased with the pace of inflation, nor with the fall of the Canadian dollar.
The infield at Fort Erie looks like a botanical garden. It’s picturesque, to say the least, pervaded by 19th century romanticism. Ask a horse named Puss N Boots, who once chose to jump the rail during a race and head to the misty infield lake for a swim.
It’s a mile track with a seven furlong turf course. Given the varied racing and beautiful surroundings, we will be tempted to remain here for at least two days of racing. If we do, we can take our charter bus in the evening to nearby Buffalo Raceway in Hamburg, New York, where we will be hounded again by driver James Morrill Jr., whose win percentage dips all the way down to 34%.
Following our two days at Fort Erie, we’ll have to travel 175 miles to reach Thistledown for day Tbreds and Northfield for night harness around an intimate half mile track. I’m not sure how I can get the distance on my bike without holding up our C&X charter bus. At least Thistledown is to the east and not the west of Cleveland.
In order to not to force our bus taking group to miss two whole days of action, the bus could leave Fort Erie and travel 35 miles west on the way to Cleveland, stopping off for dinner at the Cattaraugus Indian reservation, where we will find hotels, dinner, and most important, betting action. With daylight saving time and the late August sunset, those of us on bicycles should be able to handle the 35 miles in time for a good dinner.
That would leave 140 miles to Thistledown.
The next morning the bus can take our group to the dog track OTB in Erie, Pennsylvania, a 60 mile bike ride over flat terrain. Those of us on bicycle can pedal leisurely and make it there in time for the California races and dinner. Naturally, if the forecast is for rain, we will not be stricken with machismo and will willingly pack our bikes in the bus and forego the ride.
The next early morning challenge will be to make it all the way 80 miles to Thistledown. None of us will be required to bike it. At the slightest sign of a drizzle or heat wave, I’ll surely wilt and decide to hop on the bus.
But there is an incentive for making it there on two wheels: the evening races at Northfield harness and then, the next day, a full-course lunch at Thistledown’s Silks Restaurant, with a panoramic view of the track. My incentive for such a calorie-burning trip is the right to partake of the full menu: breaded Portobello slices as a starter, followed by an antipasto salad, then filet of halibut served on an onion role with cole slaw, and to top it off, the Chef’s hot apple pie a la mode. I’m afraid that the Cleveland vineyards do not measure up to the Finger Lakes variety, but we’ll ask for a nearby New York-bred wine, which is the closest thing to consuming locally.
Northfield Park is now celebrating its 50th anniversary. Its inaugural race was won by driver Bill Popfinger with his Bunter’s Boy trotting the mile in kitschy time of 2:12. Harness racing began in the Cleveland area in the 1850s, with purses ranging from $40 to $100. It hasn’t gotten much better today. Back then a newspaper called the Daily True Democrat decried the association of the criminal element with harness racing. Today, you can’t get any newspaper to pay attention to the trotters and pacers, and even bad publicity would be better than none. Yet, Northfield attracts a faithful crowd of regulars.
Northfield is 15 miles southeast of Cleveland, with Thistledown only 5 miles up the road in the direction of Cleveland. I am trying to time our arrival in Thistledown for early August 2008, so that we will be able to partake of a seasonal pattern match.
Consider these mid-August 2007 stats. At this writing, trainer Mark Doering has sent 14 horses to post with 8 winners, 1 place and 1 show. We love those stats where the wins outnumber the places and shows combined. The only other trainer to come near is Jevon D. Crumley, with 29 7-3-3.
The name Doering is more dominant in the southeast Cleveland area than James Morrill is at Buffalo and Batavia. Owners Mark, Ned and David Doering have had 8 horses start, with 4 wins, a place and a show. The Doering & McCoy Stables has had four winners in five starts. We’re hoping that within a calendar year of this writing, if our dream trip materializes, we will be able to play the Doering seasonal pattern match. Call it horse race futures analysis.
The next leg of our odyssey is Mountaineer Park. Who needs to go to Venice, Florence and the Riviera when we have the racing renaissance at Thistledown and Mountaineer! Until now we’ve had to confront the dominant trainer factor. But only 75 miles east of Thistledown and definitely within bicycling distance, Mountaineer Park is the house of trainer parity. During the month leading up to the writing of this article, I tracked my longshot trainer standings at Mountaineer. All trainers with 5-1 winners and up were noted. There were 67 winning horses at $12 and up, divided amongst 52 different trainers! Only a few of these trainers were repeat longshot winners. Only one had 3 wins at 5-1 or up.
And then there are the chosen two, the Mountaineer trainer exacta combination, who achieved four longshot winners each within the tested month of racing. Mark these names down if you play Mountaineer. William N. Martin and J. Edwin Shilling. Aside from these two guys, longshot parity reigned as well within the trainer and also the rider community. No Hollendorfer-Baze combination to contend with.
As of now, and also on our dream racing voyage we can make our bankroll right by playing William N. Martin and J. Edwin Shilling, for these guys also have the trainer power profile: high win percentage coupled with more wins compared with places plus shows. Within this snapshot in time:
William N. Martin: 41 13-3-4
J. Edwin Shilling: 20 7-5-1
In other words, a trainer could run up a high win percentage with a steady diet of 4.40 horses. But in the case of these two guys, their horses dominate and they do so when not expected to.
At this juncture our voyage becomes geographically challenged. We are only 35 miles away from night racing at The Meadows, outside of Pittsburgh. Like most 5/8 tracks, and contrary to popular logic, post 5 at The Meadows is the place to be, with better than a 19% win rate. Compare that to the next best stat, the rail: 16.7%. At this and other 5/8 tracks, the stat falls off a cliff after post 5. Post 6 gets 7.9% wins. This is not an anomaly. Post 5 has the extraordinary advantage of being in a position where the driver has a bit of time to decide whether “to go” or to tuck in with cover.
But after The Meadows, which way do we go? As a wimpy bicycle rider, am I willing to stretch out? It would be 226 miles to the fabled Penn National or 227 miles to one of my favorite all-time small tracks, Charles Town Races in West Virginia. I would vote for the more intimate CT, even though there’s no turf course. I love the countryside around Penn National, but within five miles of Charles Town we find John Brown’s claim to fame, Harpers Ferry, one of the most beautiful riverside sites in the USA, with well-preserved colonial architecture at the junction of two raging rivers: the Shenandoah and the Potomac. We’d be closing in on D.C. but we’d still be light years outside the Beltway. A tow path follows the Potomac into Washington, easy bicycling with no automobiles to worry about.
At Charles Town we will discover a veteran still training. We would have expected his hear to have been carved onto Mount Rushmore by now. It is none other than King Leatherbury. A more recent historic trainer figure who is not afraid to stoop down to this level is Scott Lake. But some lesser-known trainers are even more playable: David Wells, winning at a 50% clip, Christopher Grover (19 8-3-3) and Stephanie Beattie (42 11-9-5). The perpetual get-the-job-done trainer at a high win rate is Jeff Runco. Not many folks have heard of him outside this area, but he is one of the most competent trainers in the country. Then we have high-percentage riders like J.D. Acosta and Gerald Almodovar can help us keep well.
Can this dream voyage come to fruition? Perhaps. But in the meantime, we can live the trip RIGHT NOW, since these and other great small track America venues are available at most simulcasting outlets. You can download the pertinent trainer and rider information from the track websites before you play, and then employ the “lightly-raced versus proven losers” methodology. It’s a two step process. Eliminate all low-percentage trainers, and then employ basic nuts-and-bolts handicapping. In a race carded for non-winners of 2 lifetime, certainly the 1-for 5 horse, though with poor recent prep lines that followed a layoff, will be a better play than the 1-for-22 horse that, even when in perfect form, will inevitably hang in the stretch.

THE YOUNGER BROTHER SYSTEM
I’ve witnessed first hand how a younger brother (mine) benefits from the trials and errors of the older brother (me). The older brother is the guinea pig of the family. Most parents know absolutely nothing about raising a kid. Parenting is the most difficult profession in the world, and the only one that requires no training. The first child should be called the training child, or the prep child.
The younger brother is well-positioned to learn from the older one. My brother, for example, never took the stupid risks that I did.
Apprentice Alonso Quiñonez is a younger brother well-positioned to provide us with future betting profits. In the past, I’ve had the good fortune to exchange a few happy words with the older brother, the accomplished rider Luis Quiñonez. (Luis has had a few good longshot winners at Mountaineer, of late.) I won’t even mention the small “p” word in reference to the cliché about jockey intelligence, except to say that Luis is one of the many riders I’ve spoken with or interviewed who defies the cliché. He’s a thinking man.
His advice to Alonso, first a hot walker and then an exercise rider, was to wait before testing the waters as a jockey because too many riders are too green when they begin their careers. Since then, Alonso has acquired the maturity of a 23-year-old and now has broken the ice at Del Mar with some unlikely winners, including one that paid $87.
Alonso has the looks of the type of apprentice who will top a whole meet in the rider standings. In particular, he needs to do well at Pomona in order to gain business for the Oak Tree meet at Santa Anita (I refuse to use the word “Fairplex” because it sounds like a shopping mall or fitness center). With many of the regular leading riders taking off at Pomona, look for Alonso Quiñonez to dominate that meet. With many professional handicappers from SoCal taking a vacation during the Pomona meeting, perhaps their absence will boost the payoffs on AQs mounts. He will be aided by the Mexican fair ambiance and a keen motivation to succeed.
If one of my colleagues will put in my action, I will close my eyes and have a bet on each and every one of AQ’s Pomona mounts.