Mark Cramer
C & X Report

CONTENTS
Voyage Through the Mind: neuron tracking “right” and “wrong” handicapping. Eric Wing on Future Bets. The Short Form: The Crash Test. More on the Big Win. More on the Class-Drop/Jockey-Switch. The Writing of Tropical Downs. The Last Word.
VOYAGE THROUGH THE MIND: NEURON TRACKING “RIGHT” AND “WRONG” HANDICAPPING
The Breeders’ Cup offers us a laboratory situation to analyze the path through which handicapping decisions pass and the detours they take. You all have your past performances, so this allows for quick inspection whenever appropriate. Since we have not yet established an interactive C&X, we are obligated to use the synapses of yours truly as the guinea pig. I would prefer to walk naked in Central Park than to bare the intimate recesses of my mind, but this process can serve as one of the best ever C&X learning experiences. I invite you to do the same with your own neurons, with total frankness and no defense mechanisms or rationalization. Those reluctant to revisit bad experiences should remember that the greatest learning experiences for engineers are catastrophes: the Titanic, the crash of the Concorde, the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. No computer simulations can equal the pedagogy of a great crash, and from these tragic events engineers have learned to build better ships, better planes and better bridges.
The detailed study of what was done right is also appropriately pedagogical, so long as it gets beyond the simple reliving of a high. I have studied my good decisions and learned the strangest lessons that have allowed me to create the right context for handicapping and decision making. Some of my own best decisions have come in the waking hours when dream and reality overlap. On other occasions, I’m made winning decisions at the urinal or on the toilet seat (nothing to do with fixations, I hope, simply the fact that these are the rare places where one is completely alone and removed from the threatening caress of a loved one or a bad-news phone call.)
In the initial stage of my handicapping, I had two discoveries, one of them which I stood by and the other which I abandoned. Both won. Why did I hold firm on the first and waffle away on the second?
The first was Goldikova. No wavering there. No going back and having second thoughts. Even before the line-ups for the BC Mile, I had penciled in Goldikova based on here near perfect record and defeat of the boys in the Prix Moulin. (Here was a moment where “future bet” should have rung in the space between my two ears! See Eric Wing’s piece on future betting.) I knew all the best American milers, including the winner I picked in last year’s BC Mile, and nothing in my mind could compare.
I resolved to make my win bet on Goldikova, anything above even money, which I was sure to get, 20% of my entire BC bankroll, thus establishing a clear priority. Why? I had everything on my side. Probably the hottest stable in the world. Only Passero in his days of rubbing cayenne hot pepper into the infirm legs of his claimers could have been hotter. And, I had a filly that had defeated the best males milers of Europe, including Henry the Navigator. Also defeated by Goldikova was Paco Boy, who had come back to win a contentious stakes race on Arc de Triomphe weekend. It was in the morning following Paco Boy’s win, as I was awakening and between dream and reality that it literally dawned on me that Goldikova would be unbeatable against American milers. Some people think on their feet. I think from a prone position. This bodes well for me if I reach a point where I am on my death bed but still capable of thinking. I have always feared what would be going through my mind at the moment of eternal departure. If I can still get in a bet then Hope will be alive until the final breath.
My other initial urge was for the Gosden horse, Raven’s Pass, in the Classic. The question is, what short-circuited in my brain and detoured me away from this horse? My initial reason for liking RP was the well-documented vulnerability of the favorite Curlin (there I got it right) and the nostalgic recollection that Gosden once OWNED Southern California turf racing in the mid-1980s, when his Euro shippers were an automatic bet for me. I did so well with my Gosden Euro shippers, betting through my neighborhood bookie, that the bookie told me he was betting the same horses I was and looked forward to my next call.
The Doubt. My first question was legitimate, I suppose. How much could the nostalgia factor could hold up two decades after the fact. Gosden had remained a competent trainer but had not come close to the pinnacle of his previous success. Two stray neurons contributed to the detour. First: the failure of his Lucarno in Canada, a horse that should have found a haven in the Northern Hemisphere of the Americas. Lucarno was my pick on a previous C&X Stakes Weekend. He failed to relax in that race and burnt himself out, and I blamed that on the trainer. So the question arose: could the old Gosden finally be restored, or were the past glories buried forever?
The second errant neuron flashed the image of Henry the Navigator, confirming (I thought) his declining form versus Raven’s Pass in England when he finished fourth in the Prix de Moulin at Longchamp. Now I know that the Prix de Moulin is probably the biggest key race of 2008, with both Goldikova and Paco Boy coming back to win. Still, Paco Boy was and is a notch below the best, and the finish of Henry the N behind Paco Boy conjured up a second image, that of a declining Henry the Navigator now in the same league as Paco Boy. In other words, the question became: Was the Raven’s Pass win over Henry the N and improvement for RP or a decline for H the N? I chose the latter.
At the time I felt that these two supposed negatives on Raven’s Pass (defeating an allegedly declining horse and having a declining trainer) were objective reasons for not picking this horse in the Classic. One other element entered into the equation: the visual impression of Champs Elysees in the Big Cap, which turned out to be an optical illusion. The third errant neuron connected with the memory of various BC Classic wins over the years of American horses that rose to that one big occasion even though their past performances did not point to peak effort. The presence of a vulnerable favorite encouraged this line of thought, and I gravitated to the Frankel horse.
The thought process revolving around the BC Turf Sprint also provides a few lessons. This was the most positively contentious race on the card. (There are also negatively contentious races in which none of the horses seem to have a chance.) I spend a long time on this race, as you read in my website posts, with many steps in the procedure. I have saved my notes, which show horses exed out and then restored as contenders, exed out again, and re-restored!
This lengthy process ended with the final part of my final posting on the C&X website, which I quote: “in the Turf Sprint, which seems like the most interesting race of all of them all Problem is, I have angles on nearly every horse. The latest is on a 9%-trainer's horse, Desert Code. This horse, on the 6 1/2 downhill, has always been off the pace, and he was a horse for course. But in the Morvich, following a layoff,
he was gunned into a pace duel, with Gomez. But now he's switching back to Migliore, who raced him from off the pace. That just adds another angle to the race, and I am trying to put these angles in a proper hierarchy, plus dealing with the Euros, which I am tempted to eliminate altogether and the speed, which looks more
vulnerable in this context.
The proper hierarchy, of course, is helped along by the toteboard. If I have six horses with an equal chance to win and one of them is the longest shot on the board, it then becomes a simple decision to play that horse.
By eliminating the Euro horses as well as the three speed horses from win consideration, I now had a manageable situation from which to pluck out a few win bets at high odds. I combed back through my arguments. I was fatigued after all the handicapping and not really primed to do a late posting, but I felt that I had something important to say. As a once regular player of the downhill turf course, I felt that a horse for course was a big probability. The odds differential between Get Funky and Desert Code was gaping, and not representative of their comparative records. Thus, the last word on Desert Code was not an extraneous.
In the end, with the help of the toteboard, I put in two win bets on what I felt were my best arguments and most significant overlays: Desert Code and the Scott Lake horse True to Tradition, a near perfect horse since adding blinkers and 3 for 3 with Carmouche in turf sprints. I was resolved to put more win money on these two horses as the betting period progressed. But he who lives by the toteboard sometimes dies by the toteboard.
While I was considering putting more money to win on Desert Code and True to Tradition and maybe adding win savers on a couple of others, I saw the French odds … I was struck by what I perceived as a much greater opportunity! Even though win odds resulted from the commingled with American odds, we were also given a view of how French bettors saw these contenders if there had been a separate win pool. They had made André Fabre’s Only Answer as their even money favorite!!! Of course they were getting the 20-1 win odds on the American tote, but this reflected how they would be playing the separate-pool French quinellas. In the French quinellas, Get Funky was 27-1 instead of the 9-2 in the USA. Desert Code was 90-1. True to Tradition was only two points higher in the French pari-mutuel mind. So instead of adding more to my win bets, I boxed these three in the quinellas and keyed them to other horses I had mentioned in the C&X website.
It all turned out to be a grand distraction, as the second-place finisher, Diabolical, was not one of the horses I had noted as a contender. In any case, what I collected from win bets on Desert Code and Goldikova, who was 1-10 in the French exotics pools but who paid the same $5.60 in the commingled win pool, I was assured of a winning day.
The next day, when facing my confessor, I said to him: “Yes, I committed a betting sin by getting lost in the exotics instead of having more win money on Desert Code, but what would you have done if you saw Desert Code at 90-1 in the Quinella pools as compared to 37-1 in the win pool, and Get Funky at 27-1 as compared to 9-2?”
My Confessor was frank. Not knowing about racing, he said that if Goldikova was the Godess I had made her out to be, he would have put everything on Goldikova and passed all the other races.
A winning day is not enough. There are honest losing days where one has done the best he can, and there are no regrets. And there are winning days that should have contributed to early retirement. In any case, I am saving my worksheet on the BC Turf Sprint, which no graffiti artist could duplicate.
Let’s now look at the paceless Marathon, where I felt the two favorites were too vulnerable for the low odds they projected to have. Given the weird pace configuration, I called for a pass. The two faves included the vastly superior class horse, Sixties Icon (6/5) and Zappa (7/2). Zappa’s previous wire-to-wire win was so slow in its fractions that it was unlikely to repeat. Above all, Sixties Icon was a winner from way behind at a longer distance, and in a paceless field, he was extremely vulnerable. I was searching for a legitimate pace setter, but the Fanning horse, Booyah, was simply too cheap. Booyah was a course specialist at Fairplex, hardly material to take them all the way at Santa Anita.
The handicapping mistake here, and it’s one that’s not easily overcome, is to have not taken the horse that had proven he was capable of going wire to wire. What I have never really learned in a concrete way is that the winner in a paceless field is not necessarity the early speed horse but that horse which has enough early oomph to dole out its energy in a relaxed way from a tracking position. To control the pace does not necessarily mean racing in the lead.
Muhannak had shown early speed in his turf races, but in his four polytrack races, he had raced midpack. I must say I was tempted. But two short-circuits prevented me from making the right connection: the unknown trainer and the horse’s lack of early speed in his polytrack races. To put it bluntly, I was not good enough to identify a horse that was entirely capable of controlling the pace, because I can’t seem to get it straight that “controlling the pace” does not necessarily mean going to the front. Let me repeat this lesson until it becomes a mantra: the pace of a race can be controlled from off the pace, when a horse uses less of his reserve energy than the other horses are using, and this is especially true in today’s polytrack game. In a future C&X we need to have a workshop on paceless-field handicapping. Your comments will be appreciated in this department.
The great external factor. Significant as it was, the biggest external factor in determining the results of the BC races was not the synthetic surface, even though yours truly and many other public handicappers fell for the trap. In the weeks prior to the Breeders’ Cup, articles in the French racing form suggested that the more stringent rules against steroid use in the USA would result in a more honest game, and one that would favor Euro horses. I had this in my mind before handicapping, but once I held the past performances in my hand, I virtually blanked out on this factor. The written document took precedence over a the latent effect of an unwritten factor.
Remember that I am trying to examine how the handicapper mind functions and where are its flaws. Sometimes the flaw is in not seizing on a new factor, one which has no past history, one which puts the handicapper out on the limb. Such inhibition buried the factor of stricter steroid controls into a deeper recess of my consciousness.
I cannot prove it but I believe that the greater commitment to anti-doping rules played an important role in the results. The publisher of the Paris-Turf, François Hallopé, wrote: “In the United States, a profound and very recent phenomenon has obligated the racing managers to become less lax in the realm of medications …”
Result: the Supertrainers, those guys who win races at heretofore unbelievable percentages, lost their usual dominion. Example: trainers like Catalano, Dutrow, Lake, Frankel, whose horses had overachieved in the past two or three Breeders’ Cups, were off the monitor. The exception could be Dutrow’s Kip Deville, who ran a winning race had it not been for the presence of THE GODDESS. Consciousness of this factor during my handicapping of the Classic, the Turf and the Juvenile could have swung my attention back to the foreign horses.
Please get me right. I am not looking at the past with a coulda, shoulda woulda perspective. I’m at peace with my decisions. I am looking at the future, understanding how the handicapping mind functions, knowing the process, so that I can have a greater control over my own neurons.
Now for one last BC x-ray: that of the Fillies & Mares from the Friday card. There I was committed to Halfway to Heaven, and if the same race came up tomorrow, I’d make the same play. Both Halfway to Heaven and Goldikova had defeated the same consistent filly, Darjina, in different races, both times by a half length. Halfway to Heaven had earlier finished only a length and a half behind Goldikova, and both were behind the unbeatable Zarkava. Halfway to Heaven was facing the gals and Goldikova the boys. If I loved the Goddess then I had to be seducted by her soul sister. I looked at those two and I envisioned the Williams sisters on the tennis court. So where was my error?
I’m not sure there was one, but I can say, in retrospect, that the American turf filly colony seems to have been at a higher notch than the American boys. Still, that’s not enough to take me off Halfway to Heaven.
Postscript: a quote from Beyer
“While there was a clear correlation between form on turf and Pro-Ride, only a few Breeders' Cup performers were top-level performers on both dirt and synthetics. Zenyatta was one, and Midnight Lute, who scored his second straight victory in the Sprint, was another. Not a single horse won on Santa Anita's Pro-Ride without showing previous good form on either turf or a synthetic track. Good dirt form barely mattered. This is a lesson that handicappers should remember whenever they evaluate dirt runners on a synthetic track.”
Postscript on featured handicapper, Eric Wing
Eric Wing is the Senior Director of Media Relations for the NTRA. He is an avid horseplayer and has also dabbled in ownership. By far, his most successful wagers over the years have been future book bets -- both in racing and in sports.
Prior to joining the NTRA in 1999, Wing worked for 13 years as an editor at Reader's Digest. His work experience thus far has supported the old adage that a bad day at the racetrack beats a good day anywhere else. I had seen Eric in action on several occasions in the Claiming Crown press box at Canterbury and my impression is that he’s one of the best longshot handicappers around.
You can read Eric’s columns at www.ntra.com or by just typing in his name in Google with key words horse racing. Eric only had two wins on top of 14 BC races but, like a proficient longshot handicapper, he still showed a substantial flat-bet profit. Goes to show that average mutuel is probably a more important stat than percentage of winners. Since C&X has not run anything future betting, I asked Eric to give us a taste.
FUTURE BETS by Eric Wing
My approach with future bets varies pretty markedly between horse racing and sports. In racing, you have no guarantee that your horse will actually make it into the starting gate of the race in question. As a result, demanding very high odds to make the risk factor palatable is essential. And because you need high odds, it means you must find a horse that the public think has warts (to borrow a term often used by Oakland A's G.M. Billy Beane to describe bargain players). You're just not going to get a big enough price in a Derby Future on a graded stakes winner by a long-winded sire, trained by a Bob Baffert type, to make the inherent non-starting risk worthwhile. A fond memory is Funny Cide who I got in the CDSN Pool 1 in 2003 at 92-1. He had just come off a no-shot 3rd in the Holy Bull from a terrible post and I thought his 2yo races were powerful. But he was dismissed by the public largely because he was a NY-bred and by Distorted Humor. Those warts played in my favor. I also made a nice score in Daylami in the 1999 BC Turf future book because his odds doubled to 15-1 in September, right after his connections said they thought he would bypass the race. My approach was that the horse was healthy and if they changed their minds and ran, Daylami would be the favorite. And that's how it worked out. By and large, if your thinking on a horse mirrors conventional wisdom, it probably won't make for a good future play. You need to be swimming upstream.

Sports are a different challenge, and here you at least know that your "horse" will make it to the starting gate. Lots of people play teams just because they were good the year before. What I look most closely for is positive change from one year to the next. Typically this means a key (and hopefully subtle) trade, or it could be a coaching change (Jon Gruden to Tampa Bay, for example), or it could mean hoping that a team that was decimated by injuries last year will have better luck in that department this year (another key factor in pro football where player movement is not so great). When I played the White Sox at 50-1 in 2005, I figured the Sox pitching was solid enough and that getting Scott Podsednik for Carlos Lee (a trade the pundits thought favored the Brewers) would give Chicago a needed speed element at the top of their order and get them away from their "out slug 'em" mentality. I made a similar bet this year on the Astros, thinking that Michael Bourn could be their Scott Podsednik. That wager did not work out quite so well.

What I do at the end of each year is make a simple grid listing all the teams, and showing the players they added and subtracted. When you have a baseline in your head of how teams did the previous year, then look at subsequent player movement, you begin to get a feel for how the pieces will or won't fit together. One thing I can't stand are teams with too many mediocre players in their lineup. I don't care how many stars a team has, I'd rather see a team's weak spots involve blatantly bad players. Bad players are easy for a GM to identify and eventually replace. Mediocrity tends to be tolerated and not upgraded. Instead, mediocre players are passed off as being "solid". In the end, they will kill you. The death will be slower, but it will be every bit as painful.

These are just a few of my parameters. As you can probably tell, the accuracy of your horse or player valuations can trump all other factors. And sometimes perspiration is as important as inspiration. It's amazing how the prices on a given team or horse can vary from casino to casino in Las Vegas. Over the years, I've had my best luck maximizing prices at the Las Vegas Hilton, Wynn Las Vegas and the Venetian. If you're playing futures seriously, it's well worth your time and the cost of a monorail ticket to seek out the best prices. It's almost become a game within a game to me, providing the same rush a shopper feels when he pays $100 for an item selling at another store for $140.

But putting profits and losses aside, I can honestly say that I have more pure fun with future bets than any other type. You get months of entertainment with them instead of minutes. You live and die with winning streaks, losing streaks, injuries, workouts, etc. And when you are lucky enough to cash at the end of the year, or even come close to cashing, you will never forget that team or horse for the rest of your life.

THE SHORT FORM: THE CRASH TEST
The Short Form Method has been one of my best ways to sort through the information overload and come up with what is essential. Today I am reworking the Short Form in order to make it more understandable, more useful and more profitable.
Ken, one of our loyal readers, has offered to do interactive research on the Short Form, applying various filters. We consult each other every day. I have given him a research bankroll, with the idea that real money, even a modest amount, forces us to analyze each result and discover new angles we would never have seen if we’d just crunched the method through a computer.
First, a note on why it is appropriate to use real money at the research stage, provided that all the necessary research samples have been completed. Real-money research is equivalent to the crash test of automobiles. The former head of the crash test department at Renault was once a client of mine for English language consulting. I asked him, “Why destroy all the beautiful machinery when you could accomplish the same thing through computer simulations.
Not true, he explained. Engineers learn their greatest lessons from accidents. A crash test is the least expensive method for studying an accident. And this is true for horse betting as well. A research sample, good as it may be, ends up as the equivalent of simulations. In the end, you learn the most significant lessons when you place small bets on your research because it forces you to pay attention to details. In the past couple of months, I have learned more about the Short Form Method through a series of “little crashes”, than any large sample could have taught me. Working with Ken makes a difference as well, since no researcher can function without a talented devil’s advocate.
Our first experiment was disastrous, and it was my mistake. I decided to get smart and combine the Short Form (SF) with the Early Bloomer Method (EB) and in doing so, I neglected an essential part of the SF. Let’s backtrack and look at the rules of both the SF and the EB.
The SF
(1) Horse must not be a proven loser (no more than one loss at today’s class level since last win)
(2) Trainer must have at least a 12% hit rate.
(3) No more than two qualifiers in a race.
The EB
(1) Horse must have won debut race or won second career race (hence early bloomer)
(2) Play back in the third to sixth race following maiden win (debut winner: play back in career races 4 through 7 and debut-2 winner: play back in career races 5 through 8).
My error in combining the two was to begin with the EB and treat the SF as a filter. I thus neglected rule 3 of the SF, which is vital because it creates the dynamics of the race: horses that are not proven losers at the level and have competent trainers are facing fields of either proven losers and/or low-percentage trainers. Filters: The fact that I later required our picks to have a trainer with an 18% hit rate or higher (which you can consider a filter), did not compensate for the mistake.
This meant that our plays occurred in fields where you cannot really eliminate more than half the field. The dynamics of a good “system” is that it presses on the positives and takes advantages of the negatives. I had left out the “negatives” second part of the dynamic.
Thanks to Ken’s detail-oriented cross examining, I was able to spot my error and still conserve enough of the research bankroll to carry on. Our next step included another error of mine. I insisted on using two filters: the trainer must show 18% wins for the calendar year AND the trainer must have a positive return on investment, at least $2.01, in the DRF specialty stats beneath the pps, with at least four wins in the stat and at least 18 percent wins.
The mistake here, which I never should have made, was that I was piling on too many positive attributes. This lowered the average odds, and thus the average return plunged. In fact, one of the filters would in some cases nullify the other. Let me explain. If a trainer has an overall 20% hit rate for the year AND he has a positive roi specialty with 18% wins, the specialty is an illusion because his hit rate in the specialty is lower than his hit rate in the ALL column. Thus, we decided to use the filters and/or, accepting if the trainer qualified under both filters but not requiring him to do so. This allowed for cases where a trainer with less than 18% wins (but 12% or up) may have a meaningful specialty and still be included as a bet.
The difficult part still lay ahead. It has been a daunting endeavor to define “proven loser”. What seemed obvious to me was not so for Ken, and through his questions I realized that I had not really defined the “proven loser” and that in playing this method in the past, I had been engaged in artistic interpretation all the while that I thought I was making mechanical decisions.
What if, for example, they are racing at claiming 12,500 and a horse that has just won its last race at 10,000 had been a prior loser twice at 12,500? Is this a proven loser? This is a tough call. We have decided that this horse is not a proven loser, suggesting that his recent win is a sign that his form cycle today is higher than it was when he lost the two races at 12,500. I am still not sure that this interpretation is correct, but we will find out. This horse may indeed be a proven loser.
Another example: a horse lost at alw nw1 twice and then won at alw nw1. He is now entered at alw nw2. Is he a proven loser at the alw nw1 level for having lost two races at that level. No! The rule “lost 2 or more races at today’s level or lower” should be qualified by “since his most recent win”. However, if the most recent win is at $6,500 and before that he lost twice at $8,500, it’s a real tough call.
Before we further discuss the proven loser definition, let’s now look at the method as we are researching it, which has had some initial success in win percentage but is still disappointing in average mutuel. Now we are beginning with the SF, just as you have it above, including the requirement that there may be no more than two SF qualifiers in a given race. Only then do we use the EB, but this time as a filter. It’s a pretty big filter. Plus either one or the other trainer filter: 18% wins overall for the calendar year (but if in the first two months of a calendar year, include the previous calendar year as well) or positive roi in any one or more pertinent trainer specialty stats.
The EB may eventually stand up on its own. And if current research continues as it has begun, the Early Bloomer may even be incompatible with the Short Form because it excludes races for older horses which may be the bread-and-butter of the Short Form. Voila! Piling one positive factor on another may reflect the syndrome of linear thinking.
We are continuing the research, with the SF alone and with a subset of the SF with the EB filter.
The second part of the Short Form, after the proven-loser factor, is the trainer factor. It is here where I have realized, thanks to the real money research, that what I thought was entirely automatic in my handicapping choices was in reality a combination of an automatic structure and unconscious decisions based on perceived nuances. What I had been doing to intervene beyond the automatic rules was to distinguish between quantitative and qualitative eliminations.
Here’s one example. We have a 9-horse field with 5 eliminations. Do we continue the weeding out process or do we pass the race because there are too many contenders?
Case 1: Some of the eliminations were horses that were proven losers but with high percentage trainers and other eliminations were low percentage trainers but the horses were not proven losers at today’s level. In this case, I would pass the race because the quality of the eliminations does not go deep enough to warrant chancing it with four qualifying horses.
Case 2: All five eliminations are solid. For example, trainers with less than 12-percent wins are accompanied by less than 12% jockeys. Looking back at my old marked pps, I have called this a “no-win combo”. That is a qualitative elimination. Another qualitative elimination is when the horse has both negatives: it is a proven loser at today’s level and it has a less-than-12% trainer. Thus, in case two, if I have 5 qualitative eliminations then it becomes worthwhile to dig into the four remaining contenders.
What if? So you can imagine how complex this research is, all in the interest of coming up with elegant simplicity. Now back to the proven losers. What if a horse is coming from a maiden claiming victory? By the definition this does not look like a proven loser. And yet we have to count this as an honorary proven loser since the stat that I’ve often researched for maiden claiming winners in their next start is a horrendously low win percentage, worthy of exclusion.
On the other hand, a horse that has just won its maiden special weight is not to be considered a proven loser, since these types often win next out in alw nw1. But even that rule is not pristine, for the longer it takes a horse to win its md sp wt, the longer it will take him to win at the alw nw1 level, and he may never be able to graduate in this category.
The next dilemma for the Short Form “proven loser” definition is for stakes races. When not applying the EB, we may have to consider older horses or late season three-year olds in stakes races. The trend has been toward a cheapening of the group level races. There are so many possible races on the calendar that the best horses often dodge each other and find easy pickings. Witness the decline in the quality of both Travers and Haskell fields in recent years. Often a graded stakes race will include all proven losers at the level. We have yet to come up with a workable definition of “proven loser” for the stakes level. In theory we might say: lost twice or more at one level below today’s level, but even with that cheapening of the concept, graded stakes may still be full of ”proven losers”. Thus, for the Short Form, for the time being, we have decided that it is too difficult to define a “proven loser” and we have eliminated all stakes races from consideration.
For stakes races where the EB is concerned, we often have special races in which recent alw nw1 winners and even recent md sp wt winners might try. Consider an ungraded $100,000 stakes race for 2yos. A proven loser in such races might be less worthy than a recent md sp wt winner. But this is extremely difficult to define or to quantify.
Thus, the Short Form Method at this point is largely confined to claiming races and the allowance non-winners-of series.
More findings. Even if the Short Form does not end up as an automatic bet, we have determined that it serves its purpose as a handicapping structure which shortens time involved in the handicapping process, helps to focus on what really matters in a race, and allows for quick passes of unplayable races.
We have also developed the hypothesis that the trainer factor is evolving in the collective mind of the betting public. Even two years ago, the trainer factor was still a secondary handicapping procedure for the majority of players, with the public still leaning towards Beyer figs, recent form, finish position, and other eye-catching factors. But we may have discovered a decline in the average mutuel for trainer factors.
Large sample research shows that high-percentage trainers are dependable for a significantly higher win percentage than low-percentage trainers, but the gap between average mutuel for high-percentage trainers and low-percentage trainers has been closing. In past C&X research, high-percentage trainers overall had a higher impact value for longshot winners compared to low-percentage trainers. In other words, high percentage trainers won more than their fair share of races with longshot odds while low-percentage trainers won less than their fair share of races with longshot odds. This may be changing. Stay tuned, and perhaps someone in the C&X community can independently re-test this question.
MORE ON THE BIG WIN
From Don:
I totaled the results of a "big win" from the start of the year at Gulfstream Park and Aqueduct and thru the conclusion of Belmont's summer meet. The parameters were: win by 5 on a fast dirt track or firm turf only. All the next races were used excepting races "off the turf".
I was interested in the "big win" because C&X outined it as a profitabl play and because I think the proven loser factor of the horse and the trainer win % factors could be less prevalent because of the horse's obviously good form which the trainer played a role.
This research was all done by hand and included a total of 113 race days with 54 cards at Aqu and GP and 51 @ Belmont included in the results so this does not represent 100% of any of these meets. It also has no "repeat" races.
One factor stands out above all the rest. There was a total of 42 mdn claiming qualifyers and they won 4 (9%) with an roi of 0.42.
Other then that open races and MSW races totaled 76 races with 25 wins (32%) with an roi of 1.07. There was only 1 winner above $15 ($25.80) and eliminating him would result in a negative roi for this entire research. All 3 meets collectively produced more wins then place/show. Races 76 Win 25 Pl: 7 Sh: 10.
The only thing I noted to improve the results and show a moderate profit is to eliminate any big wins shipping from a sister track the first 2 weeks or so of the meet. Meaning: to not consider CRC horses at GP or Aqu horses at Bel. Aqu winter meet is a different story. In January their inner dirt track has been in use a couple weeks or so and that same period produced positive results.
Thanks for continuing another year.
don a.
MORE ON THE CLASS DROP JOCKEY SWITCH
From Dan
Thursday at Woodbine in the 9 th race Mark Cramer followers would note the number 1 horse Free to Fly was taking a class drop from Mcl 20k to Mcl 12.5k , the horse was lightly raced compared to bunch of proven losers having only 4 races, in the last two races. The horse had good pace figures (the best) compared to the rest of the field, had led against the favorite in a recent race before fading to 8th.
Today the horse is running 7 furlong and looks to fade again but the jockey is Slade Callaghan who I have trouble finding any race where he takes the lead or is even close to the front. But yet Slade wins at a 12% rate so he must be OK from off the pace. True to form Slade breaks the horse near the back and gets up to nip the favorite and pay $45 dollars.
The exacta pays over $200 and trifecta is I believe $1000.
I announced this pay to the small number of patrons in the off track location, a vulgar display I must admit but I did pose the play in a question manner.
This was a positive jockey switch to the needed style.

Mark comments:
The class-drop/positive-jockey-switch method was the first thing I ever published. It continues to work, but only under certain circumstances and at certain racing venues where it makes the most sense, depending on the claiming system and the jockey colony. It has become impossible for me to track.
But today, the best way to use this method is to superimpose a lightly-raced horse factor, as Dan has done. Dan seems to have been following the short-form method, where proven losers at the class level are eliminated.
The nuance he has added to the method is the way he evaluated the positive rider switch, not based on the jockey’s win percentage but on rider style. Makes sense to me. It’s a case where the spirit of the law has eclipsed the letter of the law.
This adds fuel to the argument that so-called automatic bets can be used as a structure in handicapping but then the handicapper should be free to use spirit-of-the-law discoveries and include extenuating circumstances rather than being forced to apply every rule in a bureaucratic way. Our mission is to reduce the time spent in the handicapping process without suffering the consequences of the fateful cutting of corners that can exclude a good horse.
Most longshot winners have some flaw in their past performances. An automatic method should be agile enough to accept such flaws. What if a horse is switching to a 9% rider (looks like an elimination) when this 9% rider has the only three wins on this particular horse (looks like a very positive factor).
These are the contradictions that make handicapping the great art form that it is.

THE WRITING OF TROPICAL DOWNS
Before you consider ordering my new novel from the DRF Press, think twice. The handicapping methods and research you will find there has, for the most part, already been shared with C&X readers. Therefore, if you are not interested in a crime novel or one with a South American theme, save yourself the effort.
The challenge of writing this book, which took two years, was to integrate flat-bet-profit research and other racing stats within the text of a full-blown novel. Even more challenging was the fact that a good part of the novel would be taking place in Bolivia, where there is no race track.
The tool for getting away with it was a central part of the story: a shady California real estate mogul and a wealthy Bolivian oligarch with reputed ties to the old dictatorships are trying to “outsource” an American race track on Bolivian soil, and ideal spot in a core of South America between five other countries that already have racing industries.
The handicapping and research comes in by way of Matt Bosch, a horseplayer and jazz pianist who is acting as a go-between, connecting the California and Bolivian businessman. There is a plan for a perfect crime, in a genre I call the “who will do it? There is an equation between pulling off this perfect crime and scoring with “the ultimate exotic”.
A sub-plot arises when Matt and his wife find themselves on opposite sides of a land conflict that develops around the site of the planned race track. An exotic call girl seems to have a solution for getting Matt out of the mess, but what will she ask in return?
Beyond the Bolivia theme, there are scenes from Saratoga, Hollywood Park, Laurel and a Chilean OTB. The main character is searching for the automatic bet. If you want to see more about the story, you can check www.altiplanopublications.com
One byproduct of this manuscript was a bizarre discovery. You know the stories about the mad scientist setting his invention loose in the world and then losing control of it. Well, one of the mad inventions in Tropical Downs is the “Informed Minority” (IF) which you’ve all read about in C&X.
Regarding the Informed Minority, for this year’s Breeders’ Cup, I felt, with good reason, that there were too many public handicappers on the DRF grid to employ the IF. With 30 plus handicappers it would be possible to have 3 or 4 different plays in nearly every race.
What I did not notice was that the DRF published a link with grid of only 8 handicappers on their home page. Meanwhile, I had sent a copy of my manuscript to several readers from different fields and of diverse literary taste, all horseplayers, in order to either validate the quality of the novel or recall it for an overhaul. I received extremely valuable advice from my readers, which for the most part I acted on. As an afterthought, still wanting to make sure I had written a good story, I sent the manuscript to a guy named Matt, simply because he was both a horse player and a man with a gift for language.
As with the inventions of the Mad Scientist, my own inventions, including the Informed Minority, were now set loose in the world, perhaps wreaking havoc on the betting bankrolls of some players, while helping others. Here is part of the response from Matt:

Mark -
I finished the manuscript and was reading about your Breeders Cup system [the Informed Minority] just days before this year's edition of the championships. How wonderful!
So without even paying much attention to the past performances, I went through 8 expert picks that I downloaded off of the drf home page, and looked for win selections that seemed out of the blue. I then just wagered $10 across the board on each one.
It worked great as I hit the winners in the first two races, with Muhannek in the Marathon, and the longshot 37-1er Desert Code in the Turf Sprint. The rest of the day I only mustered one place, but obviously the 37-1er alone was more than enough to guarantee a big day. I ended up with action on 7 of the 9 races: so in risking $210, I walk away with about $700.
I had Colonel John as the system selection for the classic, which I was a bit worried about because the Colonel had already cost me on Derby day: I actually made the trip to Louisville this year, and found myself touting the Colonel so confidently with my head full of mint julep. And of course he showed nothing!
This time he showed some horse, but let himself get boxed in inside, as the Europeans romped and stomped.
Desert Code was an Eric Wing pick by the way, if that name means anything to you.
Cheers!
Matt

Here was the inverse of what usually happens when the Mad Scientist’s discovery gets loose. Instead of the havoc we would expect, Matt picked up the discovery and used it in his own way … and won, while the inventor, me, did not even play the system.
That’s fine with me. I have always written that my material should be interpreted by the readers. Even more ironic, I came up with the same horse as Eric Wing, on my own, without having seen the grid of eight handicappers that Matt had creatively extracted.
The fact that one of the very first readers of Tropical Downs has cashed in on it is gratifying, but might simply be a quirk. In any case, Tropical Downs is essentially a crime novel and travel story. Only if fiction and travel are of interest to you should you consider getting it.

THE LAST WORD
According to a story written by Steve Anderson, in last week's Daily Racing Form, trainer Aidan O'Brien was fined $2500 by Santa Anita stewards because he had four Breeders' Cup starters race on lasix despite no previous declaration that the horses would be on the diuretic.
I have several questions for the appropriate Breeders' Cup officials:
1) How could this happen? Aren't Breeders' Cup horses supposed to be under enhanced scrutiny to prevent improper medication? If officials knew about this before race day, why was there no announcement made about the medication change?
2) If Cup and Santa Anita officials did not know O'Brien was going to administer lasix, couldn't Trainer X administer an illegal medication like EPO or a milkshake without the knowledge of authorities?
3) Couldn't a horse be subject to tampering to prevent a good performance, with the perpetrator taking his or her chances the animal would not be post-race tested?
4) If no announcement was forthcoming, and I have the entire ABC/ESPN/ESPN2 broadcast on a recording and did not hear it, doesn't that mean millions of dollars were bet under false pretenses? If perhaps an announcement was made, either on-track or on the network broadcast, isn't it likely that a huge percentage of bettors/viewers would never have heard it, rendering their bets made under false pretenses?
5) Doesn't this whole incident make a mockery of the so-called enhanced anti-drug stance coming from NTRA, Cup, and other top racing officials?
6) Does the Breeders' Cup have any authority to impose an additional fine on O'Brien, or declare his horses unplaced, for violating the rules? Do Cup officials consider a $2500 fine appropriate, or a mockery, and slap in the face of bettors? How does $250,000 sound?
If it sounds like I'm mad, you are correct. Maybe these are the ravings of a nitwit, but somehow I have the feeling racing fans will have one of two reactions: 1) the same as mine, or, 2) business as usual, the chemists in racing will always win.
What do you think?
I apologize for my anger. Obviously it is not directed at you.
best regards,
Nick Kling