Mark Cramer
C & X Report

C&X 2009 Issue 1
EDITORIAL
I am indulging this time and rambling a bit, in order to cover a few important topics. Let’s begin with the Short Form. Ken has been continuing on a major research project, giving generously of his time. In a recent sample, the Short Form has yielded a substantially profitable roi. However, three of the longshot winners came from Philadelphia Park, so we’re keeping a cool head about this. But I can give you one conclusion that vindicates what I have preached. The track takeout for win bets is higher at Pha than at most other tracks. A handicapper playing the Short Form who decided to exclude Pha from his tracks because of the high takeout would have made a grave mistake and missed those three longshots.
My premise is: I would rather play at a track with a high takeout and low betting public proficiency than with a low takeout and high betting public proficiency. I suspect, but I cannot prove it, that most of the smart players do not bother with Philadelphia Park, and I believe that we should move in where the smart players move out.
Point two concerns the Horse for Course factor. As you know, some time ago the DRF improved its format by putting horse-for-course information in the performance box. However (and a good thing for us), this information is misleading. Consider, for example, Horse A, who is 2 wins in 3 starts at this track/surface, while Horse B is 2 wins in 5 starts. Which one is the horse for course?
Missing from the equation are the odds. What if horse A’s wins came at 3/5 and 6/5 (in other words, he figured as the best horse in the field so the track itself was not responsible for moving him up). What if horse B’s five races at the track were all at odds between 5-1 and 50-1, and his two wins came at 6-1 and 11-1? Well, that tells us that Horse B is an authentic overachiever at this track, and therefore the real horse for course.
In conclusion, the odds tell us so much that is not visible in the performance box. Even for other factors such as track bias and horse-jockey tandem, the odds make the difference. I love the factor where a horse is switching to the rider who last won with the horse. However, if that win came at 3/5, it means nothing, especially if the same rider also shows losing races with that horse. But if the jockey only shows one race with the horse and that race was a win in double figures, then the rider switch is truly significant.
My last subject concerns the competitiveness factor in performance-box handicapping. When I look at a race, the first two factors I consider are based on the short form: whether or not the horse is a proven loser and whether the trainer has a reasonable hit rate. Then my eyes immediately float over to the performance box, in order to see whether or not this horse is particularly comfortable at this track, on this circuit and in the win hole. Horses that show more wins than places and more places than shows are often the same horses that are capable of winning at a price, and if not, at least they have the “horse personality” to stick it out and fight to the end.
Consider Horse A with 3 wins, 5 places and 4 shows in 20 races and compare with horse B who has 3 wins, no places and 1 show in 12 races. A finishes in the money 60% while B is ITM 33%, but B, when properly spotted, goes all the way. B is the win type.
Those are a few reflections whose purpose is to trigger creative handicapping. Write to us and let us know how you have observed these and other factors that are appearing in C&X. The computer method project that we would like to develop is mainly frozen because of my lack of computer skills. At the moment, though, the Short Form path seems to be the best way to keep it simple and still retain nuanced analysis, so that’s where we are exploring. Stay tuned.
HIGH QUALITY ELIMINATIONS AND “MAYBE” HORSES IN THE SHORT FORM METHOD
In this ongoing testing of the Short Form Method, I have been playing races and painstakingly analyzing: (1) which decisions are automatic and which ones require handicapping intervention?; (2) how many horses in a field can qualify before I am obligated to pass the race?; (3) what can I do about marginal horses?; (4) do I need a fully automatic method or can a partially automatic method be useful for (a) selecting playable races and (b) saving handicapping time without cutting corners and without snipping away valuable longshot inclusions.
Which decisions are automatic and which ones require handicapping intervention?
Please be patient as I am obligated to repeat some concepts from previous articles in order that we have a total picture. The basic Short Form would (a) eliminate all proven losers (horses that have lost two or more races at today’s class level, essentially in maiden claiming races, claiming races and the “non-winners of” allowance races). The conceptual foundation comes from James Quinn’s The Handicapper’s Condition Book, a treatise that has withstood the test of time. It was there that I first picked up the concept of “proven loser”. Essentially, the more that a horse loses at a given class level, the less likely this horse will ever be able to win at said class level.
The second elimination (b) is for horses whose trainer has less than a 12% win rate for the year (or for this year combined with last year in the early months of a year).
This is the letter of the law. Naturally, there are times when the spirit of the law will render stupid the letter of the law. For example, the law says to not cross the street on a red light. But if a doctor sees a bicycle rider go down and injured and no cars are coming, it would be stupid for the doctor to wait for the light to turn green before going to the assistance of the cyclist.
Similarly, a horse can show two losses at today’s level and the first one might be a race following a 6-month layoff for a trainer who does not have a winning record for lay-1 and the horse’s second loss at the level might be a race in which he was crunched at the gate and lost 6 or 7 lengths at the start, then making a bold move on the final turn until being stopped in traffic. This horse is not a proven loser at today’s class level.
An 11% trainer might be a guy who was a high percentage trainer in the past, who had a whole stable in need of racing, and is now rounding into form with three wins in his last five, two of them in double figures. This guy does not qualify as a no-win trainer.
Fortunately for the Short Form, these spirit-of-the-law exceptions are (a) rare and (b) relatively easy to identify.
The point I am making here is that the Short Form practitioner goes into the past performaces aware that there may be exceptions and he thus develops a rapid scanning process that will discover horses that can be considered as exceptions. When I was playing the Tomlinson figures automatically, I encountered a Lord of War horse that qualified in a turf maiden by the Tomlinson turf figs but had lost twice on the grass, normally a proven-loser elimination. This was in a tournament in which I was playing with partner Mike Helm. Each of the two losses on the grass for the Lord at War horse had overwhelming excuses, so we used the horse. That 15-1 winner, together with a Mike Helm debut longshot winner earned us a thousand dollar prize for highest profit of the day.
In looking back, I can note that it took me exactly 19 seconds to realize that the Lord of War horse was still a qualifier. The handicapping intervention was MINIMAL, and at the time I still felt as if I had used an automatic play.
In summary, the Short Form in the hands of a technocrat or a computer might fail to earn a profit but with the most minimal handicapping interventions, it can remain highly functional.
How many horses in a field can qualify before I am obligated to pass the race?
Here again, handicapping intervention is required to make a determination as to whether or not we can still play a races even though there are three or more qualifiers. In principle, if we had more than two qualifiers we should pass the race.
But also in theory, if we have high quality eliminations we should be able to deal with a race as long as we’ve eliminated more than half the field. For a 12-horse field, for example, we would need to eliminate at least seven horses. So let’s talk about a definition of “high quality eliminations”.
As the Short Form practitioner collects eliminations in a race, he should label them high or low quality. For example, a high-quality elimination is a horse that is both a proven loser and has a less-than-12% trainer. Another high quality elimination is when the trainer has less than 12% wins and the rider has less than 10% wins. Yet another would be if the trainer has less than 8% wins. One more high quality elimination is when the horse has been a chronic proven loser with four or more losses at today’s class level.
You get the idea. High quality eliminations occur when the past performance rules are conformed to in Draconian fashion. The more high quality eliminations the easier it is to accept confronting a race with more than two qualifiers. Furthermore, the more high quality eliminations, the greater likelihood that we should be playing exactas and trifectas. In the past, if I came upon a race with high quality eliminations for more than half the field I would play exactas and trifectas, while making sure that my straight bets accounted for at least half my action.
What can I do about marginal horses?
I like to call these “maybe” horses. Perhaps an example of a mistake I have recently made can illustrate the role of maybe horses. Excuse me for using a French race, but believe me, the Short Form is universal, from Hong Kong to Newmarket. This was a MULTI race (four horse quinella) in France, a 15-horse field where seven of the horses were high-quality eliminations. I use my French version of the Short Form to do these races. Without getting into the specifics on how I construct MULTI tickets, which is not relevant to your needs, I had five horses to use plus a sixth that was a maybe. Three of the horses were the top three favorites but the other three, including the maybe horse, were big longshots.
In order to keep things simple, I decided to throw out the maybe horse. The only thing I was able to do by throwing out the maybe horse was to use all three favorites in all my tickets. This was stupid, especially with someone of my experience, because I know that it is not worth doing this bet if the top three favorites finish in the top four positions. Had I constructed my tickets to exclude all combinations with the top three faves, I could have included the maybe horse. As it turned out, only one of the top three faves was in the money (in fact the winner) and the other three were all longshots, including the maybe horse. The payoff was generous.
Marginal or “maybe” horses are those that do not qualify by the letter of the law but which cannot be eliminated by the spirit of the law. In the Short Form a maybe horse might be one with two losses at the level but whose trainer is red hot at the moment. Or a horse with an 11% trainer who shows a flat-bet profit and 18% wins in one of the specialty stats for today’s race.
A maybe horse could be one that has finished second at today’s level in a relatively large field, for example. A place finisher that has defeated 10 horses might be worth more than a winner that has defeated only four others. Place finishers at today’s level are especially dangerous in maiden claiming fields. By the way, for maiden claiming races, first-time starters are obviously not proven losers and a debut horse becomes an automatic inclusion if its trainer has a flat-bet profit with 18% or more wins in the debut specialty stat. Nor are second-time starters considered proven losers unless they were merry-go-round horses in their first race, which means following the field and making absolutely no moves.
Maybe horses can be used in second and third places in exotics and in rare cases, in win bets and the top slot of exotics when a big specialty statistic supports the horse.
To the uninitiated in the Short Form, this seems like a lot of handicapping intervention but in fact I did not really discover the unautomatic nature of these decisions until our reader Ken did research on the method and in our discussions, I came to realize that my perceived automatic decisions were in fact handicapping interventions.
In using the Short Form, do I need a fully automated method for (a) selecting playable races and (b) saving handicapping time?
From the above, the answer to both (a) and (b) should be easy. In testing the Short Form in real play, Ken says that it has saved much handicapping time both in more quickly identifying unplayable races (most of them) and in making selection and betting decisions. If I have understood him correctly, as he has increasingly practiced with the method, his time-per-race, including handicapping interventions, has been reduced. He was a good handicapper from the get-go so I am sure he is also applying his own criteria for spirit of the law.
This is not the last chapter on the Short Form Method. However it seems that at least we can say that it is a mechanical time saver that allows for the passing of more races and the zooming in on smarter wagers. As I’ve written before, every race that has been sensibly passed is equivalent to a winning race when you check your ledger (I hope you are all keeping betting ledgers).
A player with a slight loss in a 100 race sequence, will transform it into a profit simply by being able to pass five of those 100 races. The Short Form is a useful tool for acquiring the discipline to pass races.mc
JUST HOW COMPLEX CAN IT GET? Review of Dr. Z
In fact, the new edition of Efficiency of Racetrack Betting Markets (2008 Edition) by Donald Hausch, Victor SY Lo and William Ziemba (Dr. Z) may not be so complicated at all, since it is possible for yours truly to understand at least some of the narrative sections. What is truly attractive about this volume, but not necessarily accessible, is the complex math relating to most of the collected articles, which comes form professors of math, economics and other disciplines.
It is a heavy book, and one that I can use as a weapon against anyone who tries to put down the science and art of horse race handicapping. There are two ways to use this weapon. One way is by hitting one’s opponent over the head.
More effective an attack mode is to simply open the book to any of the articles and flash the pages of complex math in front of the eyes of your opponent. It’s blindingly impressive. Somewhere in my computer I have the key combinations that can reproduce these bizarre signs and figures, but I am not sure where to look.
One of the articles that I was able to understand concerns a true “lock” at the races. Yes, this is a bet that you CANNOT LOSE. If you scan the toteboards of all tracks every day, you may find one of these plays per month. Here’s how it happens, as explained in the essay “Locks at the Racetrack”, by Hausch and Ziemba (p. 423-430). It begins in a 5-horse field when one of the horses gets 95% or more of the show pool.
We all know that this is called a “negative pool”. The track is obligated to pay out 5 cents on the dollar ($2.10) when in fact this horse should be paying something like $2.0001. Well, I am not sure what that would be but you get the point: the track loses to the phantom plunger.
Ziemba and Hausch recommend playing all five horses in different proportions, with most of our money on the superfavorite, staggering our wager in a way that we will make the same amount whichever way the race finishes. Either we collect three show bets of 2.10, one of them a major wager, or if the superfave is off the board, we collect three of our five show bets, all of them stratospheric payoffs. So in essence we would be dutching the bet and profiting any which way thanks to the negative pool.
The authors cite a race in which the horse with 95% of the show pool was off the board and the three resulting show payoffs were $312.00, $113.00 and $340.00.
Now I don’t know about you but I would feel cheated by making a 4% return from a race that has such enormous payouts. I would prefer to leave out the 1/20 favorite, play the other four horses to show, and pray that the favorite gets excited about a mare in the backside barn, gets distracted on the backstretch, and drops out.
One area that several of this book’s researchers agree on is the statistic that we lose less money betting blindly on 3/5 favorites than we would lose doing the same with 5/2 horses, and in turn, 5/2s return better than 5-1s. The higher the odds, the greater the long-term disadvantage, or as summarized by University of Kentucky professor R.M. Griffiths: “There is a systematic undervaluation of the chances of short-odded horses and overevaluation of long-odded horses”. Every C&X reader understands, though, that we need to find those elegant subsets when a 10-1 is the overlay and a 2-1 is the underlay. In other words, we need to find the contrarian percentage in order to win at the races.
Researcher Mukhtar M. Ali (University of Kentucky) has studied, with complex mathematics, the subjective decision-making behavior of bettors, and concludes that “a representative bettor” … “tends to take more risk as his capital dwindles”. Or, “the more capital the representative has, the less he tends to be a risk lover.”
Without knowing of this study and based on my observations I had referred to a similar phenomenon. Players betting larger sums of money tend to take less risk. This may explain why a player who has successfully earned a profit betting on longshots at $10 a pop will find is percentage of profit diminishing when he raises his bet to $100 per horse. With larger bets most of us tend to become more conservative.
For this reason I have found that I have to dialogue with myself so as to not become distorted by the C&X Stakes Weekend. If I wanted to put $60 or $100 into a race but I imagine that readers collectively will reading my analysis and putting $600 or $1,000, then I “feel” as if the bet is going to be above my comfort level, and this sometimes has affected my handicapping, causing me to become to cautious and conservative. This is why (and you may have noted) I usually end my posting with the reminder that I am providing information, for you to use as part of your own analysis, and that I am not a tout.
I wish I could copy professor Ali’s math that helped him arrive at this conclusion. No doubt that mathematics experts would find the pages of formulas and graphs rather elegant. To give you an idea of the mathematic themes running through this book, take a look at some of these titles and subtitles: “Concavity Properties of Racetrack Betting Models”; “A Multinomial Logit Model for Handicapping Horse Races”; and “An Empirical Cross-validation of Alternative Strategies”.
A common conclusion among many of the researchers in this book is that inefficiencies or anomalies do exist, which in theory can lead to profitable exploitation. R.H. Tuckwell from Australia, for example, explains that in Australia he has spotted two 7-1 horses on the board with one of them paying 2-1 to show and the other even money.
I get the feeling that most of the numerous authors in this volume would tend to lean with the favorable percentages on low-odds horses, and who knows, this could be an answer for players who have not combined the creativity of picking out live longshots with the selectivity of only playing when there is a real advantage.
My copy of this book comes from England with a 58 Pound price tag. The American affiliate is World Scientific Publishing, 27 Warren Street, Suite 401-402, Hackensack, N 07601.
ZIEMBA SOUNDS OFF
(I asked Ziemba to have the final word about issues in this game we love. He sounds off about Breeders’ Cup ticket gouging, shopping for better odds with other detals.mc)
THE BREEDERS Cup has now expanded into two days with five filly and mare races on Friday and nine male with female runners allowed on Saturday. In 2008 it was held at Santa Anita and 2009 will be held there too. Santa Anita is a most famous track and has polytrack as well as grass, which is said to favor the Europeans, and they did well again. The expanded races allow more categorization of the events and give more horses a chance to do well.
Bettors are wise to check the betting exchanges Betfair and London and Dublin bookies
for hints as to good horses that might be at much higher odds at the track. Santa Anita puts on a good show and there were no accidents in 2008. Ever since about thirteen horses had to be put down two years ago at Del Mar on their very hard dirt surface the industry has been pushed in the polytrack in various versions for a safer surface.
A tip re tickets for 2009: We bought expensive 600$ in a complex way for the 2 days tickets, assuming these would be good ones. They were fairly good grandstand placement but not the really good seats. This gouging, by Breeders Cup, not Santa Anita who runs the event, is a negative on the most important racing event of the year.
On Friday about half the seats were not sold and the stands were really empty and on Saturday there were plenty of seats available. Scalpers took a loss with tickets selling for way less than face value.
A better policy seems to me to price to fill the stands. That will provide more profit too in seating and other food and concession revenues, and give the Breeders Cup the good PR it deserves.
The real important use of our book is to provide a scientific way to beat the races by creating edges, like hedge funds do. Racing is viewed as a financial market. Many people can and have used such ideas. But the attention has been on the most successful, who are very secretive as well.
There are about 10 syndicates around the world who have been able to do this on a consistent basis, using ideas from our book and other sources. Together they have made in excess of $10 billion.
The historically most successful is the Bill Benter team from Hong Kong, which now has become a successful force in US racing.
The top team currently in the world is in Sydney, Australia and makes about 15% on a one billion handle each year with a very sophisticated operation with many employees. They are in various pools around the world, including betting exchanges like Betfair and others in the UK and rebate shops that give back part of large bettors’ wagers, thereby reducing the take.
Our book became famous and costly because the only article Bill Benter ever wrote is in this book and the method has been used successfully by his and other teams.
The kelly crtiterion is used extensively for sizing various wagers, using as input model estimates of probabilities of winning from various handicapping ideas and services, versus the track odds (probabilities). When there is an advantage, where a dollar wagered is worth more than a dollar in return, then bets are made.
The book includes the classic paper on the economics and statistics of horseracing. This reprint in 2008 is identical to the 1994 original except for a new preface that discusses among other things the current favorite longshot bias: a crucial element of how betters bet. A companion book with new articles was recently published in 2008 by North Holland as the Handbook of Sports and Lotteries, edited by Hausch and Ziemba. Together they give a pretty full treatment of the financial market approach to racetrack betting.
Since the keys to winning are getting good probabilities and then betting well, handicappers into selections can use the results of this research to bet when the odds are in their favor.
Professor William T Ziemba / known as Dr Z in some circles
[Cramer adds: if the sub-prime investors had chosen Dr. Z instead, maybe we would not be facing today’s financial crisis.]
THE UNINFORMED MINORITY
C&X research has been tinkering with the Informed Minority method for nearly a decade now. It has worked in Claiming Crowns and for the most part it has worked well in Breeders’ Cups, except for 2007. In the most recent BC, yours truly saw a bloated DRF grid of public handicappers and decided to pass: too many handicappers on the grid means that there might be two informed minority public pickers, out of 30, and that’s like one out of 15, and so the rule of having only one public handicapper picking a horse became questionable.
However, one of my critical readers, a writer I asked for help in combing through the pages of the pre-publication draft of Tropical Downs, found the Informed Minority method in there and then used it in his own way. He downloaded a reduced grid of DRF handicappers, which made the method functional again. He scored big and sent me a thank you note.
That’s the good news. Bad news comes in as well. One of the great C&X researchers, professor John Sember, has just mailed me (yes, really, via the post office) his new research on the Informed Minority and the results do not look promising. In fact, it has shown a loss that is not a whole lot worse than random betting. John’s sample came from 700 races extending for over a year at Hastings Park. In medieval times the messengers of bad news met a mortal fate. But for racing researchers it’s always good to get a bad sample.
Here are my thoughts. Please be aware that I am entirely conscious of the fact that telling a horseplayer that his system doesn’t work is like telling a mother that her new-born baby is ugly. But I have a different position. I don’t need to be on the defensive and I welcome negative samples. So my thoughts are not a subjective defense mechanism.
You have noted that all of my references to the Informed Minority have referred to big racing days. On such days, two phenomena kick in. First, a lot more information is available to the public handicappers. And most important, a big race day represents a break from the daily grind. Few public handicappers can possibly be capable of sustaining maximum intensity through the most ho-hum days of a lengthy race meet. Therefore, it is only human nature that during the dog days and racing doldrums, they will not be capable of the same level of all-out handicapping effort that they would make for a classic race.
For this reason, even before receiving professor Sember’s research, I had always advised to be wary of regular race cards when considering the Informed Minority. Public handicapper psychology on a grim day of low level claimers might be something like this:
“Well, I can’t come up with anything in this race and if I pick the favorite I will look even worse, so I might as well take any old stab.”
This is what I think happens, probably subconsciously, with at least some informed minority picks, which essentially become the uninformed minority selection. Thus, the results of John Sember’s research seem to corroborate my suspicions.
In another realm of Informed Minority research, I can testify to a completely counter logic. Whenever I have tried to filter out the bad handicappers from the good ones, one of the “bad” ones wins with an informed minority pick at 15-1. I have utterly failed at developing a ranking for public handicappers. And this makes sense, because the informed minority is not cherry picking public handicappers, it is cherry picking moments when public handicappers are most inspired. So, if it ain’t broke, let’s not fix it. My thanks to professor Sember. All research samples should teach us something, and we may learn the most when a sample loses.mc
NEW YEAR MUSINGS
First possibility. Check an enjoyable website called horseracing.about.com, run by a racing journalist and photographer by the name of Cindy Pierson Dulay, who won an eclipse award for the best racing photograph of the year, in 2004. This is, above all, a site for racing fans, and even the most serious players can benefit by remembering what it’s like to be a fan. I don’t know how she sustains this site with so many features: sources of free pps, archive of book reviews, archives of betting and handicapping articles, Triple Crown trail (which can save us time), race day information, and even a harness race feature (the virtual stable) where you can pick out 10 or 20 horses to watch and be advised when they are going to run. If you face opposition at home against your passion for racing, try this site on the family: it has features for race lovers who are not hard-core players, including games. I guess that’s why the operator of the site calls herself a “horse racing guide”.
Second possibility. BRISnet has a free feature whereby you can approach the races through the trainer. I’ve always felt that the structure of the BRIS pps is very much trainer oriented. With this feature you can choose among some 15 or 20 trainers they have selected and enter the pps not by race track or by day of racing, but by trainer. Certainly a new point of departure can shake us out of past performance doldrums. The eye goes immediately to trainer info and one box tells you if the trainer is hot recently and gives a stat on the trainer’s last X days of races.
Let me give you a specific example of how it works. On January 1 I chose to click on trainer Kiaran Mclaughlin. I then had a choice of clicking on that day’s races in which KM had horses entered, or I could look back over the three previous days of this trainer’s races and actually see the pps with the results: an excellent way to spot patterns. I could also see KM’s horses entered for subsequent days when the pps were not yet available, which allowed me to appreciate the types of horses in his stable, the structure of his racing plans, and the volume of activity, and possible clusters of results related to trainer form cycle, thereby having a window open upon possible trainer intentions.
The BRIS trainer stats are in a number of categories and this gives us a chance to do research on one of the last frontiers in trainer handicapping. With all the trainer specialty stats available, which ones seem to work more effectively, and in conjunction with that category, how many of these trainer stats should be profitable in order to consider them worthy? Can negative trainer stats nullify positive ones on the same horse. I found one Mclaughlin maiden claiming horse that had only one positive-roi-stat stat among eight, and the horse won. This could be a superb research mechanism in order to more clearly identify a reasonable trainer filter for the Short Form method.
I’ve confronted this dilemma with Short Form research. Consider, for example, using a trainer specialty stat as a required positive filter. If there’s a switch to turf, for example, and the normally 13% trainer has won 19% on first turf and with a positive roi, then we have a positive trainer stat. But what if there are seven other specialty stats for today’s race, and the trainer shows a loss along with a lower percentage of profit in those specialties? How many negative trainer specialties can eclipse a positive one? When confronting an array of trainer specialties, does any one of them take precedence over the others? The BRIS format makes research on these questions easier because we can see the pps along with the stats we are researching and immediately take down the results.
SNAPPY THINKING
The article “Keep clicking and you’ll be a snappy thinker: The net is making us good at quick decisions – but there is a cost” (Sunday Times, London, 26 Oct 2008) by Brendan Montague and Helen Brooks makes the point that “The internet is changing the way the human brain works, researchers have found. It is improving people’s ability to make snap decisions and filter large amounts of information – but at the cost of subtle skills such as picking up the nuances of facial expression.”
This article triggers a thought: In my handicapping for the Breeders’ Cup, my initial decision in favor of Goldikova was made with print past performances, from previous races I had collected. My very final posting with arguments in favor of Desert Code was made with the print version of the pps, arrived UPS on the Friday eve of the BC. All my other analysis came from electronic downloads of pps that I read off the screen.
In going back over previous Stakes Weekend posts, I have noticed that some of my best analysis came from pps that I had printed from the downloaded version, while other less perceptive analyses came when I had handicapped off the screen. I will submit myself as a subject for these internet thinking researchers. I do believe that my own creative juices flow more liberally when I use hard copy than when I depend on a screen, but that’s anecdotal evidence. Your thoughts please.mc
TRICKS
Tricks is the name of a 2008 Polish film written and directed by Andrzej Jakimowski, about the relationship between a 17 year old girl and the 6 year old brother she is raising, in a small and funky Polish town, dominated by the railroad station. Using non-actors, this film is an authentic and emotive examination of the question of luck and probability. Can we force luck by intervening, and if so, in which ways?
Nothing to do about horse race handicapping, this film explores the delicate relationship between the roundabout process of destiny and the role of human participation in playing tricks with destiny in order to alter it.
With a little imagination we can leap from film to trackside and see how a rider or trainer change can make a meaningful difference in the evolution of a horse’s past performances, and we also see how human intervention is essentially experimental rather than deterministic.
It’s all about how we can change our “luck” in subtle ways, without forcing it, and this understanding can carry through to how we open the racing form, where we study it, and when we make our betting decisions: A truly exquisite film, and the “feel good” at the end is not based on cheap manipulation. On the contrary, there is a message that, indirectly, can help us to re-examine the intangible factors in our handicapping process.
From the Back Cover of book by C&X subscriber and contributor Dr. Kevin Maki and his colleague Dr. Peter Toth
A practical text on the clinical management of dyslipidemias, Practical Lipid Management balances conceptual development and pathophysiology with a straightforward approach to the identification and treatment of abnormalities in lipid metabolism.
The book explores the role of novel risk markers in clinical practice, summarizes the current guidelines for lipid management, and offers a critical and systematic approach to interpreting the results of clinical trials. A feature of the book is a set of sidebars which explore current controversies and unanswered questions in clinical lipidology. The treatment of specific dyslipidemias is illustrated with case studies. Treatment algorithms are also provided.
My comment: it is a source of great pride for all of us who appreciate the intellectual passion of horse race handicapping that C&X has so many eminent readers, such as Dr. Maki.
Hirsch, dean of writers, dies at 80
[I am taking the liberty of reprinting this DRF article, with thanks to the DRF, because many of you get your pps on line and will not have read it. Even if you saw it once, it is well worth rereading because of Privman’s fine writing in capturing the character of Joe Hirsch, and because of the memorable Hirsch quotes that Privman has included in the obituary.]
By Jay Privman



Joe Hirsch, whose writing and wit graced the pages of Daily Racing Form for nearly 50 years, died early Friday morning at St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York after a lengthy battle with Parkinson's disease. He was 80.
Last April, Hirsch fell and broke a hip in his Midtown Manhattan apartment. He had been living in a long-term care facility on Manhattan's Upper West Side until he was transferred to the hospital on Wednesday.
Hirsch was one of the most respected, honored figures in American racing, and the scope of his accomplishments is encyclopedic. He won an Eclipse Award for newspaper writing in 1978 and the Eclipse Award of Merit in 1992. He won the Lord Derby Award from Britain's racing writers, the only writer to win both the Lord Derby Award and an Eclipse Award. He is the only person to win all three awards presented by the National Turf Writers Association - the Walter Haight Award for career achievement, the Joe Palmer Award for meritorious service, and the Mr. Fitz Award for typifying the spirit of racing.
In 2004, the Turf Classic at Belmont Park was renamed the Joe Hirsch Turf Classic, and the press boxes at both Churchill Downs and Saratoga Race Course bear his name. He founded and was the first president of the National Turf Writers Association, becoming a mentor to several generations of racing writers.
"Joe Hirsch was much more than just the dean of American racing writers for half a century," said Steven Crist, DRF's publisher. "He was a global ambassador for the sport, a mentor to two generations of journalists, and probably the most universally respected figure in the world of horse racing."
Beginning in 1957 and for nearly 40 years thereafter, Hirsch compiled the Daily Racing Form's popular Derby Doings every spring leading up to the Kentucky Derby. He traveled far and wide to chronicle and promote racing. He attended the Arc de Triomphe in Paris for the first time in 1957, attended the first Dubai World Cup in 1996, and covered every Kentucky Derby, beginning in 1956, for nearly 50 years until his retirement. He covered races in England, Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan, and South Africa, as well as at every major track in North America.
Because of the trust and respect he commanded from those he covered, Hirsch frequently broke stories, most notably the news that Dancer's Image had tested positive for an illegal medication in the 1968 Kentucky Derby and the announcement by John Gaines in 1982 regarding the founding of the Breeders' Cup races.
The esteem in which Hirsch was held might best be illustrated in his friendship with Sonny Werblin, whom Hirsch first met when Werblin was a racing executive in New Jersey. Werblin also was co-owner of the New York Jets, and in 1965 the Jets drafted a promising quarterback from Alabama.
Joe Namath had a playboy reputation, and Werblin asked Hirsch if he would room with Namath and take him under his wing. Seemingly opposite in personality and temperament, Hirsch and Namath nevertheless roomed together from 1965 to 1976 and became lifelong friends
"We hit it off immediately," Namath wrote in Daily Racing Form when Hirsch retired.
Hirsch was born in New York City in 1928. He attended the University of New Hampshire and New York University, from which he earned a degree in journalism. After working as a stringer for The New York Times, Hirsch joined The Morning Telegraph, a sister publication to Daily Racing Form, as a copy editor in 1948.
He had a four-year stint in the Army before returning to the Telegraph in 1954. In the spring of 1955, he got his first assignment writing for Daily Racing Form. He was promoted to executive columnist in 1974, and retired in 2003.
Hirsch believed that "good racing is good business." He thought the pure sport of racing was the best lure for fans, and he had special admiration for the top horses, trainers, jockeys, and executives. He was particularly close to jockeys Eddie Arcaro and Bill Shoemaker.
When Shoemaker retired in 1990, Hirsch wrote: "He not only won more races than any jockey in history, and had a higher percentage than most, but so many of his victories came in important races, when the stakes were high and the competition at its keenest. Hemingway called it grace under pressure. Shoe was the epitome of grace; a Fred Astaire of the saddle."
In 1964, Hirsch wrote of five-time Horse of the Year Kelso, "Once upon a time there was a horse named Kelso, but only once."
After the death of Go for Wand in the 1990 BC Distaff, Hirsch wrote: "Only the best of the breed will try to the death. The average horse, once he's had enough, will coast home, but the champions don't know how to coast. They only know how to win."
Hirsch was a staunch traditionalist.
The Triple Crown, he wrote, "isn't an annual presentation that inevitably must go to a mediocre individual or team holding a hot hand. No ordinary horse can win the Triple Crown. Its components and its ruthless time frame are too demanding. Indeed, even the extraordinary horse who is not incredibly lucky will fail, for it takes all of that, and a little more, to accomplish a sweep of the classics."
When Garden State Park closed in 2001, he wrote, "And so we lose another track to the passing parade. Narragansett Park, Jamaica, Tropical Park, Ak-Sar-Ben, Longacres, Washington Park, Bowie. They fall like autumn leaves, with only memories of great horses and magic moments left behind."
Hirsch was fond of racing's offbeat characters. One of his favorites was Saul Silberman, the president of Tropical Park in Miami, who had a tote machine in his office and would hand out envelopes with $20 bills to patrons on New Year's Day. "Take it, dummy," Silberman would bellow to those who hesitated, Hirsch wrote.
His grace and sharp mind in print and in private were legendary.
Before the 1973 Kentucky Derby, Hirsch wrote of Secretariat's loss in the Wood Memorial: "Like Watergate, it didn't seem possible, but there it was."
Before the 1974 Derby, Hirsch wrote of trainer Woody Stephens: "He is in approximately the same position as Sir Edmund Hillary, poised a few yards below Everest's summit and prepared for the final surge to the top." Stephens won that Derby, with Cannonade.
He had an understated, yet rapier, wit.
A turf writer once lamented the weather befouling a major race, calling it "a shame."
"It's a shame what happened to Marie Antoinette," Hirsch replied.
No writer worked harder, longer, or was more prolific than Hirsch. He would cut a dashing figure in the mornings in the barn area, immaculately dressed in coat and tie. In an era before cell phones, the Internet, e-mail, and computers, Hirsch always had the latest, most accurate news in his columns, especially Derby Doings.
Even in the latter part of his career, when the progression of Parkinson's disease made typing difficult, Hirsch would still turn out a column, his colleagues marveling at how well he wrote, and how tough and dedicated he was to get the work done.
"I cannot imagine that there was ever a more dedicated or courageous sportswriter," Namath wrote when Hirsch retired. "Despite a 20-year battle against Parkinson's disease, Joe continued to travel the world to cover the sport he loved, even when those columns took longer and longer to type and complete.
"I know something about playing in pain and the body giving out on you as an athlete. Until finally calling it quits at age 74, his mind as sharp as ever, Joe Hirsch played in pain but never once complained."
For much of his professional life, Hirsch would winter in Florida, go to Kentucky in the spring and remain in Louisville until, as he often said, "the tests come back" from the Derby. Following the Triple Crown, he would spend the rest of the spring and summer in New York City, except for decamping to Saratoga. In the fall, before the advent of the Breeders' Cup, Hirsch would often go to the Arc de Triomphe or the Washington D.C. International, then head for Miami in the winter and begin the cycle anew.
Hirsch liked to dine out and dine well. He became close friends with the maitre d's and owners at the best restaurants in the country. His best clout was at Joe's Stone Crab in Miami Beach, where the usual two-hour wait for customers was reduced to "Right this way, Mr. Hirsch" when he arrived.
Hirsch liked to invite several people to dinner each night on the road and always insisted on picking up the check. It was a requirement of guests to have a full meal - cocktail, appetizer, main course, wine, dessert, and coffee. If someone would try and beg off dessert, Hirsch would implore that having dessert "wouldn't hurt a baby."
Once, a greenhorn attempted to pick up the check and made a show of it. Hirsch grabbed the check. "In order to be a good host," he softly scolded, "you must first be a good guest."
Hirsch had another great passion in his life, baseball. A dedicated Yankees fan, he watched their games nightly after his retirement. He went to his first game in the 1930s with his father to see Babe Ruth.
Hirsch has no immediate survivors. A funeral will be held at 10 a.m. Sunday at the Plaza Jewish Community Chapel, 630 Amsterdam Ave. and 91st St. in Manhattan.