Mark Cramer
C & X Report

CONTENTS
Editorial: when the irrational becomes sensible
Problem race II: what went right?
The Maiden Dropper
Ken’s research on the Short Form Method
Problem race I: what went wrong? (and the Short Form)
Notes and Reflections: Pick 3 Pluralism
Nathalie Desoutter: the Next Julie Krone?
Bet-downs and Overlays: new research and validation
Is Ed Bain Superman?

EDITORIAL:
WHEN THE IRRATIONAL BECOMES SENSIBLE
Our Derby day Stakes Weekend is worthy of reflection. For the Kentucky Derby we knew everything about every horse and could not come near picking the winner. No public handicapper I know of even mentioned the winning horse in the money.
The winner came from a race track that is nearly 4,000 feet above sea level. Though I don’t consider 4,000 as “high”, having lived at 12,000, I do recognize that the horse was stabled there, worked there and probably increased his red-blood-cell count just by being there, and then vanned in to Churchill the nearest possible to the date of the Derby, thus maintaining whatever was gained from the altitude training.
I have written about this subject before and should have seen the possibility, but frankly, before the fact, 4,000 feet altitude would not have seemed high enough for the red-blood-cell-expansion mechanism to kick in. My original theory came with observation of shippers coming down from Arapahoe at 5,200 meters to Midwest tracks.
A more rational post-race analysis could go back to our original doubts about the field. I had written that none of the major prep races contained what we would call fields of competitive class. Thus, the winners of those preps were all suspect. So in the end, the Kentucky Derby could have been a lesser-of-evils race, and such scenarios often trigger big surprises.
The irony is that we had one race with high-information content, replete with expert opinions and visuals of prep races, including super-refined workout reports, and we still couldn’t get it right, while in the other race, the truly problematic race, I was able to pick out a most likely winner at generous odds and see him run a bang-up race finishing a close second. (At least one C&X reader has told me he made money on the race by betting the horse win-place.)
In fact, backing up to place was a great bet because in my same analysis I had documented that the heavy favorite would be a sucker bet. Place on a longshot is an underlay when the favorite finished first or second but place betting a longshot when the heavy fave figures off the board is a definite overlay, And thus, with the super-fave out of the money in our Problem Race I, the back-holes paid off well on my horse.
If the “problem race” feature works out well, who knows, we might develop our own “C&X Problem Race Triple Crown”.
Let’s take a look at my arguments and try to extract what was done right about this:
“I am therefore going to favor the one pace presser that is a win type, and that horse is the 11, Dawn After Dawn. Look at the grass stats: 4 3-1-0 at the distance/turf and 7 4-1-0 on turf overall. Now look at the trainer stats, by far the best in this field. Sadler has an incredible flat-bet profit over 271 turf races, and he has profits in other specialty categories.”
So in fact, Ken dished me a race in which most of the horses had similar speed potential and class level (hence, problem race), for which classical handicapping could not pick a horse. But thin slicing it provided to fertile slices of information, (1) horse domination on the surface/distance, from the all-important and under-used performance box; and (2) an amazing flat-bet trainer stat.
Thus, for this one problem race, at least, two apparently secondary factors were elevated into a primary position, but in combination with a more conventional suspicion about the pace of the race that would favor the same horse.
So let’s summarize the quirky contrast between the Kentucky Derby and the Problem Race. Year after year we get siphoned into playing hyped races simply because they are supposed to be big moments of the year. In this case, a race we would have normally passed because it looked impossible to handicap contained better value than the race we are all supposed to unload on.
In the end, it was more rational to play the “problem race” than the one that every player in the nation was fixated on.
I will leave this reflection open ended, on purpose. It just shows that no other form of entertainment or participatory activity can match the philosophical complexity and potential for supreme surprise of this game we love.

PROBLEM RACE III: WHAT WENT RIGHT?
In the Dixie, on the turf, with the favorite that we didn’t like, Proudinsky, scratched from the race, we lost some of the value but gained a leg up for the back-up position in the exacta. Let’s not dwell on what I did not like about the scratched horse.
Beyond what I wrote in the post, I have gone back through my process, step by step, to see how I arrived at picking the exacta cold.
Since this was a Grade 2 race, the first step was to eliminate all the horses which I felt could not handle this class level. While doing this, I realized that some of the Gr 1s and 2s next to the horses’ performances contained fields that were not necessarily as good as the designated class levels of those races. Therefore, I allowed for some flexibility in the class eliminations. (Since the class designations at these levels often do not match with the true levels of the fields, you can see why the Short Form cannot be applied at this level.)
In my class rankings, I had Strike a Deal (4-1 second favorite), Just as Well (longshot at 9-1) and above all Lauro at above 10-1 as the fundamental class of the field. I also gave third favorite Kiss the Kid and Wesley some chance.
The sleeper in the class department was Parading, since we were dealing with a horse at a new level from his previous years. Parading was coming from a win by 7 _ lengths in a Grade 3, and longtime C&X readers know that we call this a “Big Win”. A horse earning a Big Win (by 5 lengths or more) is a horse with a higher class than the field he comes from. Exceptions would be on wet tracks and maiden claiming races, where you may have a huge distance between the leaders and the also-rans.
We have also identified that big wins are even more valuable on the turf, where margin of victory is often shorter than in equivalent dirt races. Any horse winning by a huge margin in a large-field turf race is likely to be worthy of a higher class ranking.
While Parading was now occupying a major part of my thought process, I still had to eliminate Strike a Deal (whose best races were two furlongs longer) and Lauro, both because they figured to need the race following a layoff. It was rather difficult to toss the longshot Lauro, but I made a note to follow up on Lauro next time he races, for a highly competent German trainer, Andreas Wohler and his top rider Starke. Lauro was last a winner in second after layoff, so we will be having a pattern match next time we see him. Please note that Lauro once defeated Rail Link, a horse that went on to win the Arc de Triomphe! Lauro could be a good bet next time! Watch the replay of the Dixie and watch how Lauro was used over-energetically from the far outside post, as if it were a workout within the race.
Once these two class horses were Xed out of my pps, I confronted the third class horse, Just as Well, originally making him my first choice. He had been in the money twice at Grade 1, had been forced to skip a graded race in his program because of a missed workout, and had once finished second by only _ at 24-1 to Kip Deville, making him an overachiever.
His trainer, Jonathan Sheppard, though of poor roi in his stats, is highly competent and knows the Maryland racing circuit.
So I loved this horse and wanted very much to make him my top pick.
Pace
But then I noticed that there was not much speed in the field and that Just as Well would have to come from way off the pace. In fact, Lauro (already eliminated) would offer some speed from the outside post, and Parading, the Big Win horse, looked like he was ideally set up to control the pace.
The question on Parading was whether his new-found early speed was for real. Today, the handicapper has much more information at his disposal, through Google searches. I went into my research mode, scanned Google for articles on Parading, and got my answer. Since his return to the races, his handlers had documented in an interview, that Parading had found a new life and had become a speed horse. Click in my head: new-found early speed is one of my favorite angles for identifying an improving horse.
This interview told me two things: first, that Parading would be able to control the pace from either in front or as a presser, and second, that his Big Win was for real because he was at his best level ever, and thus I projected him to improve. In my mind, I had the feeling of both pace control and “current class”, as opposed to the dormant class of other contenders. This was the “now horse”.
This meant that it would be difficult for Just as Well to get up in time but also difficult for Just as Well to not finish in the money. Hence, I made him my only exotic inclusion, with Parading as the win play.
It was a cold exacta and it paid $70.20 for $2. Naturally, with the difference in odds between these two horses, it became reasonable to have a backup win bet on Just as Well, just in case. (I couldn’t have predicted, at the time of writing my post, that Just as Well could have gone off at such high odds.)
It certainly was pleasing to watch the race unfold exactly as I had predicted.
In retrospect, I had juggled with a balance of current class and pace, distinguishing rising class but also benefiting from what I had uncovered with the information digging: notably the interview on Parading.
I look back and see the evolution of my thought process in this race and I discover went right: I did not make hasty judgments or prejudgments in the early part of the handicapping process, and was willing to keep juggling the information until I came upon a perfect balance. I sure wish it would happen this way more frequently, but at least I can resolve to not form prejudgments until all the information is in balance.

THE MAIDEN DROPPER
I haven’t written about this subject in years. It used to be the best bet in racing. Everyone knows about it. Sometimes it is overbet. Other times the public is still capable of ignoring it.
Consider the following pps:
Douseewhati’msayin (running position in bold, lengths behind in parentheses)
2Feb08 FG ft 1 Md 25000 3 (1) 5 (4) 6 (4) 5 (7) 7 (23) 40-1 odds field of 7
4Jan08 FG ft 6F Md 16000 7(6) 5(6) 4(5) 4(14) 3-1 odds as first-time starter field of 8

On 24 Feb, the horse was dropping back to a $16,000 claiming price. He was not a proven loser, since he had only lost once at today’s level. Yes, he had lost by 14, but he was with the field most of the way and finished in the top half of the field. Furthermore, someone thought highly of the horse because he was sent to post at 3-1 in that debut race.
In his second race, at a much higher class level, he remained in contact with the field for at least six furlongs before dropping back. The old American Turf Monthly articles would have labeled this second career race as a six-furlong workout within a route race.
The question is, how much of the class drop factor is lost if the horse has already been defeated once at the level he’s dropping to today?
If this had been the Short Form method, the horse would have been eliminated by the fact that he had a 5% trainer. But here, we are simply trying to isolate the maiden class drop factor, in order to find out whether it can function independently of other factors.
Given the above information, in what odds range would you rank the horse? In deciding the odds range, consider that the maiden class drop factor functions best when it is not so obvious … the horse has lost once at the level, but with an excuse, or when the horse lost at today’s level he had a no-win jockey or did not have lasix, etc.
Well, in order to relieve you of the suspense, I’ll tell you the horse’s odds: 56-1. At 5-1 we can not excuse a trainer with a 5% win rate, but if everything else is cool, perhaps we can be more flexible at 56-1.
Please excuse me for the sensationalism. I had a choice of numerous races to illustrate my argument, and perhaps I have sinned by using the most sensational among them. But my point is that the maiden class drop factor is still alive and well, especially when there is some exquisite underlying factor. I suppose in the case of Dooseewhati’sayin, the elegant piece of information is the fact that the horse was 3-1 as a first-time starter.
By now you will have guessed that the horse won, paying 114.60 to win. In doing so, his Beyer figure went from 32 in the mile race to 60 in the winning sprint. However, the horse’s pace-Beyers in that mile race were much better than 32 and the public should not have judged him by his final time at the mile, since today’s race was a sprint.
Even with less sensational examples, we can confirm that the maiden class drop factor is alive and well, especially when the public overestimates the obstacles against the horse.

KEN’S RESEARCH ON THE SHORT FORM METHOD (SF)

[Mark’s note. Ken’s research is based on real-race, real-time analysis, and also includes his own perceptions. Thus, we do not have a mechanical sample of the Short Form but we do have an in-the-trenches example of how one handicapper applies it. Ken has the floor.]
This is a report from Feb. 17 through April 10, some 51 days with a total of 88 races and 70 races (difference explained below) in the sample.
Several things should be noted. First, there is a lot of subjective “me” in this sample:
1. It covers only races with SF qualifiers that I actually wagered.
2. It covers only races with SF qualifiers who were 50% overlays to my assigned fair odds. Therefore, the hit rate does NOT represent the hit rate of ALL SF qualifiers.
3. The “fair odds” method is Mark’s from Thoroughbred Cycles and the top horse on the ALL-IN-ONE output was given the top odds, and so on down the line- again fairly mechanical.
4. In many, many cases (in fact most, I think) multiple overlaid entries were “flat bet wagered” without any regard to which had a higher positive expectation or which was more likely to win. Obviously many tickets were doomed to be losers because of multiple win bets in the same race.
5. While the strict letter (or at least the spirit) of the current SF rules were being followed as closely as possible, there is a sprinkling of common sense and intuition in these results. They are not just flat “automatic” selections although the method of selecting SF qualifiers was ALMOST automatic. An example might be a situation where a horse barely won a $15k Maiden State Bred Claimer 2 races back, then lost BIG time next out at the same track and distance in a $15k open claimer, and is now entered back at the same level today. I might very well say this horse has NOT YET PROVEN it can compete in open company against winners at this level and tossed the horse.
Having said all of that, this is for real in the sense that real money was bet here (and a hell of a lot more than $2 flat win bets). But the results are tabulated on $2 flat win bets for research purposes.
[Mark’s comment: It is too complicated to publish the spread sheets in our format, and I can testify, having combed through Ken’s spread sheets, that his narrative account is precise and expressive.]
RESULTS WHERE ALL OVERLAID SF QUALIFIERS ARE BET
There were 88 races during the sample (races and tracks that I analyzed; obviously there were many more across the country) with one or more qualifiers who were a 50% overlay to fair odds at post. There were 50 SF winners in those 88 races for a 57% hit rate BETTING MORE THAN ONE HORSE MOST OF THE TIME. Total bet was $239 and total returned was $265.70 for an average mutuel of $5.31 and an roi of $1.12 for each $1 bet. This roi is obviously reduced by making multiple win bets in a race. The largest winning mutuel was $19.20 and the lowest was $3. And you can see in column L there were many double digit winners.

RESULTS WHERE ONLY OVERLAID SF QUALIFIERS IN AIO’S TOP 4 ARE BET
Of the 88 races in the sample, there were only 70 who had one or more overlaid SF qualifiers in AIO’s top 4. In those 70 races there were 44 winners for a 62% hit rate, and a $4.97 average mutuel. There was a total of $192 bet in those 70 races and a return of $218.70, for an roi of $1.14 for each dollar bet. Largest mutuel was $17 and smallest 2as $6.20.
WIN TYPES
There were 5 winners with “win type” life time performance boxes with a total mutuel of $54.60.
WINNING HORSE VERSUS WINNING TRAINER
Winning Horse (a horse that qualifies but a trainer that doesn’t including a double elimination trainer) were 16 with a total mutuel of $123.20 and average mutuel of $7.70. There was one $42 winner in this category which certainly skews things.
Winning Trainer with non-qualified horse (including chronic loser double elimination horse or horse who won maiden claiming last out) were 9 with a total mutuel of $98.90, BUT with an average mutuel of $10.90. At this point at least, the winning trainer aspect seems more powerful than the qualifying winning horse, or TRAINER OVER CLASS.
MY CONCLUSIONS
The method continues to look strong and surely cuts race analysis time and focuses you on what apparently does make a difference in selecting contenders. From then on, the results can get better by further analysis of each contender. The sharper you are, the thinner you can slice the pie.
Postscript from Mark. Ken added that the results were not happy when using the SF in exotics. He also noted that it was not good to intervene and change the amount of the flat-bet win wager based on whether you liked a horse more or less.
The relatively disappointing exotics results are not surprising. Even with a method that has a high percentage hit rate, in pick 3s, for example, we would not be able to depend entirely on that single method. We know from experience that the results of pick 3s are eclectic. (For further comment, see my short reflection under Notes and Reflections.)
But in general, assume you have a method with a significant flat-bet profit that gets 20% winners. Say you have 3 qualifiers in leg one (a 60% chance), three more qualifiers in leg two (again a 60% chance) and a single in leg three which has a 50% chance to win. That “looks” pretty good. But to calculate your probability of collecting on this Pick 3 your would have to multiply .6 x .6 x .5. The result is .18, so in fact, with 3 horses in the first two legs, all based on a flat-bet-profit method, plus a valid even money chance in the third leg, you would only have an 18% chance of collecting on the pick 3. In other words, flat-bet-profit methods for win betting do not automatically turn into exotic profits. (See further comments below.)mc
PROBLEM RACE II: WHAT WENT WRONG? (AND MORE ON THE SHORT FORM)
We lost the problem race sent to us by Dr. Billy M, but this race offers an excelled case study of where we are at in our attempt to make the Short Form a truly automatic bet.
Since you all were in on this, you have seen the pps and I can refer to them here without having to reprint. I would also like to add that prior to post time but too late to post on our website, I received separate e-mails from both Ken and Don, doubting my having placed Aferds Code Red as a most likely winner.
First, let’s be clear: Aferds Code Red qualified by the Short Form. He was not a proven loser at the level and his trainer was not a no-win trainer.
Second, although I listed the proven loser Tytus as the fourth possible winner, he was not a contender for the win and that’s why I called him as a possible backwheel horse. I did this because the Short Form does not necessarily eliminate horses from backup slots in exactas or trifectas. My considering him with a chance for in the money was based on my studies of trainer Jamie Ness, who always spots his horses low enough where they can do their best. For this reason, Ness has the unhappy (for the player) combination of low return on investment with a high win percentage.
Third, regarding my second choice, Chasm, I had to do a bit of interpreting here, since this horse had lost one race that you may have considered at the level (clm 4,000 in open company) compared with the race level of clm 5,000 non-winners of 1 race this year. In the end I decided that 4,000 open company was at least as high, if not slightly higher, than 5K nw1y. Think that an open race may have multiple or recent winners in it while a nw1y has no recent winner.
Yes, that was a matter of interpretation, but in any case, Chasm was not a proven loser at the level because none of his other races were that low and you need to strike out twice at today’s level or lower in order to be considered a “proven loser”.
The downside on Chasm was the switch to an 8% rider. Those of you who have been following the Short Form research know that I am still not clear about how low a rider percentage has to go to nullify a trainer percentage. I will ask Ed, who is currently working on a computer formulation, to take note of this question.
Fourth, this brings us to the eventual 6-1 winner, Caleb’s Boy, one of our three SHORT FORM contenders for the win. If you were using this race in a pick three, you would have had to use all three of these contenders, excluding the heavily bet Tytus and thereby gaining an advantage. And even if you had done multiple win betting and played all three SHORT FORM contenders, you’d have more than doubled your money.
Here is where a Cramer flaw enters the picture. I had the Bris pps for this race, and according to all the info they gave me, Caleb’s Boy qualified by the Short Form, even though the trainer was a virtual unknown. His rider’s percentage was considerably better than that of Chasm’s.
My flaw came with the layoff factor. I had mentioned early on in my analysis that conditions such as non-winners of a race for the year favors those horses that have not raced during the year, in other words, layoff horses.
All three of my contenders were coming back after long layoffs. Here, I decided to handicap the layoffs, eroding my neurons by trying to hopelessly split hairs. Aferds Code Red had won following a layoff (3Sep06 to 24June07) but as Don later said in an e-mail, that was a l-o-n-g time ago, and we had no recent evidence on this horse. Still, I saw the trainer with a position lay-1 stat and that caused me to take the horse over the other two, whose lay-1 races were not good (Caleb’s had the worst lay-1 race listed).
That was very thin reasoning, I suppose, since a trainer may on one occasion decide to not crank up a horse for a lay-1 race and use that race as a conditioner, and then, with the same horse, decide to crank him up to top fitness for another comeback race.
Ken raised the question as to why I mentioned Caleb’s Boy as a win type(18 4-2-3) at Canterbury, if the wins did not total higher than the combined places and shows. My reasoning was one of spirit of the law over letter of the law. Caleb’s Boy’s record for all other tracks was 5 0-0-0), which meant that he was a true Canterbury horse that could be favored over others in the field for this reason.
But Chasm was an even better horse for course (12 5-2-2), and also a better win type at Cby and for this reason, closing my eyes to Chasm’s 8% rider, I decided with much hesitation to place him above Caleb’s Boy.
What can I say? Those were the only three Short Form contenders in the race, and one of them won at close to 6-1. We were not all that far off, but this shows a flaw in our attempt to make the Short Form an automatic bet, as well as a serious wrinkle in how to “compute” these factors in a way that the spirit of the law has some place in the formula as well as an artistic way to weigh contradicting variables. My thanks to Dr. Billy M for having sent this race, which has served as a particularly expressive research benchmark.
Fortunately, I chose a second problem race on May 16, and we got that one right.

NOTES AND REFLECTIONS
Pick 3Pluralism
In the past several months I have had discussions with various readers who seem to have winning methods that have not been successful in Pick 3 wagers. Here is the synthesis of my responses:
I will try to help you here as best I can. First, please note that I am not a pick 3 player. I prefer single race exotics.
Here is why. I can divide winnners into 3 types:
a. ho hum: we discover the same as betting public, so the results are formful but underlayed;
b. we have an insight and can get an overlay
c. nonsense or chaos races, where the result does not figure and we have no answer to why it happened. This third of the races prevents me from playing pick 3s.
The people I know who are successful in pick 3s are
1. able to identify the (c) races in the sequence, and
2. willing to use the ALL in those (c) races.
Finally, in a pick three, we can expect that the reasons for the winners will be diverse. Therefore, if we are using a single methodology, good as it may be, then we will be defeated by either lack of diversity or by the (c) chaos winner.
As for identifying a chaos race that looks like a break on a pool table, I would say that a race with all proven losers at the class level is my favorite measure. One in which none of the horses can run to par is reasonable but excludes the possibility that one of the non-par-capability horses is still faster than the others, or is a win type (more wins than places or shows in the performance box).
That could illustrate another type of chaos race: one in which all the horses are non-win types, with more places and shows than wins.
I hope this helps.
Mark

NATHALIE DESOUTTER: THE NEXT JULIE KRONE?
France is not known for prominent female riders but a young woman by the name of Nathalie Desoutter has a chance to become a new Julie Krone. For the moment it is more difficult for her to find mounts in flat racing, so she mainly races in events for female or at open events at small tracks in her native Landes region in the Southwest.
Desoutter tells me that she comes from a family of horsemen and riders and learned her craft from a young age. She went to the Ecole de Jockeys in the southern town of Mont-de-Marsan, and had her amateur license at the age of 16.
Watch her ride and you can see that she has all the natural skills that come from being brought up in a horse riding culture.
The other half of the formula for success along with skill is self-confidence. I interviewed Ms. Desoutter on a Spring afternoon at Longchamp with the aroma of cherry blossoms in the background. In predicting whether I could use her as a plus factor when considering a horse she is riding, I probed for the self-confidence factor. I could see it at many levels. She’s not afraid to talk to a reporter, and not afraid to be honest about herself, and even self-critical. And when she is criticizing a poor ride, she does so with fresh exuberance, with a sparkle in her eyes, with no evidence in her voice of any negative “woulda-coulda-shoulda” thinking.
Most important, she was not afraid to lose a race. She just wants to ride and to do her best. She relishes the challenge.
One of the greatest tests for Nathalie Desoutter, perhaps a milestone, came on May 4, 2008 in a graded stakes race called the Prix d’Ingre. This was a prep for the Grand Steeple Chase of Paris and Desoutter had a mount named Padisha Soy. I went that afternoon, with a special interest in the performance of Padisha Soy and the possibility that a woman jockey might have a chance to win the Grand Steeple Chase (the equivalent to the BC Classic of jumping in France).
I never got the chance to see. In mid-race, Padisha Soy threw his rider. Nathalie Desoutter was on the ground, under hooves, her chances for the Grand Steeple apparently thwarted.
She got up cleanly, and three weeks later she was back aboard Padisha Soy for the Grand Steeple. Trainer David Windrif was guardedly optimistic. He called the fall in the Prix Ingre a “little annoyance” and said his horse had trained well for the big event. But he recognized that, “One must be a realist. There are three or four big cylinders in this race and if they fail in one way or another, my horse is capable of rising to the occasion.”
So Nathalie Desoutter’s horse was eighth choice, at 22-1, in a field of 14. But she kept the mount thanks to the trainer’s confidence in her, which was a reflection of her confidence in herself.
Padisha Soy raced evenly in the beginning, gradually gaining position. In the stretch, he made up tons of ground, finishing third in the nearly 4-mile race, for a big slice of the plus million dollar purse. With the second horse eventually disqualified, Padisha Soy was moved up to the second slot.
“It was a magic experience”, Desoutter told me, lighting up in a wide smile.
In retrospect I asked her if the fall had made a dent in her self-confidence.
“It was troubling,” she said. “But I felt no loss of confidence. After all, it was my fault and not the horse’s. So I knew what to do.”
Here was the great sign of infinite self-assurance. Nathalie Desoutter had said, non-chalantly, that it was her fault. Capable of self-criticism, yet also capable of learning from mistakes, Nathalie Desoutter has all the right ingredients to become a champion. Already among the leaders in the jumping standings, she may have a chance to rise in flat racing as well.
It is rare to find any rider anywhere in the world that rides both in flat and jump racing. Nathalie Desoutter loves to ride and is ready for any new challenge. She has a special finesse for the most delicate horses.
For the moment, if you are planning a visit to Paris, don’t forget to attend the jumping races at Auteuil, Hemingway’s favorite track, and play Nathalie Desoutter on all her mounts.
She tells me that Padisha Soy will be back in the Fall. I will be there.
PS. On Sunday May 3 in a 16 horse field at Auteuil, it was the anniversary of Nathalie Desoutter’s fall in the Prix d’Ingre and she was on a 16-1 horse. Just for fun, but considering seriously Desoutter’s memory of the fall and resolve to make amends, I played her horse to show. She finished a close second (there’s no place betting in France) and paid off at 5-1 in the show hole (what the French and British call “placé”).

NEW RESEARCH: VALIDATION
[I have decided that this piece on harness racing applies equally well to the Tbreds, since the idea came from previous Tbred research. I have let this great method slip through the cracks of automatic betting since it would require the player to be there and thus it defeats the purpose of being able to bet without waiting around to see the odds. However, this is still good stuff and is worth the review.]
BET-DOWNS OR OVERLAYS?
A DISCOVERY!
Saturday night May 9, 2009, at Georgian Downs is a perfect microcosm of my recent research into thousands of double digit winners.
What I expected
From the beginning of this research, I expected that there would be many more double digit winners that were bet down from their morning line odds, illustrating the presence of insider action. And in the same formula, I expected that there would be a lot fewer winners that went off above their ML line odds.
Wrong, wrong, wrong!
In fact, roughly 40% double-digit winners went off at above their ML odds, 40% below their program odds, and another 20% within range of what the oddsmaker expected.
The Georgian results I refer to are a perfect representation of my findings:
Race 3, Live to Dream ($11.00 winner) was 8-1 in the ML (bet down).
Race 5, Windsong Daisy ($15.90) was 4-1 by the program estimate (overlay). Please note that I am using the word “overlay” within the classic perception, using the Morning Line rather than my own personal odds line, for research purposes.
Race 6, Woodmere Windsor ($10.50) was 8-1 in the program (bet down).
Race 8, Rain Activator ($20.90) was 10-1 in the program (neither bet down nor overlay).
Race 11, Profit Forecast ($19.60) was 4-1 in the ML (overlay);
I was going to write, “Ya see! The toteboard means NOTHING.”
But then I thought back to thoroughbred research I had done, which showed that there was a flat-bet profit in playing horses that were bet down not from today’s Morning Line odds but from their real odds in their previous race, having finished off the board in that prior race. Makes sense, doesn’t it? If a horse races a clunker and then, next time out his odds are significantly lower than they were in the clunker race, it suggests that something is going on here and now on the toteboard, regardless of the irrelevant morning line.
It also makes sense that poor odds can be a legitimate excuse for a bad finish (that is, if you believe that there is something meaningful called “smart action”).
So I went back to the past performance that produced the above Georgian results. Were these double digit winners bet down from their odds in their previous race? Had they finished off the board in that previous effort? Let’s look. (Here I retype their winning payoffs so you can visualize the odds change from previous race to now.)
Live to Dream ($11.00) was indeed 9-1 in his last race and had finished 6th by 9 lengths.
Windsong Daisy ($15.90) was 12-1 in his last race and had ended up 4th by 7 lengths in that unfruitful effort that reflected her odds.
Woodmere Windsor ($10.50) was 29-1 in his prior race, finishing 4th by 2 1/4.
Rain Activator ($20.90) had been 22-1 in his previous line, with a futile 7th by 14 lengths.
Profit Forecast ($19.60) was a whopping 42-1 in his prior race and raced just like his odds, finishing 8th by 11 lengths.
So what have we got here? All five double-digit winners had been off the board in their last race and nevertheless, all of them were now bet down in relation to their odds in their previous race.
Are we on to something? You’d better believe it!
Summary of Rules for Tbreds
To simplify how previous research went, the night before the races, you identify all horses that have finished 4th place or worse and at least 4 lengths behind and were are least 9-1 in that losing race, you look at each of these horses on the board.
Any horse that goes off at half his previous odds, even though by requirement he looks bad in his last race, then that's the bet. But take nothing above 14-1 and nothing below 4-1.
Those are the rules, and embedded in these rules are one of two possibilities:
(1) the horse has no redeeming traits for today's race and therefore the action is insider trading; or
(2) the horse does have positive handicapping traits, such as class drop, and a smart sector within the betting public realizes this.
It's the best of both world's because it's an odds drop but it's also an overlay.

IS ED BAIN SUPERMAN?
Before I go on, it must be known that both Ed Bain and his wife Susan Sweeney are friends of mine. So I may be prejudiced. In fact, my website, www.altiplanopublications.com has a link with their newsletter and past performance service.
I will try to be as objective as possible. I used to play the horses in Maryland, at the Cracked Claw OTB restaurant 21 miles north of my home in Gaithersburg. Over several years I witnessed that both Ed and Susan were winners, in their own ways, with both using Ed’s trainer specialty stats. Ed bet to win, and he bet meaningful amounts of money, so, as they say, “He was putting his money where his mouth is.”
If I look for words to describe Ed, I come up with “straight shooter”, “man with a mission”, “rigorous”, “self-critical”, “self-confident” and “mild-mannered”.
The “mild-mannered” reminds me of the old Clark Kent, and now that I see that Ed is single-handedly attempting to leap over the tallest of obstacles in order to produce his own past performances, I am beginning to think he can pull it off.
The obstacles are numerous. Time is an obstacle because Ed must hand-craft his pps without the help of, and sometimes with the opposition from, the database establishment.
Ed is an anti-handicapper, in the sense that he tries to reject the type of information that has proven to be ineffective … ineffective either because of a bad record for picking winners or because it is overused and thus leads to regular underlays and a negative return on investment.
I have begun testing Ed’s pps, which for the moment are limited to Southern and Northern California. They are based on seven main categories, all of which are color coded. Green refers to layoff and maps out the trainer stat for anywhere from first through fourth after layoff. Brown is for claim, and mirrors the 4-race layoff methodology, as does grey for debut. Blue has the trainer stats for “won last race”. Yellow is interesting for those who don’t like to get bogged down with speed but would like to see the essential. Ed has decided that the essential is “par” and we can see the pars for fractions and final times. A horse that has been able to equal or exceed par gets a yellow stripe through the performance line. That alone saves us a ton of time. (We also are made to know the percentage of horses that win this type of race which have equaled or exceeded par for each of the fractions. Thus, we have an all-important context.)
The red refers to Ed’s “4 plus 30” whereby a trainer reaches a 30% milestone win rate within a particular specialty and whose statistic includes at least 4 wins.
Then there is the purple, which refers to Ed’s automatic bets, which are even more demanding in the realm of percentages for a trainer specialty.
Aside from the color-coded specialties, we receive the basic information on each race, so I am able to use these pps, for example, to follow my Short Form method.
Thus far, I can say that these past performances have become comfortable to use, following a reasonably short “get-used-to” period. Thanks to the color coding, if I want to scan for one thing, I can get through the pps of a whole card in a matter of minutes.
Sometimes it is good for a struggling player to look at the races from a new perspective. Ditto for an experienced player who needs a freshening.
In the interest of competition in the marketplace, I would like to see Ed pull it off. One can use his pps as a complement to what we are used to, as an entirely perspective that differs from the crowd.
So far, it looks real good. I will continue testing.




In the last lines of the final article in C&X, I have a little
correction (the article on Ed Bain).
It should read:

"Ditto for an experienced player who needs a freshening.
In the interest of competition in the marketplace, I would like to see
Ed pull it off. One can use his pps as a complement to what we are
used to, or as an entirely new perspective that differs from the
crowd.
So far, it looks real good. I will continue testing.