Mark Cramer
C & X Report

CONTENTS

Not a bum for a few days

The merry-go-round maiden dropper

Negative handicapping

Synthetic rumblings

Davidowitz: book review

The Different Race

Product review: “The Selective Bettor”

The Last Word: Racing and Life Itself

EDITORIAL:

NOT A BUM FOR A FEW DAYS

We are now rounding into the stretch drive of the final year of C&X, which began as the C&O Report with Bill Olmsted back in the early 1990s. This has been a dream job. My publishers, Bill Olmsted, followed by the late-great Dick Mitchell, and now Dave Powers, have all respected my individuality and allowed me to take this beyond the edge. A couple of articles in this issue will also get into the handicapping twilight zone.

My son asks me how I manage to convert play into work and work into play. I explain to him that there is a trade-off. You accept lower pay and you derive greater pleasure. Luckily I have a wife who accepts this philosophy. She sees me at the screen typing away and she knows that it’s only 10% income but 90% pleasure.

I have clients in my language consulting work who have high-powered jobs for big companies and spend much of their work time looking forward to the next vacation. I wouldn’t change places with them. For me, this IS a vacation. A vacation from a world I am glad not to be part of.

It is not all so sweet. With the Stakes Weekends I feel the pressure, first in choosing the right races, and then in making sure that I have done the best possible analysis for you, the readers. When I don’t get it right and my horses lose, I try very hard not to take it out on my wife. When dinner is ready I just tell her that “tonight you are sitting down at the table with a bum”.

I hesitate to announce that my picks over the years have earned a flat-bet profit because some of what I say in my postings requires interpretation. For example, in the 2009 Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint, I made a late Saturday morning posting in which I had discovered good reasons for the longshot Desert Code to win the race. He won, I collected, but then I had a sinking feeling inside: “what if the readers did not check on Saturday morning for late posts?” so I cannot take credit for that horse in my Stakes Weekend ledger.

However, for my recent Arc de Triomphe post, there was no question of interpretation or late ideas. On Saturday I posted my order of preference.

One of my three A horses won (too bad it was the favorite), my two C horses finished second and third at high odds, and one of my D horses finished fourth. I have received e-mail congratulations from readers who tell me they had the superfecta and others who nailed the trifecta. Choosing Youmzain as a B horse was basically a question of the overachiever method, since the horse had already finished second at huge odds in the two previous Arc de Triomphes. Using the Fabre horse Cavalryman as the other B horse was nearly as simple in the end, since he had come from the historically most productive Arc prep race and it was a pattern match with Fabre’s most recent Arc winner, Rail Link. How poetic that after so much handicapping and probing analysis, simple reasons prevail!

“I am going to sleep well,” I told my wife. “For a few days at least, I am not a bum.”

Soon, the ups and downs of the Stakes Weekends will become a good memory and C&X will go gracefully.

But I won’t lose contact with those readers who have been good enough to communicate with me, and will welcome correspondence from other readers who have not had the chance in the past to write.

I’m not sure what life will be like without C&X. But one thing for sure, the extra times will be spent handicapping more races. My marriage with a sometimes scornful horse racing has sometimes been turbulent but I’ve never thought of asking for a divorce, and the passion has only increased.

THE MERRY-GO-ROUND MAIDEN DROPPER

For years now we have been groping for what to do when we have a horse that qualifies by the maiden drop, using the Short Form or with my previous maiden methods. If the horse “ran” like a merry-go-round horse, following the field but not making any move, in other words, if he was never really part of the race at any call, is he really dropping today?

The argument went: no move against better = never really faced better.

But a few of our readers would insist that some of these merry-go-round horses have won off the drop, and at tote-blasting prices, and that you don’t need a high percentage hit rate to come out ahead.

Well, long-time reader and researcher, Ed, has done a piece of research that is both craftsman and engineer. He writes:

Here's what I did:
I marked every horse in my database that raced in a MSW last time out and was in a MCL today (no checks were done to see if this was the first time in a MCL) and that was at least 7 beaten lengths at every call and at the finish and was either last or next to last at every call and at the finish. For the purposes of this test, these horses were designated merry-go-round (MGR) horses.

I calculated four different scenarios for those marked horses, (the results in raw form are in a pdf file I sent to Mark, in the same order as listed here).
1. All MGR horses

2. All MGR horse with trainers with a win% greater than or equal to 12% over the 365 days preceding the date of the race

3. All MGR horse with trainers with a win% greater than or equal to 12% over the 365 days preceding the date of the race and that had no exceptionally bad trainer stats

4. All MGR horse with trainers with a win% greater than or equal to 12% over the 365 days preceding the date of the race and that had no exceptionally bad trainer stats and had at least one trainer stat that had at least 10 starts with a win % greater than or equal to 20% and an ROI of 1.30 (based on $1.00)

Ed

Mark responds:

I am reporting to you on the print-out of Ed’s results. The first three groups all lost more than the track take-out, although the third group lost the least (22%) while earning a 1.01 impact value. That means the horses in this third group actually won 1% more than their fair share.

Impact value is calculated by percentage of winners divided by percentage of qualifying horses. If there are 10% grey horses and they win 20% of the time, then you divide 20 by 10 and you get an impact value of 2.0. On the other hand, if you have 20% grey horses but they only win 10% of the time, you divide the 10 by the 20 and you get a .5 impact value.

Ed’s fourth category, with the enhanced trainer factor, produced an IV of 1.39 with a return on investment of $1.15 (15 cents on the dollar). This came from a sample of 173 horses with 15.6% wins.

What does this say? First, that the class drop of the merry-go-round horse, when merged with a positive specialty trainer move, has a positive result. Thus, you can use these criteria when playing the Short Form with maiden-class-drop horses only, with Ed’s trainer criteria.

Furthermore, we can use this research as one more piece of evidence that, in spite of the fact that the DRF publishes trainer specialty stats for everyone to see, the trainer factor is still alive and well when we have the right circumstances.

NEGATIVE HANDICAPPING

By Ron Midnight

Everything in this material world is binary. There is light and darkness, pride and shame, acid and base. There is also handicapping based on eliminating horses versus handicapping that identifies positive assets of horses. In reality, we can’t do one without the other but we do have to decide which one will dominate in this marriage of opposites.

For exotic wagering, at least, handicapping by elimination may be the best foundation. That’s the thrust of Mark Cramer’s “Short Form” method, based on eliminating horses that have no-win trainers in combination with the tossing of those that are proven losers at today’s level.

But handicapping by elimination does not have to be by Cramer’s criteria. Most of you, using your own methods, may agree that it’s easier to identify a horse that will not run well today than to isolate the definitive winner of the race. If you can eliminate 20% of the betting pool, then suddenly you have a mathematical edge, even if you have not found the sure winner.

Even if you were just as good picking winners as throwing out horses, handicapping by elimination may still offer a better return on investment than straight win handicapping. When you evaluate a race according to the assets of a horse, you are more likely to be in line with the public’s perception, whereas if you “use” the horses in your trifecta that have merely survived the elimination process, you may very well be getting higher average odds. The horses that are left in the mix following the elimination process may not be the crowd’s favorites.

Here’s an example. By eliminating horses with negative trainer stats, we often end up tossing out a relatively low-odds horse because its speed figs may be attracting action from conventional handicappers.

On the other hand, horses that make the cut for no other reason than that they could not be eliminated are what Cramer calls “maybe horses”, the type that pop up to ruin our trifecta or superfecta.

Recently I collected on a generous superfecta because there was one horse I left in simply because he made the cut. Had my handicapping been entirely focused on the horses’ assets, I might have bypassed this horse.

Epilogue. Whichever elimination process you follow, keep in mind that there is a secondary binary principal, based on the contradiction between letter and spirit of the law. One example can give you an idea of the concept. Recently I found a horse that had already lost three times at today’s level, a proven loser if there ever was one, according to Cramer’s Short Form method. However, sandwiched between these failures he showed one second place finish at 43-1, at the same level, when he was ridden by a particular apprentice jockey. In today’s race they were switching back to the very same apprentice.

The horse was a proven loser with all other riders but he was not a proven loser with this apprentice, and most important, he must have looked bad in the pps, because his odds were 43-1. In this case, the spirit of the law trumped the letter of the law, and fortunately I kept the horse in my winning combination.

[Editor’s note: When everyone sleeps, Ron Midnight can be found pouring over the past performances, smoking a Cohiba cigar and then savoring a Belgian chocolate. R.M. gets depressed by the sunlight, which he refers to as “an illusion”. He is an advocate of night racing.]

SYNTHETIC RUMBLINGS

It’s official: the two best horses in the world, Arc winner Sea The Stars and the filly Rachel Alexandra will both be absent from the Breeders’ Cup Classic. Sea The Stars is out because he has done everything, defeated the very best, and has earned an early retirement. He had nothing more to prove.

Back on our side of the pond, RA has also beaten the best. This year she was 8 for 8, including three wins against the boys, and one of those against the older guys in the Woodward. She won one Triple Crown race and defeated the winners of the other two Triple Crown events.

One of the reasons that her co-owner Jess Jackson does not want to go to the BC is to avoid the synthetic surface at Santa Anita. On the other hand, European trainers are relishing the idea of challenging a sub-par crop of American contenders for the BC-Classic on the synth.

One of those Euro challengers is Aidan O’Brien’s Mastercraftsman, winner of two Group I races at a mile, who was purposely dropped to Group III to prep on the polytrack at Dundalk, winning easily at a mile and 5/16 that resembles the BC-Classic distance.

Mastercraftsman joins an elite crew of Euro BC challengers that have one thing in common: the only recent races they have lost have been won by Sea The Stars. If it weren’t for the presence of Superhorse himself, this year’s top level of Euro horses would represent one of the most deeply classy crews of any racing season.

Aidan O’Brien wants to win the Classic this year (he was second last year to his arch rival John Gosden) but he has two possible entries to choose from, and both are mile specialists. The one I haven’t mentioned yet is Rip Van Winkle, who has not been prepped on the synthetic surface.

After last year’s one-two Euro finish in the Classic on the SA synth, other Old-World horses may be tempted. For example, Gosden’s filly Dar Re Mi, who would be a heavy favorite in the BC-F&M, might choose the Classic instead.

So Euro trainers are willing to bypass easier races with big-enough purses to try the synth but Rachel Alexandra will have nothing to do with any artificial surface.

I have been mulling over the synthetic factor, perpetually perplexed. The question is whether or not these artificial surfaces evolve with either time or human intervention. At the moment of this writing, Santa Anita Oak Tree’s synthetic surface is producing a fair game with no particular bias. No longer does SoCal speed have the advantage it used to enjoy on the dirt.

However, at Keeneland, the synthetic surface has done an about-face and is now favoring early horses or pressers, in conformity with what dirt racing used to be.

In the five Keenland sprints of October 18, four were won by E (early) horses, only one of them a favorite. In the six sprints of October 17, there were only two wire-to-wire winners but one paid $49, and the other four winners were all trackers or pressers, with none more than two lengths behind at the half mile (for both 6f and 7f races). A similar pattern could be observed for October 16.

This is not an especially pronounced bias, but it is what they used to call the universal bias: speed, either from in front or from a pressing position.

The bizarre results we were getting at the outset of synthetic surface racing, with even the slowest fractions not helping front runners to stay, seem to have diminished.

Meanwhile, back in Europe, horses go from fiber tracks to grass tracks and back, and I have lost my edge in playing American bred horses on the partial or false dirt.

After last year’s BC-Classic, many race observers were concluding that the Santa Anita artificial surface favored grass-oriented horses. This seems to me like anecdotal evidence. The one-two finishers in last year’s Classic were both classy horses. Today in Europe, horses can gallop on the dirt anywhere. At French training centers in Maisons-Laffitte and Chantilly, all the galloping paths are cushiony dirt.

Perhaps we are losing the measurable distinction between heredity and environment when it comes to racing surface.

Even if you ask trainers what they think about polytracks and pro-rides, some of them love it and others hate it. I’ve talked to a couple of horsemen who believe that dirt is actually easier on a horse’s legs than turf.

Go figure.

And still, we must not be confident about the statistical methodology on whether synthetic tracks are really safer for the horses. It gets complex when you consider how many variables are involved.

One thing for sure, the safety factor as related to synthetic surfaces is a smokescreen for other more crucial safety factors, especially the use of steroids and bute. Bute can mask a pain, which can allow a hurting horse to gallop as if he were in perfect condition, setting up the chance for a fatal step. When that happens, it would make little or no difference which surface he was on.

So, to answer the question about the recent domination by Euro horses over the Americans, it may have much more to do with the drug-free racing in Europe. Less infirmity is passed on from generation to generation because bleeders, lame horses and steroid monsters, if deprived of their fix, would show less attractive past performances and therefore would not qualify to become expensive superstuds.

Furthermore, training techniques that help overcome the stress factor can also tilt the playing field on the side of Euro horse condition. Both class and condition are favored in drug-free racing environments.

This may (or may not) explain the domination of Euro shippers in most Breeders’ Cups. There are some interesting pedigree theories based on the over-use of stallions, but the technical aspect of pedigree is beyond the scope of this article.

And the Euro invaders this year? Let’s wait until we have the pps in hand and do our measurements. One thing for sure. There are two potential repeaters. Mr. Stoute’s, Conduit, winner of last year’s BC Turf and this year making an attempt at a double, has also been defeated twice by Sea The Stars and is not even considered at the top of the Euro class list. We also have the BC-Mile winner Goldlikova, trained by Freddy Head, who was prepped at the odd distance of 7-furlongs, in a race that resembles the SA downhill turf course, and was used in a prolonged way to eventually get the lead and the rail, having started from post 14. Surprisingly for most of the crowd, she was not able to hold on against two Aga Khan horses. You can watch this race on Youtube (Prix de la Foret 2009) in order to judge for yourself if this was a failure on the part of Goldlikova or simply an anomaly where a filly that normally tracks was used too fast too early.

Having lost to two Aga Khan horses was no real shame since the blazing hot Aga Khan stable had 7 Group winners that weekend.

We can say that the Euro horses arriving for the Breeders’ Cup are a classy bunch that looks a little less formidable only because of the super-horse/super-stable competition they faced.

CHANGE AND CONTINUITY

Review of Betting Thoroughbreds for the 21st Century

by Steve Davidowitz (DRF Press, 400 pages)

In the interest of transparency, it should be noted that the same DRF Press has published two works of my fiction, so some may interpret it as a conflict of interest if I give a positive review to another book from the same publisher. That said, long before I had any relationship with the DRF, I have reviewed the original Betting Thoroughbreds, published back in 1977, which was the first handicapping book that ever taught me to study the past performances in a creative and non-linear way.

Therefore, I have fond recollections about how the Davidowitz masterpiece opened my eyes to things like key races, trainer specialties and track bias. It was the book of a visionary.

The updated version is more than twice as long. The point of departure is still inventive handicapping, but all the new developments in racing are included here with the same zest and analytical gymnastics as was the case for the first edition. Thus, we find synthetic surfaces, the new exotics strategies, the Breeders' Cup, the supertrainers, and newer hidden class angles, all this crafted masterfully within the structure of the original book so that the reader can see and feel the evolution of the game. We go from nostalgic pleasures to futuristic projections.

In reference to the nostalgia, we can revisit a 4-hour bus trip to Bowie, way back when New York racing used to be shut down for the winter, and what was learned by Steve D from that losing day would nurture winners for the next three decades. (I made the Bowie journey once myself, with an old girl friend, when I was still in high school and suffering from the lack of winter race action. I wonder whether playing horses "in season" is just as recommendable as eating fruit in season.)

There is no way we can summarize the completeness of this volume without sounding encyclopedic, so instead, I prefer to give a few specific examples from the book that will illustrate the scope and depth of Davidowitz as past performance analyst.

On page 92, he refers to "perhaps the strongest drop-down in all of racing", the drop from maiden special weight to maiden claimer, nothing strange to C&X readers, who have revisited this angle as recently as this issue, in the article on merry-go-round horses. One of the examples given by Davidowitz is the subject of my very first racing article, on the "class drop jockey switch", the case of Luna Vega at Keeneland. This is not the first time in the Steve D book that I will feel vindicated.

Moving to page 111, Mr. D. confronts the supertrainer factor, and tells us that even when most supertrainers are returning a negative roi with their high win percentages, at least one of two particular specialities seem to be commonly profitable for these guys: (1) a higher win percentage than in their overall stats with just acquired horses and (2) a higher win percentage with horses coming back after long layoffs.

These two categories validate Ed Bain's work, for Bain isolated precisely the same categories with his Layoffs and Claims. One example Mr. D. provides us is that of Scott Lake, whose roi’s are disappointing in every category (because the public knows his number) except with recent claims and long-term absentees. Lake also excels, according to the author, with class drops to the previous win level and shortening up in distance.

With so much trainer data inundating us, it's good to see that both Bain and Davidowitz help us to separate the wheat from the chaff, in order to avoid information overload.

Moving to another category, on page 138 Davidowitz gives one of his many examples of class subtleties, taken from the heritage of James Quinn's The Handicapper's Condition Book. Using stats from Charles Town (a track I remember fondly and will certainly return to), we see a set of average Beyer figs:

4,000 claimers N3L (non-winners of 3 lifetime) 53 average Beyer

4,000 Open claimers, 69 average Beyer

5,000 N3L, 62 average Beyer

which illustrates the added class value of open company races. An open company 4,000 claiming race is actually a higher class than a 5,000 conditioned claimer!

Another highlight of the book, in my view, is the way that Davidowitz resuscitates the Quirin speed points (pp 196-197). Just as I mentioned in the editorial, sometimes what is simple and pristine is what endures. In sprints for example, you give one point for and first, second or third position at the first call in a horse’s last three sprints, plus another point each time the horse was within two lengths at the first call, this too applied for a horse’s last three sprints. The horse gets a bonus point if it “led or was within a neck in all three rated races”.

The Quirin speed points are a type of short form in handicapping, with some interpretation involved, especially for knowing when to discard unrepresentative races, and my only question is whether or not they can be applied with the same success to synthetic surfaces.

This leads to another Davidowitz topic, which culminates when the author makes a projection of potential leading synthetic sires: Put it Back, with 22.2% synth wins of offspring, Tribal Rule (19.9%) and Red Bullet (19.6%).

One area where I may disagree with Steve D is on the question of “action bets” (p 279), where he writes:

“I expect to lose some money on action bets but they keep me in the race and provide peace of mind.”

I’ve heard this argument before. You are supposed to concentrate more on what is happening and learn more about handicapping if you have real money in a race. In part this is true. But it’s not a good trade-off, at least for yours truly, for whom action bets represent pissing away portions of one’s bankroll. My only exception to this is when I bicycle 300 kilometers to a race track, and given the effort I’ve made, I figure I have earned the right to play every race. (See www.altiplanopublications.com: “Our Racetrack Tour de France”).

But this disagreement with Davidowitz is minor, considering that his wisdom has helped me so much in my own handicapping agility, and Betting Thoroughbreds for the 21^st Century is laden with sage advice. The fundamental Davidowitz approach is based on the rational idea that winning at the races depends on being able to project change, as opposed to expecting continuity. The author reminds us that the cliché of “Never bet a horse to do what he or she has not done before” is opposed to the very essence of what it means to outsmart the betting public.

Howard Sartin once said that it is impossible to teach people to think inventively, and thus, to handicap creatively. If anyone is able to prove Sartin wrong, it would be Steve Davidowitz. If you feel your handicapping is lacking in agility and in need of a sixth sense, Davidowitz is the guy to read.

THE DIFFERENT RACE:

Two handicappers isolate the main factor but only one picks the winner!

(Keeneland, October 17, Race 3, 7 furlongs, 16k claimer. Please note that I have narrated in a way where you do not need to see the pps).

Ken sent me this race. Said it was an interesting puzzle. Indeed it was! In fact, the race was just as intellectually stimulating as any Breeders' Cup race.

My first rundown was the Short Form. At least eight of the twelve horses qualified, so if this were any other race, it would be: No play, on to the next race.

However, like a BC race, horses were coming from all over the place and the various class levels of the different tracks they came from made it more perplexing and thus a potential spot for a surprise winner at big odds.

Independently of each other, both Ken and I were able to identify what it was that was "different" about this race:

most of the horses were coming from races of a mile or longer with tracking or closing running styles and even those horses that weren't coming from such a race were still essentially specialized in routes rather than sprints. Several of the horses did show sprint wins in their pps, but way back when ... and their recent races were routes.

So both Ken and I, in our own ways, thought that the race would be taken by the horse that could control the pace. Once you understand these dynamics, you will be able to compare our two logics.

Ken saw that the 9-horse, Pish Posh, was the only one with early route speed, and the only one to have won by the wire-to-wire method. Because of the fact that Pish Posh had quit in his last race, he became a huge longshot.

I found one horse, a hanger now leaving from the rail, that had taken the lead at the 7-furlong point of his last mile race, only to give it up before the wire. I did not like this horse for the win, but felt he could be a potential backwheel horse.

However, I did have a horse that I gave my best chance to (though I felt the race was not really playable, and stayed out).

My filly, the 12, Nick's Girl, was the only runner in the field to have won at the 7-furlong distance, four races back, versus better horses, for a different trainer. On this day he was dropping from 25,000.

Both of our horses qualified the Short Form method, but that meant nothing since nearly the whole field qualified.

So what would you have done: choose the only horse that had shown early speed at the mile, or the only one to have won at today’s distance of 7 furlongs, coming from off the pace?

Now, if you work on the premise of wager value and if you had to choose between the two logics, certainly the odds would influence. In this case, Pish Posh was nearly 24-1 while Nick's Girl was the 3-1 favorite. Now suddenly the choice is easier, isn't it?

I never got to the point of making that choice. I had a hospital visit to make and then had to go fetch a houseguest.

By now you've guessed it. Ken's horse won, wiring the field.

A couple of days later, with the houseguest gone and no great tribulations assaulting me, I relaxed and re-read the past performances, in order to learn a lesson or two. I found a few things that I would have seen had I been on death row and had this race been my last handicapping meal.

First, as it turned out, Pish Posh was the only gal in the field to have ever won on the Keeneland synthetic surface. Big factor! Second, Pish Posh was 3 for 12 on synthetic surfaces but 0 for 12 on all other surfaces.

This was certain a different race. Different races can be found at all class levels and at all tracks. I suppose even at Finger Lakes, a track I once visited, you can find a different race.

Only in a race that is truly different can the betting public be blinded into letting a horse like Pish Posh go off at 23-1.

What a great way to be selective. Only handicap when you find a different race.

And as a coda to this article, transitioning from the idea of being selective, we harp back to the same tune: the number one reason why good handicappers get bad results is that they play too many races (see Skinner’s article in this issue), which forces them to handicap with less depth and less intensity, which is what happened to me with the Race 3 at Keeneland.

In my case it is not by design but by the demands of life at this moment in time that I only handicap two or three races per day, after quickly scanning all the races from at least three tracks. This allows me to dig into the grains of a race, which I can admit I did not do with the Keeneland event.

Using me as the bad example, you can see that I was able to correctly identify the prevailing dynamics of a difficult race, but I probably needed an hour or more to pick out the parts on each and every horse to make sure I was missing nothing.

With the Short Form, which did not apply to this race, we have a method that primarily allows us to eliminate races and helps us decide which race or races to zoom in on. The zoom-in time is the time of discovery, the time that will allow us to make that rare exception and allow for a non-qualifier to qualify based on well-mined information.

Some readers may say that they’re in this for the fun, and for the action, but what more fun than becoming the detective and getting past the smokescreens and into the real hard empirical evidence on a difficult case which for us is a difficult race.

Or as the French economist Jean-Louis Servan Schreiber noted, why spend little pieces of time on the many fleeting and forgettable pleasures when we can better be dedicating substantial time to those few pleasures that really matter.

PRODUCT REVIEW: “THE SELECTIVE BETTOR”

by Rolf Skinner, PhD in Behaviorist Psychiatry

[Editor’s note: This article was submitted simultaneously to C&X and Ed Bain’s newsletter, thereby threatening for the first time a friendship between Cramer and Bain that dates back two decades. The dispute centered around who had the right to publish the article. The Mick Tyson Mediation Center intervened and it was finally agreed that Cramer and Bain could publish it simultaneously, splitting the royalty to Dr. Rolf Skinner. Okay Dr. Skinner, have your say.]

Barry Meadow, Mark Cramer, and numerous other analysts and observers have noted that the greatest obstacle to long-term winning is playing too many races or not being selective. However, they fail to distinguish between the true impulse betting that obliterates bankrolls and the type of suddenly inspired handicapping discoveries that lead to big scores.

Rightfully, readers have asked, “Well it’s all well and good to play fewer races, but which races should we pass and which ones are playable?” Their question, legitimate as it is, contains a certain limitation, because it is not always a question of a playable race, but perhaps an unplayable horse in a playable race, or a playable horse in an unplayable race.

Before I sound any more like Yogi Berra, it is time to introduce the new product, THE SELECTIVE BETTOR, created by the non-profit Kankakee Psychiatric Foundation. Hidden behind the vast soy bean fields of Illinois, the KPF has been able to conduct behavior modification research, using mild shock treatments that are entirely acceptable by CIA standards.

They have managed to differentiate between an impulsive bet and a wager based on “thin slicing” which extracts one brilliant finding from the rest of the handicapping morass, a secondary factor that rises above the rest because of a unique situation. For example, you discover that the leading rider’s next-to-last race on the card was in the fifth, and yet he has stuck around to ride a horse in the ninth and last race in a lowly maiden claimer. Or you discover that the whole field is shortening up except for one horse that is stretching out and therefore can control the pace. Or you find a trainer who is 0 for 66 except with one particular apprentice rider with whom he is 3-for-4.

This second type of inspired bet has all the same appearances as impulsive wagering but results from a far more complex combination of neurons and ganglia, based on layers of information coming from years of experience, whereas the classic impulsive bet comes from fewer neurons that connect smaller portions of the brain.

Handicappers who wish to be the first to purchase THE SELECTIVE PLAYER should first make an appointment with our, I mean “the” staff in Kankakee. You can get there by taking The City of New Orleans train from either Chicago or New Orleans. After a preliminary psychiatric screening, you will be asked to pay a small fee (at less than our cost) of $139, and we will insert two microchips, one in each part of the brain where impulsive wagering stems from.

Before you return to your homes, we actually accompany you to test the product at the Kankakee OTB.

The special feature of these twin micro implants is that they are only triggered by the impulsive desire to wager on a hunch or ill-conceived pattern. This differentiation takes place in the following way. If the player is acting on a true thin-sliced discovery, our research has shown that there are many more neurons from more parts of the brain involved, and the microchips recognize this volume of neural transit and remain inactive.

However, if the impulsive behavior originates from an infantile desire for action, the chips are set into action, triggering the required shocking jolt in the player’s head. The player feels the shock and immediately stops salivating about the wager. Thus, the need to bet subsides quickly. Furthermore, we can guarantee in 95% of the cases that the player will not need any corrective medical measures following the shock.

Some of you will think that this product is going to an unacceptable extreme, but spouses of impulsive bettors have been unanimous in approving our psychiatric methodology.

In those very rare cases when this product might malfunction, the Kankakee Psychiatric Foundation will fully reimburse the player’s survivors.

I have expressed how this product is being marketed by the KPF. I have a mixed opinion, as a clinical behaviorist. On the one hand, the differentiation between impulsive betting and thin slicing is a true discovery. Furthermore, it is correct to assume that most players have not reflected enough to tell the difference between a bad and good impulse. Moreover, impulsive betting does call for a radical solution, especially in the age of on-line betting when it is so easy to click on a screen … too easy! At least in the good old days, some effort was required to get up from the seat and walk to the window.

Before trying The Selective Bettor, I recommend that players first try their own behaviorist techniques. When an impulse invades the betting soul, the player should do one simple task: verbalize the reason for the bet, even if people think you’re talking to yourself. Listen to yourself! If you sense that your arguments would be effective at the Lincoln Memorial before a crowd of 500,000 people, then go make the bet. However, if you perceive yourself as a midnight cowboy standing on a soapbox at Times Square before a group of bedraggled bums, desist from the wager.

Traditional behaviorists would argue that I am placing too much confidence in you, the reader, and that all your actions and reactions are pre-determined. I would tell them that I have seen examples of voracious bettors who learned to tame their betting appetite without sacrificing, and even enhancing, the flavor of horse betting.

THE LAST WORD: RACING AND LIFE ITSELF

“No woman can compare with a monster exacta!” (Quote from Andy Anderson, inventor of the exacta-perfecta gauge)

It is 2:15pm on October 21 and a strange thing has occurred. At the same moment I was sending an e-mail to trainer Gina Rarick (the only American trainer in France) about my handicapping of a race in which she had a horse entered the next day at Deauville, she was e-mailing me inviting me to accompany her to the Deauville races so I could see the whole process of vanning a horse to the track and getting him into a race.

The horse’s name is Skid Solo. My racing partner Alan Kennedy and I had previously visited Gina’s stable at Maisons-Laffitte the last time he raced, on a sparkling early autumn afternoon. He went off at 20-1 and we had him. It was a glorious woodsy day in a race-course town where street signs say that horses have the right of way.

My e-mail to Gina Rarick lamented that I would miss the OTB broadcast of the race because I would be teaching advanced English to masters students in nuclear physics at France’s highest ranked university: Université Pierre et Marie Curie. My plans to become a Skid Solo groupie have been temporarily scrapped.

Ten years ago, I would have offered a major body part to have the opportunity of teaching graduate students at a French university. And yet today, in my sixth year of this job and mostly loving what I do, I felt as if my values had become twisted. Because of the tight schedule of classes (the semester began late), there was no room for postponing a class. If there had been the slightest chance to postpone, I would have grabbed it.

It is at moments like this where I have what the French call a “prise de conscience”, which means a profound realization or discovery. The reckoning is this: of all my multiple identities, horse racing would be the most difficult to shed.

Riding in the van to Deauville, I would have had the chance for two hours of learning experience with Gina Rarick about horses, training, and giving horse owners a thrill of a lifetime.

If a player had bet an equal amount on all of Rarick’s horses, he would have ended up with (at this point in time) more than a 200% profit. She’s a hands-on trainer who in the realm of horses could be considered a “chef d’haute cuisine”, in that she is remarkably sensitive to the idiosyncratic dietary needs of the different horses in her small but elegant stable. I had the chance to take in the palm of my hand the feed mix of another of her horses, Turfani, and smell it, and at that moment I wished I had been a horse. Imagine living in those wooded stables (much better than cramped Paris housing) and partaking of such haute cuisine!

So I ask: what is it that has attracted me so much to the game of racing. Naturally, there is the intellectual challenge. As one who has been in academia, I can say that college profs, especially economists, get paid for their opinions whether they are right or wrong, and most of the time they are wrong. In racing, you get paid only when you are right.

And in life outside racing, powerful people can manipulate the financial or political circumstances for their own profit. It is the idiomatic expression I teach to my students: an “uneven playing field”.

In racing this is not the case, and especially in France, England and Ireland, where any form of doping is prohibited, with Draconian consequences for the offender. Rarick explains that it is possible to care for and train horses in a way that reduces the type of stress that might provoke serious bleeding. She’s dead set against legalizing lasix and other drugs.

So racing offers a level playing that life outside of racing does not offer. And even where lasix, bute and steroids are allowed, the sanitary worker still gets the same odds on the toteboard as the computer consultant. This is why I have called racing a refuge.

Back in Los Angeles in the 1980s, I had a class at LA City College called Probability Theory as Applied to Horse Race Handicapping. In one of our groups there was a man with terminal cancer. In his dying days, racing provided him with a reason to live. Each day brought a new and active challenge. When one’s life is greatly restricted, the Good Fight is to find a way to remain active. Watching TV? For what? Can’t ride a bicycle or go hiking, or other laudable activities, so what seems vitally important to me now, will eventually have to be discarded. But not racing.

Even with his spreading cancer, my LA City College student was able to study the racing form, avidly, and make his betting selections. Other guys from the class would go and visit him, sometimes putting in a group pick 6, or simply taking out his action after discussing the race card.

So you see that horse race handicapping and, yes, betting, provided an active pursuit, and the odds of winning a pick six were better for my student than the odds of staying alive. I am willing to wager that waking up each day to a new adventure probably added days or even weeks to his life.

Even my own mother, who for years had not been able to understand my passion for racing, was able to change her position in the years before she died. No, she never became a serious player, but she did attend a pick 6 seminar in Southern California where we ended up hitting the pick 6, and this experience probably brought her into a closer understanding of her own father, who was the first person to introduce me to horse betting.

I am sure there are other activities in life which offer both the challenge and the level playing field. But racing sure deserves much more credit than it gets.

I have often lamented that horse racing is reduced to a subculture, except in a few place such as Saratoga, where it makes the front page every day during the meet. But perhaps horse racing will always be condemned to subculture status in a society whose only philosophers are celebrities.

So I will miss the trip to Deauville with trainer Gina Rarick and a miss out on a potentially memorable experience, and one more day in a life will be pissed away. BUT WAIT! Not so fast! If I can wheel a TV into my classroom, my students will be able to see Skid Solo run. They are studying probability. What better lesson!