DanG
15th March 2007, 01:53.04 PM
Part-I: “Red Boarding” (One man’s opinion)
I used to dissect every losing bet from here to Sunday. Made sense at the time. The winner had to have some clue that gave him away, so if I scrutinized every winner and why my selection failed my game would have to improve.
In theory…
Jack Nicklaus used to practice his stroke after missing a putt. In athletics there is something physicians call “muscle memory” that you use subconsciously to reproduce the perfect swing, pitch etc…
When applied to handicapping race horses it makes sense on the surface to learn from each event if nothing else to internalize the winning patterns while increasing our chances of recognizing future ones.
I’ve come to the conclusion in the last few years…This is flat out WRONG!!! :eek:
Once you have been at this game for a while (as most of us have) you develop your own approach and methods. Even those using HTR for the first time should still apply many of their own techniques even while using a radically different / improved information source.
Once your approach is established (“established", it is NEVER really finished) your “red boarding” should be confined to two primary areas.
1) Did I maximize my opinion and bet the race correctly?
2) Did the profile of what’s currently winning suddenly radically change and I failed to adjust?
# 1 should be our primary focus. Handicapping literature outnumbers proper betting text 100-1. It should actually be just the reverse. All things being equal, the good gambler will beat the good handicapper 9 out of 10 times.
# 2 is more esoteric; 2006 Breeders Cup when Ken wrote about the picket fence of one holes winning…or… Todd Pletcher's horses are running on nitro all across the country…or… Often failing to include the 1, 2 and 3 holes at Aqu-inner going two turns REGARLESS of their appearances. Etc…
I truly believe it is counterproductive on many levels to red-board yourself into frustration because of bad results. Bad gambles and bad results are two entirely different things. We ALL get bad results, but our inherit approach will suffer not to mention our mental outlook if we continually examine the past to back fit the results.
================================================== ==================
Part-II: “Smart Money?”
This was a VERY educational tool for me.
I was a pretty serious horseplayer before we moved to Florida to get in the restaurant business. Our first breakfast cook (great high volume chef) named Al used to own a horse that ran at Calder / Tampa. He bought him as a yearling (first mistake) and if you knew Al’s luck in racing it was no surprise this poor thing couldn’t outrun a Clydesdale.:(
Al bet at least $500 to win EVERY time his horse ran. As soon as he got to the track…BAM…First flash his horse would be odds on. As a first time starter he bet $2,000 and he went off as the favorite.
This poor creature never hit the board and was never really close to cashing a check before the retired him. That’s a 32 race career were he bet at least $500 each time he ran.
People on track didn’t know in his first out if the stable “new something” or if it was some guy named Al risking 2 + weeks pay because he loved the SOB.
I was fascinated hanging around the backstretch at Monmouth and Santa Anita to see just how competitive and just how wrong stables often were when betting. A disproportionate amount of “stable money” does not evaluate the rest of the field very well.
Bottom line…We know more than we think going into a race. The theory that there are people in the shadows who are in on something we are not privy to is largely false.
Whether this applies to the short super in the “$300+” winner at GP recently is pure conjecture. If the stable did body slam this bet truth is they were very fortunate. Douglas’s mount was best if he didn’t lug-in severely.
I remind myself daily to keep firing at the bull’s-eye and try and allow as few distractions as possible, because in the end I want all my gambles to represent my opinion.
Easier said than done, but that’s the discipline we all strive for. :)
I used to dissect every losing bet from here to Sunday. Made sense at the time. The winner had to have some clue that gave him away, so if I scrutinized every winner and why my selection failed my game would have to improve.
In theory…
Jack Nicklaus used to practice his stroke after missing a putt. In athletics there is something physicians call “muscle memory” that you use subconsciously to reproduce the perfect swing, pitch etc…
When applied to handicapping race horses it makes sense on the surface to learn from each event if nothing else to internalize the winning patterns while increasing our chances of recognizing future ones.
I’ve come to the conclusion in the last few years…This is flat out WRONG!!! :eek:
Once you have been at this game for a while (as most of us have) you develop your own approach and methods. Even those using HTR for the first time should still apply many of their own techniques even while using a radically different / improved information source.
Once your approach is established (“established", it is NEVER really finished) your “red boarding” should be confined to two primary areas.
1) Did I maximize my opinion and bet the race correctly?
2) Did the profile of what’s currently winning suddenly radically change and I failed to adjust?
# 1 should be our primary focus. Handicapping literature outnumbers proper betting text 100-1. It should actually be just the reverse. All things being equal, the good gambler will beat the good handicapper 9 out of 10 times.
# 2 is more esoteric; 2006 Breeders Cup when Ken wrote about the picket fence of one holes winning…or… Todd Pletcher's horses are running on nitro all across the country…or… Often failing to include the 1, 2 and 3 holes at Aqu-inner going two turns REGARLESS of their appearances. Etc…
I truly believe it is counterproductive on many levels to red-board yourself into frustration because of bad results. Bad gambles and bad results are two entirely different things. We ALL get bad results, but our inherit approach will suffer not to mention our mental outlook if we continually examine the past to back fit the results.
================================================== ==================
Part-II: “Smart Money?”
This was a VERY educational tool for me.
I was a pretty serious horseplayer before we moved to Florida to get in the restaurant business. Our first breakfast cook (great high volume chef) named Al used to own a horse that ran at Calder / Tampa. He bought him as a yearling (first mistake) and if you knew Al’s luck in racing it was no surprise this poor thing couldn’t outrun a Clydesdale.:(
Al bet at least $500 to win EVERY time his horse ran. As soon as he got to the track…BAM…First flash his horse would be odds on. As a first time starter he bet $2,000 and he went off as the favorite.
This poor creature never hit the board and was never really close to cashing a check before the retired him. That’s a 32 race career were he bet at least $500 each time he ran.
People on track didn’t know in his first out if the stable “new something” or if it was some guy named Al risking 2 + weeks pay because he loved the SOB.
I was fascinated hanging around the backstretch at Monmouth and Santa Anita to see just how competitive and just how wrong stables often were when betting. A disproportionate amount of “stable money” does not evaluate the rest of the field very well.
Bottom line…We know more than we think going into a race. The theory that there are people in the shadows who are in on something we are not privy to is largely false.
Whether this applies to the short super in the “$300+” winner at GP recently is pure conjecture. If the stable did body slam this bet truth is they were very fortunate. Douglas’s mount was best if he didn’t lug-in severely.
I remind myself daily to keep firing at the bull’s-eye and try and allow as few distractions as possible, because in the end I want all my gambles to represent my opinion.
Easier said than done, but that’s the discipline we all strive for. :)