"Bet With the Best"

[MtKen]

Rec'd my copy of "Bet With the Best" 3 or 4 weeks ago & was rereading some of it today while I had some snow tires put on 1 of our vehicles.

1st a belated thanks to Ken M for the book. @ 1st I was a little disappointed with it because it reads like a Reader's Digest version of the writers' stuff from their other books. After today, though, some of the sections seem great because they touch on the major themes of the author's handicapping ideas & serve as great refresheners w/o having to read 200 pages.
Also I hadn't read anything by Shubach, Stich & Watchmaker so their sections were completely new terrain for me.

The sections that stick out for me were the ones by the familiar names of Beyer, Davidowitz, & Litkin. All 3 consider track bias to be the main ( or nearly main) component of their handicapping. Davidowitz says the best time to play is when prevailing bias changes, however momentarily or when horses shift tracks & face a new bias & their figs must be evaluated in that light. They all emphasize that profitting from a bias is an exercise in patience as horses who raced well against a bias enter on a "Horses to Watch" list & come back later on a fairer track. Anyway, I'm cutting back tp play on those tracks I can watch on TVG & doing much more chart reading.

The issue of key races comes up with Davidowitz & Litkin & has convinced me to start printing some charts & tracking the participants for a couple of races. In fact I've used these to come up with negative key races where if the top 3 come back & lose near that level. Then the others sure as heck aren't going to win w/o a major change of some sort. I'm hoping it will be possible to print charts off HTR 2001 in their entirety sometime instead of race by race. What do you think Ken?

Also good ideas on tracking trainers by D & L that helps to seperate the wheat form the chaff as far as trainer stats go.

All-in-all it's a good reference book to have around.

[Rick]

The charts are just a text file. You can open and print in any word processor or WordPad.

You can do it in NotePad also but its normally more trouble than its worth getting things to print the way you want them in NotePad.

[MtKen]

Thanks Rick

[four m]

mtKen,
with all do respect to those handicappers, they do this full time and although there isn't any question they are fine students of the game, i'd match any of you part timers against them when it comes to making $$. ever look at liftins picks on pik 6's, major races, etc. sound logic but winners are far and few between. think i'll stop here.

[MtKen]

4M:

Litkin seems a lot more anal about his handicapping than I'll ever be & mainly he echoed Beyer & Davidowitz's observations on bias & key races.

I really like Beyer's ideas on keeping tabs on 1/2 dozen tracks, spotting biases & then waiting for the runners to reappear on fairer tracks. I've started to spot horses I thought unlikely winners before & 'locks' who don't do as well when the bias tables are turned. Need to start using the DRF Horse Alert that lets you know when your Horses to Watch are coming back.

If you look at the races at AQU on Sat & Sun there's an amazing difference between the type of runner that won Sat & the Sun winners. Lots of inside speed won Sat & then on Sun it was mostly 3 wide closers. I'm looking to forward to betting against some of these winners & betting on some not so obvious choices next time around.

[four m]

mtken,
buddy told me they turned over the track after sat. races so sun. would be different. right on the $. on sat. pletcher had a 2nd time runner who ran against a speed bias first time out. won for fun $22. not that i do not watch for this, don't make it tell all. just another tool in my small arsenal, i try to keep it very simple. kinda have to using paper and pencil.

[hurrikane]

Interesting info fm....I believe in biases just not always ready to jump on the bandwagon because of a couple of races. That is interesting about AQU though. Wonder if TF has any knowledge of this?

[tbrown]

this happened frequently at Finger Lakes. they changed the track drastically a couple of time a year and you can expect big changes when they do. On Wed, the horse might be running 47.4 112.3 141.4 then on Friday, the same class is running 50.4 117.4 152.3 !
And Closers will win everything for about 2-3 days, until the new surface settles in .
You can make a killing if you know when they do it. You have to be real carefull mixing pacelines from before and after tracks - they are so far apart, you can't adjust them easily.
some days, all the horse will be running 8-12 wide on the far turn, closer to the outside rail than the inside one. Quite a sight to see. I once askled a jockey why everyone was going so wide and he replied,"Bad juju inside-might not come out if you go in there!" Tanslation: DEEP!
Don't know how often they did it this year. Last year, they supposedly fixed the track once and for all. I don't remember the big change, but I always pay attention for it.
Overall, Finger Lakes has changed greatly - closers can now win races here. Years ago,
we used to call the horse running second a closer and the horse running third a deep closer.
Anything running 4th or worse was called the next race.

One thing I remember about AQI is that if you get long periods without rain or snow, and really cold temps, the track goes dead-no bounce, no life. Horses have a real hard time running on it and a lot them come out the races finished for the season. Shippers have a really difficult time, especially those from California or Florida. Front end speed was deadly because no one could mount a rally in the dead sand.
When I profile AQI, I always track the temperature and when it last rained. When I look at my sheets, I can see at a glance temperature ranges and how long a spell since rain was seen.
If I am handicapping a race on a day when it is 10F and the wind chill is -20F and there has been no rain for a month, I don't want a paceline from a 55F day two days after a rainstorm.

[hurrikane]

good insight tb.....any insight into the inner track at AQU?