What Works For Me
Published by BG on Tuesday, February 14, 2006 at 8:03 AM.
What Works For Me
From my comments a couple of posts back, bcd wrote:
I started to write a comment back, but it got a little long so I thought I'd post it instead:
Trying to articulate exactly how to look at the form and pick a horse out of nine to twelve possibilities is the thing I'm struggling with right now.
Basically, part of it is that the Form is a collection of data that's consistently structured but tells a different story for every horse. In some cases I'm looking for speed figure discrepancies, in others I'm looking for speed figure consistencies. In some cases I'm looking at class and trainer intent, and in others I'm looking at class and trainer capabilities. I can show someone what I'm looking at as it pertains to a specific horse in a specific spot ("What is he doing in this race?" or "Look at how the trainer has moved this horse into a position to succeed today."), but there's no ten-point plan as to what you should or shouldn't look at first. I made a ton of mistakes and learned to read the story I feel the Form is telling me. Frankly, I don't think the Form tells any two handicappers the same stories, we're just seeing thematically consistent information to come to similar conclusions.
The other part is that despite some huge steps in the right direction, I'm still an obvious novice at this game. I'm putting good pieces together in my head and have been identifying some good plays lately, but for me to try and explain how to play this game would be similar to me teaching someone how to cook. I can do a few things fairly well using some middlingly non-awful technique, but there are a lot of people who are doing it better, have written about it already, and have been part of my education to this point. And yeah, that goes for both cooking and handicapping.
One of the things that becomes very apparent right away as you're reading books on handicapping is that there's a similar tone to what you're seeing in poker books when they say, "It depends." You should raise with pocket Queens pre-flop, and you should consider laying them down to a re-raise and a re-re-raise if that happens. But it depends on what you know about your opponents, what they think about you, if you're playing limit or no limit, and any other of a variety of factors. Horse racing is filled with shoulds and shouldn'ts as well. You shouldn't play a win bet on a "classic bridesmaid," a horse that has shown he cannot win but seems to pop up in the money from time-to-time. Well, you shouldn't, but what if the horse has dropped in class? What if he's training better than he ever has? What if the other horses aren't even bridesmaids but long-time losers and total non-factors?
And while the "it depends" factor is in the books, so is the constant reminder to figure out what it is that works for you. Some people play only the big stakes races, others play trainer angles, jockey connections and even breeding is used as a factor. Here's what's working for me so far:
· Playing Big Fields In Competitive Races - I've said before that I play at Tampa Bay Downs for two reasons: less "smart" money going through the windows, and more competitively large fields for other bettors to make mistakes in. While anyone can spot an obvious 1/9 favorite in a five horse field at Bay Meadows on a Tuesday, it's more difficult to pick from a twelve horse lineup when three to five have a realistic shot at winning. And the more horses the other bettors can make errors betting, the better the payoffs on the horses I'm not making mistakes identifying*.
*Don't take that as an ego-fueled statement, where I'm declaring how much better I am at this shit than other people. I make my mistakes too, but if I'm making fewer mistakes than the average casual gambler, I'm happy and will get paid off.
· Being Prepared - You absolutely cannot make a handicapping and a gambling decision in 20 minutes on a competitive race, so why wait until the horses are in the paddock to look at the program for the field? It's crucial in this game to make good bets, and by good I don't just mean betting on the horse you think is going to win. It's more complicated than that, as you have to interpret the board to see if the value is there for your wager, and if youre going to pull the trigger, how much to pull? Play a win bet only? Does an exacta make sense? Are you confident enough to play the double or pick-three? You can't make these decisions flippantly and expect to do anything but lose. When your handicapping is done and you're ready to make a decision that decision can be made without additional pressure.
· Trainers Hold The Key - It's not enough to look at only recent or past form, you've got to understand whether the horse is prepared (in your opinion) to run his best race today, and if that best race is going to be enough. The key to preparation is in the trainer's intentions. Has the horse been working out well? Is he being asked to do something today that he's had (enough) success doing previously to be a factor? Does the trainer show that he's handled horses in situations like this before with success? I'm more likely to trust a Kirk Ziadie sprinter than a Laurie Pompell horse in any scenario (hell, I'll trust Ziadie in any scenario over Pompell), as Ziadie knows how to get a horse ready to run short and fast. I like a horse that's showing improvement, and with a quality trainer and a solid workout pattern you don't even have to see races under a horse's belt to predict a step forward.
· Early Speed Matters - When I'm looking at sprints, the ideal scenario I'd like to see is a capable (but not overlaid) horse who can get out front early on an unchallenged pace. Multiple horses vying for the lead can lead to a tired bunch of leaders by the time they hit the stretch. An unpressured leader is likely to have gas left in the tank. When I see that scenario, which isn't present all that often, I pounce.
I'd think a little more here and offer a few more, but not only is this getting long but I've got more races at Tampa today to handicap... Good luck to me.
From my comments a couple of posts back, bcd wrote:
how do you go about making your opinions on your picks? i assume all your betting is off track.
my college roommate's family owned racing horses, thus he spent a lot of time at the track. he got all his advice from the trainers, which helped him hit some trifecta or superfecta his sophomore year - a win large enough to pay for all of his college (at a private university!)
just wondered what regular joes (without track hook-ups) researched.
I started to write a comment back, but it got a little long so I thought I'd post it instead:
Trying to articulate exactly how to look at the form and pick a horse out of nine to twelve possibilities is the thing I'm struggling with right now.
Basically, part of it is that the Form is a collection of data that's consistently structured but tells a different story for every horse. In some cases I'm looking for speed figure discrepancies, in others I'm looking for speed figure consistencies. In some cases I'm looking at class and trainer intent, and in others I'm looking at class and trainer capabilities. I can show someone what I'm looking at as it pertains to a specific horse in a specific spot ("What is he doing in this race?" or "Look at how the trainer has moved this horse into a position to succeed today."), but there's no ten-point plan as to what you should or shouldn't look at first. I made a ton of mistakes and learned to read the story I feel the Form is telling me. Frankly, I don't think the Form tells any two handicappers the same stories, we're just seeing thematically consistent information to come to similar conclusions.
The other part is that despite some huge steps in the right direction, I'm still an obvious novice at this game. I'm putting good pieces together in my head and have been identifying some good plays lately, but for me to try and explain how to play this game would be similar to me teaching someone how to cook. I can do a few things fairly well using some middlingly non-awful technique, but there are a lot of people who are doing it better, have written about it already, and have been part of my education to this point. And yeah, that goes for both cooking and handicapping.
One of the things that becomes very apparent right away as you're reading books on handicapping is that there's a similar tone to what you're seeing in poker books when they say, "It depends." You should raise with pocket Queens pre-flop, and you should consider laying them down to a re-raise and a re-re-raise if that happens. But it depends on what you know about your opponents, what they think about you, if you're playing limit or no limit, and any other of a variety of factors. Horse racing is filled with shoulds and shouldn'ts as well. You shouldn't play a win bet on a "classic bridesmaid," a horse that has shown he cannot win but seems to pop up in the money from time-to-time. Well, you shouldn't, but what if the horse has dropped in class? What if he's training better than he ever has? What if the other horses aren't even bridesmaids but long-time losers and total non-factors?
And while the "it depends" factor is in the books, so is the constant reminder to figure out what it is that works for you. Some people play only the big stakes races, others play trainer angles, jockey connections and even breeding is used as a factor. Here's what's working for me so far:
· Playing Big Fields In Competitive Races - I've said before that I play at Tampa Bay Downs for two reasons: less "smart" money going through the windows, and more competitively large fields for other bettors to make mistakes in. While anyone can spot an obvious 1/9 favorite in a five horse field at Bay Meadows on a Tuesday, it's more difficult to pick from a twelve horse lineup when three to five have a realistic shot at winning. And the more horses the other bettors can make errors betting, the better the payoffs on the horses I'm not making mistakes identifying*.
*Don't take that as an ego-fueled statement, where I'm declaring how much better I am at this shit than other people. I make my mistakes too, but if I'm making fewer mistakes than the average casual gambler, I'm happy and will get paid off.
· Being Prepared - You absolutely cannot make a handicapping and a gambling decision in 20 minutes on a competitive race, so why wait until the horses are in the paddock to look at the program for the field? It's crucial in this game to make good bets, and by good I don't just mean betting on the horse you think is going to win. It's more complicated than that, as you have to interpret the board to see if the value is there for your wager, and if youre going to pull the trigger, how much to pull? Play a win bet only? Does an exacta make sense? Are you confident enough to play the double or pick-three? You can't make these decisions flippantly and expect to do anything but lose. When your handicapping is done and you're ready to make a decision that decision can be made without additional pressure.
· Trainers Hold The Key - It's not enough to look at only recent or past form, you've got to understand whether the horse is prepared (in your opinion) to run his best race today, and if that best race is going to be enough. The key to preparation is in the trainer's intentions. Has the horse been working out well? Is he being asked to do something today that he's had (enough) success doing previously to be a factor? Does the trainer show that he's handled horses in situations like this before with success? I'm more likely to trust a Kirk Ziadie sprinter than a Laurie Pompell horse in any scenario (hell, I'll trust Ziadie in any scenario over Pompell), as Ziadie knows how to get a horse ready to run short and fast. I like a horse that's showing improvement, and with a quality trainer and a solid workout pattern you don't even have to see races under a horse's belt to predict a step forward.
· Early Speed Matters - When I'm looking at sprints, the ideal scenario I'd like to see is a capable (but not overlaid) horse who can get out front early on an unchallenged pace. Multiple horses vying for the lead can lead to a tired bunch of leaders by the time they hit the stretch. An unpressured leader is likely to have gas left in the tank. When I see that scenario, which isn't present all that often, I pounce.
I'd think a little more here and offer a few more, but not only is this getting long but I've got more races at Tampa today to handicap... Good luck to me.
