Horse Racing Handicapaping Book: Bet With the Best: Expert Strategies from America's Leading Handicappers

Excerpt from Horse Racing Handicapaping book hailed as the most comprehensive book on handicapping thoroughbred horseracers that has been published in over a decade. Written by DRF experts Andrew Beyer, Steve Davidowitz, James Quinn, Tom Brohamer, Steven Crist and many more. This excerpt is a courtesy of NBN Books, the book's distributor. Order your copy online!

CHAPTER 3: CRIST ON VALUE

BY STEVEN CRIST

A typical liberal-arts education sets a graduate loose upon the world with a tremendous amount of knowledge he will never need or use again and some gaping holes about how actually to function in society. He may know the abbreviations for the periodic table of elements and the names of the leading Renaissance poets, but have no idea how to make a cup of coffee or write a business letter.

A similar situation exists for the American horseplayer, self-taught through handicapping literature and days of hard knocks at the old horse park. He has vast amounts of handicapping data swimming through his head-names, dates, running lines, speed figures, pedigrees, trainer patterns and angles-all devoted to the goal of discovering the likeliest winners of horse races. When it comes time to go to the betting windows, however, nearly every one of these well-informed enthusiasts almost immediately surrenders his edge. He is like the chemistry scholar who knows the molecular structure of the coffee bean but has no idea how much water to put into the percolator. Each is unable to convert his knowledge into something useful and pleasurable-a steaming cup of java, or a consistent profit on racetrack bets.

This is not to suggest that universities should stop teaching chemistry or literature, or that horseplayers should not continue to develop and enhance their skills as selectors. Like a liberal-arts education, the study of horses and how they perform is a worthy pleasure in itself, and in the case of handicapping, the world's savviest bettor cannot win with bad opinions. The point is that pure handicapping is only the first half of the battle in winning at the races.

Most horseplayers intuitively know this, but don't do much about it except complain. How often have you or a fellow trackgoer opined that you're a pretty good handicapper but you really need to work on your betting strategies or your so-called money management? This is sometimes an exercise in denial for people who are in fact bad handicappers, but it is probably true for many who can select winners as well as anyone.

The problem with this line of thinking is that it suggests betting is some small component of the game, which is like pretending that putting is a minor part of championship golf. In fact, if you handicap well and bet poorly, you've failed. It's as useless as crushing your tee shots while three-putting every green.

Turning your enthusiasm for racing and proficiency at handicapping into profitable betting requires an entirely new way of thinking about playing the races. It would take a far longer treatise than this chapter to explore fully the mathematics and mechanics of racetrack betting, and the strategies available to optimize one's wagering through different types of bets. Instead, the purpose here is to raise three fundamental concepts that may help the serious handicapper to focus on profit rather than prediction, making money instead of just picking winners: probability and odds; handicapping the competition; and using multiple bets to improve your prices.

Continue.... Probability and Odds