Lifting the Cloud of Ignorance: New Handicapping Research for Horseplayers
Steve Sharp
September 01, 2008
What happens when you open your track´s racing program or DRF and start handicapping a horse race? If you´re like most horseplayers, you begin by analyzing a variety of factors, including each racehorse´s trainer, jockey, post position, class, speed figures, and more. Perhaps you scribble some notes, circle key numbers, write comments, and eliminate likely losers. You probably review and evaluate the data over and over again before suddenly deciding which horse to wager on.
Let´s say you´re high on the #2 horse in the first race at your home track—an animal with a low-percentage trainer, good jockey, decent class, and fairly high speed numbers. But this horse is coming off a three-month layoff and has never raced at your track before.
Hmmm…should you risk your money on this animal?
Which is more important, the trainer or jockey factor? Is this trainer´s dreadful win percentage a serious problem, or should you ignore it and focus only on the racehorse, which looks like a strong contender on paper? Since the animal seems faster than his competitors, should "speed" be the most important variable in your decision? How concerned should you be that the horse is a "shipper" and hasn´t raced in three months?
The problem is that all these perplexing handicapping questions—questions that any serious horseplayer would ask—simply cannot be answered with much certainty or confidence.
We simply lack the tools and data to evaluate these problems. I´m unaware of any research or study that actually "ranks" the objective value of key handicapping factors—that is, determines their true weight or value in predicting the outcome of a horse race.
While well-prepared poker or blackjack players can use scientific data to help them calculate their chances of success, we horseplayers and handicappers must make relatively subjective "guesses" and rely on fickle "intuition" to decide which horse to bet. Each pre-race analysis is a confusing mental process without a clear set of firm guidelines, criteria, or objectives, a perplexing mixture of facts, figures, and statistics swirling chaotically through our minds.
We constantly change our minds about whom to bet because we don´t know which handicapping factor (or factors) will be the telling one—the one that will most accurately predict the winner of the race.
Our lack of knowledge condemns us to make uneducated, spur-of-the-moment decisions at the betting windows. Decisions that often result in financial losses.
Inspired by "Beat the Dealer," I designed a research project that I hoped would clarify—and perhaps resolve—some of the thorny handicapping problems that befuddle gamblers, horseplayers, and handicappers. While "Beat the Dealer´s" author studied winning blackjack hands in order to determine which playing strategies would likely produce a victory, I decided that we horseplayers needed more objective information about real winning racehorses in order to cash more winning tickets.
So I went to work and analyzed 286 actual winners at six different tracks. I kept a detailed chart for each horse, recording information about the animal´s trainer, jockey, speed, class, class level, post position, owner, breeder, recent form, last-race finish, layoff period, jockey switch, and much more. It took me three months to record all the data.
Then I tabulated the results for each category and ultimately "ranked" the handicapping variables according to their percentages--that is, how often they described the winning horse. These rankings clearly reveal which factors play a key role (statistically, of course) in shaping a winning racehorse. And which factors are of little consequence.
The research also reveals common characteristics shared by winning racehorses—
information that can help all gamblers, horseplayers, and handicappers make smarter decisions at the betting windows.
(Steve Sharp is the author of "Fast Horses, Fast Money." His website is www.fasthorsesfastmoney.com; his e-mail is slqhracing@yahoo.com.)