There's Gold in Quarter Horse Racing

What draws us to the racetrack rather than the blackjack table?

Long shots.

Thoroughbred fans who diss—and dismiss—Quarter Horse racing don´t realize that betting

these exciting sprinters can be profitable too.

At Los Alamitos Race Course, my home track, long shots or overlays (horses whose winning chances are better than their odds) light up the tote board relatively often. (Just because Quarter Horse races are shorter than Thoroughbred contests doesn´t mean that they are less predictable. In fact, favorites win at about the same rate in both forms of racing.)

The key is learning how to identify these well-priced animals during the handicapping process. Do they share common factors? What should we look for? What did the experts miss in these horses?

The racetrack offers the seductive possibility of an incredibly high return on your

investment. It's called "leverage"—risking little to win much. A smart betting principle.

Humdrum blackjack pays off at 1-1 most of the time—even money for horseplayers. Hardly an insignificant payoff, mathematically speaking. Give any gambler four bucks for every two he wagers and the bloke certainly wouldn´t be displeased. A 100% profit, after all, isn´t too shabby.

Funny thing, though—at the racetrack, many horseplayers expect a greater return. We´ll take the filet mignon, thank you, not the chuck steak. The Rolex, not the Timex. A 100% profit? We think we can do much better.

We´re spoiled, I suppose. We´ve seen the miracles romping home at 15-1. We´ve seen the Red Sea part time and time again, Lazarus rising from the dead.

Naturally, watching this manna fall from heaven inflames our human passions. "Greed is good," Michael Douglas´ character preached in "Wall Street."

Ironically, the relative infrequency of long-shot winners creates a subtle addiction; we keep on climbing the mountain, chasing the rainbow, looking for that elusive pot of gold.

Handicapping is not unlike golf. You may be having an awful day on the golf course, missing one shot after another, cursing the day you took up the damn sport…but when you hit that one pure shot you dream about, all your negative thoughts disappear.

"Geez, I love this game!"

Elation. Joy. Rapture. It´s all there when the 9-1 shot that you handicapped yourself--a horse that, after all, was seriously snubbed by the betting public and probably branded a loser by the track handicapper--gets its photo taken. You scored...big time.

Lord, what a genius you must be!

My desire to learn more about long shots and overlays motivated me to study real winning racehorses; I wanted to learn more about why certain racehorses won and others lost.

What, if anything, did the champs have in common? How many of them had the highest speed index in their last race? A high-percentage trainer? Class? A top jockey? An outside post?

Once you had enough data to describe these animals in a comprehensive way, could you then use that information to identify potential winners—and possibly long shots?

I described the results of this research in my book, "Fast Horses, Fast Money."

Did the research help me spot potential long shots or overlays? Definitely. Patterns emerged from the data. Myths were exposed.

Secrets revealed.

(Steve Sharp is the author of "Fast Horses, Fast Money: The Complete Guide to Quarter Horse Racing." Linking new scientific research with step-by-step betting and handicapping strategies. He can be reached at his e-mail address: slqhracing@yahoo.com.)