Handicapping versus Gambling

My dad was trained in what, in the 1930s, passed for genetics. He made his living working for a large poultry firm breeding laying hens. His avocation was breeding race horses so I spent a lot of my first dozen years hanging around stables and race tracks. I still love horse racing and race horses, and yesterday was the Breeders' Cup-nine races featuring the best horses in the world. Americans don't pay much attention to horse racing today which is a shame because it is an exciting sport with the intellectual component that young people love in fantasy football. My father taught me to read the racing form shortly after I learned my Dick and Jane. Today, the average racing form has enough information to make the typical baseball stat nerd's head spin. Luckily, stuff that once had to be calculated from raw data now are provided in the form.

Yesterday's races took place in Kentucky, but Easton no longer has a barber shop with a bookie operation (older Eastoners will know who I mean!). Luckily the corporation that runs Churchill Downs provides an online betting service (www.twinspires.com) that allows gambling on tracks around the world including harness racing. Back in May, I signed up, put the required $50 in, and began betting. Yesterday I bet every single race in the Breeders Cup, a behavior just barely within the pale of family tradition.

My dad would never bet on a race where he couldn't pick out the single horse which he thought would win. If he couldn't find that one horse, he'd skip the race. Dad had a pretty good formula-find the fastest horses (called speed handicapping) and then check out the horses as they walked around the paddock. I learned a lot about the shape and gait of race horses-you might say I became an expert in horses' asses, and my dad probably picked more winners from finding the healthiest horse than through his mathematical calculations. He had a lot of other rules as well-don't bet on harness races or dogs, don't bet on anything more exotic than a Daily Double because those things were gambling not the science of handicapping. He was also the original "know when to hold'em, know when to fold'em guy." If his $2 bet returned a winner, he still wouldn't invest more than $2 in the next race he bet.

Dad would call me a gambler with wild habits. Earlier in the year I went to work at handicapping "going" to Santa Anita in California every day for a couple of weeks and like dad often passing on races. Where I fell into apostasy was in betting on more than one horse in a betable race. I often bet on two or three horses to win if the odds showed I could get a profit if any one of them won. This coupled with my "system" (too complicated to explain here, but if you'd just send $10…) had skyrocketed me to $164.10 on my original investment of $50 at the start of yesterday. Yes, I do come from a line of tight fisted and risk adverse Yankees, and yes,  I do plan to nickel and dime myself to a million dollars, but hey that's like a 300% return on investment in six months. For those of you tempted to invest the $10, the "system" returns winners more than the 20% of the time most skilled handicappers consider excellent.

Yesterday was a special event so even Dad would have been placing a bet on every race "just to make it interesting." I had to bet early on the first four races since I was going to be at a public event in the afternoon. I returned home to find I had increased my winnings a little by picking off an early race for a small payoff. I settled in for the rest of the afternoon and saw some excellent races. My account jumped to $189 with a second winner before sinking back to $164.10. Not a bad day for special event with very high quality horses which are harder to handicap-I'd have been bummed if it was an ordinary day betting on cheap claiming races. Two winners in eight races, not bad coming into the last race of the day. The first and second favorites was going off at short odds, and neither looked good in my system. I selected the third favorite at 5 to 1 and two horses at above 10 to 1 from the thirteen horse field. The race came through very nicely on my computer screen, and it was very exciting except I looked more and more like a sure loser. Then out of the back of the pack came my 13 to 1 pick charging down the stretch to take and hold the lead. Hooray, $164.10 went to $228 in a flash, but it was the adrenaline rush of seeing a champion horse running as fast as it could that will bring me back for more. That and a little bit of nostalgia for the days when my dad and I used to do this sort of thing together.

The blog is back more or less full time now. Stay tuned this week for blogs on the OA Hall of Fame, tree identification, perennial broccoli, and global warming deniers.