Handicapping.com - Your Thoroughbred Racing Website

I have watched the proliferation of handicapping information with equal amounts of amusement and apprehension.

Apprehension because, having kept records on jockey and trainer strengths and weaknesses, for one example, seeing such information widely disseminated diminishes the wagering value of such information. Or, for a more blunt example: you’ve sniffed out a moderate-odds horse that figures strongly to win. You tell the biggest bettors at the track, who include you in their group because you have such great information and handicapping ability, and what happens? BAM! The 10-1 horse you came to bet is now 5-1! Yes, this may be a bit of an extreme example, but you get the picture.

Amusement, because we’ve gone well past the point where managing lots of information was relatively easy.

Look at any set of past performances in the Daily Racing Form. Sticking with our example of jockey and trainer info, we have not one, but two sets of information, for each. Suppose it’s early in the year. Does a lower win (or in-the-money) performance, even taking into account a smaller number of races, mean that the person is in a slump compared to last year? If your edition of the Form features the Track Facts Handicapping Statistics page, now you’ve you got MORE trainer or jockey info:

And we haven’t even begun to consider any information about the horse itself yet!

BRIS recently introduced a new product, Quick Play PP’s. These past performances are similar in format to a Daily Racing Form layout, with one particularly notable exception: A rectangular box extending from left to right across the top of each set of pp’s, divided into two boxes. The box on the left contains “positive comments” about each horse and the box on the right contains “negative comments.”

In the case of a horse like Classic Zipper, in the fourth race at Penn National on July 29, the positive comments box was empty and the negative comments box contained this information: “Finished far back in last start – Poor Speed Figures – Only 2 wins in 39 career starts – poor trainer win% - Poor record at this track.” While you can see this information by looking at the pp’s themselves, it certainly is convenient to have this style of interpretation available in this format. The horse is an easy throw-out.

Foxy J.R. won the race.

Whether using such easy-to-read spelled-out comments or collecting this information to consider by studying the pp’s themselves, casual players run the risk of falling into a dangerous trap: developing the mindset that says there are more factors on one side than another, and betting accordingly.

So how DO you determine whether one or one set of factors is truly the information that points you towards cashing your wager?

When it comes to handicapping, with one or two special exceptions, recent information beats historical information, and current information beats them both.

Most of the time, current track bias dominates all other information. So you know how dirt routes were won yesterday-and the day before? How about turf sprints? Is there a running style imposed on the runners by tracks labeled sloppy or muddy, that is strong and consistent?

Is a trainer having a great week? When a barn starts winning races in clusters, you need to give extra weight to that barn’s entries, especially if the wins are coming ahead of a stakes or major race next weekend. “When You’re Hot, You’re Hot” is more than just a song title when it comes to racing.

The Big Question, then, with the huge amount of handicapping information at your disposal today, is “Which factor, or factors, in a given race are the dominant ones, the ones that are more important than other positives or negatives?”

The answer is that it all depends on the type of race in question and knowing your track.

We’ll look at different types of races, and what types of handicapping are currently suited to each type in future articles.