Today, I begin my look over the world of angles - now that we’re clear on how I define an angle. Last week, I defined playing an angle to mean looking at one factor to the virtual exclusion of all others, in arriving at a horse to bet. I also stated how dangerous this is and why. Funny thing is that most angles are helpful pieces of information when taken in the context of a whole analysis.

My purpose here is more for a review - a look at the various angles that are out there. I do have some of my own, which I will point out. By "my own" I mean ones that I’ve either come up with, adapted or use to some degree. This of course is not an all-encompassing list, but the major ones than are more prevalent out there. I am not here to sell you on any of these, or scold you for using any of them. What you use is entirely up to you. For the record, I will give each angle a 3-star rating. * means I feel that it is basically useless, ** means I feel it can be useful on occasions, and *** meaning that it’s pretty sound, especially if used right.

I’ve categories the angles into groups, more for my sake than yours. Today, I’ll look at what I call "Shape Angles" meaning that they are designed to help you ferret out in-shape horses. Whether or not they do is another question, but that is what they seem to be designed to do.

1. FASTEST FINAL TIME IN LAST RACE (*) - as I’ve already put down in print my hatred for using final times as part of the handicapping equation, looking for the horse who recorded the fastest final time, one of the angles listed in Sports Eye, is in my opinion, an utterly poor angle. Final time really has nothing to do with shape, although this angle is often used as some sort of "class" factor I find it to be virtually useless by itself. Too many factors go into the final time, not the least of which is that the vast majority of horses pace faster in loosing efforts than they are ever capable of doing in winning ones. Hence, as an angle, I deplore it. There is one time when a horse with the fastest final time can be spotted on that basis as a play - assuming all horses have been running at the current track and on mostly the same nights … if the horse has the fastest final time, and did it on the front end, it can be useful. In order to be useful though, you have to look at the race fractions of the other horses (not the fractions of those horses themselves - that of the leader at each point) …. And if the horse in question’s individual front-end fractions are superior to the race fractions of the others, it can be indicative of a clear speed advantage - but that’s about it.
2. FASTEST FINAL QUARTER IN RECENT RACE (*) - again, taken by itself, the actual speed that a horse paces a final quarter has got no relation to his relative shape, nor is it indicative of superior speed. It is not unusual for horses who are in sub-par shape to pace fast final quarters keeping up with a field after ¾ of a mile of using very little energy. In fact, many horses pace faster actual final quarters when they are in down portions of their shape cycle than they do when they are in the up sections of their cycle. This is probably due to lack of early usage when the horse is dull. Furthermore, when a track has a speed bias, the ability to pace a fast final quarter in absolute terms is usually not the determining factor in winning a race. Much more important than the actual last ¼ time is how fast the last ¼ was relative to the speed of the race and to other races on that particular night.
3. FASTEST FINAL TIME AND FASTEST FINAL QUARTER (**) - a combination of the above, it offers a slight improvement in terms of spotting in-shape horses eligible to win. It is a good idea to look and see if there is a horse who paced the fastest final time and fastest final quarter, but not as a winning angle. If you did this, for example, you would have come up with PIA SQUARED with Willie Mitchell in the most recent race at Pocono (13th on Sunday) - and you see he didn’t win. However, if a horse is already clearly in shape and the horse has an inside post with which to get position, this can sometimes be an interesting combination.
4. FASTEST FINAL HALF AND FASTEST FINAL QUARTER (**) - this is much more useful than the other 3, particularly when trying to sift out horses who are not in shape for inclusion in exotics. I generally like halves better than quarters for reasons I have already mentioned many times before. By combining these two, a possible angle arrives for a horse who can pace fast enough prior to the final quarter to get position, and can come home fast enough to out-stagger the competition. For comparing in-shape horses, though, forget it.
5. BLOCKED, BOXED OR IN TROUBLE IN THE STRETCH (**) - is among the most over-used angles my many people, including those who are "experts". This is so important and so tempting that it bears repeating: Stretch troubles are merely an excuse for a less than stellar performance in the lane, and only in-shape horses have earned the right to have an excuse. If a horse sits all the way to the lane, shunning the opportunity to get involved earlier, he is expected to have horse left - he need not be in sharp form to have horse at that point. The fact that he is boxed in makes no difference. When this happens, ask yourself the question: "Had he gotten free and won the race, would I be so impressed as to call him sharp based on that mile?" The answer is probably "No". So why then would you accord him an even greater advantage for not winning? If you weren’t going to be impressed if he did win, who cares if he didn’t? There are 2 situations where stretch traffic problems are a good angle - first is the horse who was clearly sharp prior to the race and second, the horse who expended energy early in the mile and was then prevented from finishing better by traffic. If the last quarter is a fast one, stretch trouble can be a good angle provided that the program does not indicate he was blocked, and the announcer doesn’t keep repeating it ad nauseum during the race (i.e. if it is obvious, the value portion of this quickly deteriorates).

6. BIG IMPROVEMENT IN LAST RACE (***) - I guess it’s an angle, though it’s more of just plain sound handicapping. The problem is that what many people think is an improvement really isn’t. Again, when the improvement is dramatic, it is apparent to everyone and often does not result in a valuable piece of information which can give you an edge over your competition. In fact, particularly in the hot summer weather, I become wary of horses who exhibit the "Poulin Effect" and come out of the blue with lifetime marks! However, improvements do not have to be that eye popping in order to be extremely valid indicators of a return to shape. You have to compare apples to apples here (i.e. you really cannot compare a horse’s performance from the pocket to his performance first over …. It is much more powerful to compare two efforts, say 2 first over efforts to see the difference). Thus, I call this one the CHANGE OF CHARACTER, and it is an extremely powerful angle. And it also works in reverse, as a negative angle if you will, to help spot potentially overbet horses. We have covered this angle two different ways in Handicapping Corner, namely, the Turn Around Closer and Death of a Closer.

7. SPEED ON BOTH ENDS OF MILE (***) - again, a good thing to look for as these horses are usually in some degree of shape. The real trick of this angle is to understand where the horse was used most effectively, and whether the horse was really used on both ends. This angle is particularly powerful when the middle half was an exceptionally slow one with rapid first and final quarters.
8. FASTEST TWO HALVES BASED ON EFFECTIVE USAGE (** ½) - this is one I created a long, long time ago which can not only help spot in shape horses, but is particularly valuable in comparing two races to see which race seems to be superior, fraction-wise, to another. Their are a few nuances to how and when I use it - whenever I am looking at a program, I will very often take a key race of a horse and in the margin, jot down the 3 halves (first, middle, last) on the margin. This often helps me to isolate the pace of a race. But what I did about 20 years ago one night, was just look at which 2 of those halves a horse was used most effectively, and add them up to come up with a hypothetical mile time. I found that under certain conditions, this created some unbelievable results - but the other parts of this are just too much to go into in this article.
9. THE KEY RACE (**) - this is something you hear the gurus talk about very often, that such and such a horse is coming out of a "key race". The way this is usually done is that if you see other horses from a particular race who come back and win, that is supposed to be an indication that other horses coming out of that race might have some sort of advantage in their next start. The way this is usually done, is highly vulnerable and can be very easily misused. Say a certain race develops with a very strong last half, which produces the 1st and 3rd place finishers who came from first over and 3rd over. The first horse comes back next week in shape and wins. The 3rd place finisher comes back next week in shape and wins. Many handicappers will spot this, and will immediately declare this a "Key Race" and bet the 2nd place horse, who may in fact, be totally out of shape, having used energy most effectively in the first part of the race. What I discovered was that there is no such thing as a key race, but rather,
10. THE KEY FRACTION (***) - this is similar to the Key Race theory, except it recognizes that there is often a key portion of such a race in #9 above, and horses who raced effectively in that portion often come back together the next week and perform extremely well. It is not the race that made it key, but the part of the race in which they were used MOST effectively. I will often see a portion of a race that looks key, and follow up on all the horses who got involved with any degree of effectiveness in that part of the race, even if they finished out of it!

11. THE BIAS BUSTER (***) - among the most reliable pure angles, this involves noticing a distinguishing and powerful track bias on a particular night, and following up on horses who raced most effectively into the teeth of this. The most obvious example is the horse who wins on a night where there are maybe 1 or 2 winners on the front end the whole night. These horses are almost always in good shape. The reverse is the closer who comes from off the pace on a night where the front end is winning everything in sight. In these 2 cases, almost regardless of the fractions or the apparent ease of the trip, these horses inevitably prove themselves to be in substantially sharper form than the line would suggest. As we’ve covered and will do so in even more depth, uncovering even more subtle and powerful nuances, there are many other, less obvious ways that a horse can be a bias buster.
12. WON HIS LAST RACE (**) - Here’s a question: if you look at race winners, what is the most common finishing position that these horses share in common in their previous race? The answer is 1st. More horses win following a win than following any other specific finish. Hence, the rule my dad taught me some 30 years ago - A HORSE THAT WON HIS LAST IN NEVER OUT OF SHAPE - it doesn’t matter how easy he won it … it doesn’t matter if all the other horses in the race fell down. He may not be sharp, but he is never considered to be in poor form. You won’t get anything more guaranteed or concrete than this.

These are the top dozen angles of the "shape" variety that I use and/or see used, and my thoughts on them. The one thing that makes shape angles different from other angles is that almost all of them, in their own little way, are sound pieces of handicapping - but they are just that - pieces. When you listen to my analysis of various races or read editions of this column, you hear little bits and pieces of all of these, which come together to form my opinion of the horse's shape - and remember what I stated in my introduction to this entire website -- I've handicapped entire meets for decades at various tracks, and the relationship between shape (as I define it) and winning is just so consistent - night to night, week to week, month to month, meet to meet, year to year, track to track - that if you are serious about actually making money at this, you must be putting the vast majority of your efforts into learning to make shape distinctions.