I figured why answer all the mail directly to the reader who asked it ... why not take some time to share what we're going over with everyone ... so here are a couple of recent questions that I've received, and my discussion. I'm interrupting the shape discussion because these are both pretty relevant.

Ed from Pennsylvania writes ".....I notice many top stables often ship some of their best horses into the Meadowlands .... what are you're thoughts on how to handicap these horses coming in from out of town tracks? ....."

Well, I'll tell ya my approach - some may not agree, but I'll give it to ya straight. It is very easy to get caught up in all of the hullabaloo and hype that all those bullshit artists on TV and the media give you about this horse and that horse, shipping in with powerful credentials and from a powerful stable and all that baloney.

This is not my most statistically proper study that I've ever done, but it confirms what my overall observations have been over long periods of time, so it should get the point across. I just went back through the last weekend of racing at the Meadowlands, and picked off all the shippers from out of town during the past couple of weekends. This includes Canada, the Midwest, Delaware but does not include Garden State and Freehold. I wanted to see how all of these horses did. But first, I wanted to make sure I wasn't artificially killing the performance so I took only those horses who, upon their first start at the Meadowlands, had a reasonable chance of winning, according to the crowd - with odds of 4-1 or less. Furthermore, all horses must have raced regularly out of town, and recently. Furthermore, all horses must had a top pilot for their Meadowlands debut. Based on a cursory glance at the lines, all seemed to be in some reasonably good shape out of town, many were dominant.

This left me with about 21 horses. Their average odds in their first start at the Meadowlands was 2.6 - 1 (about 5/2). Only 3 of them managed to win. Now think about this for a second. Crowd must have thought they were pretty good, right? All had top drivers (Campbell, LaChance, Moiyseyev, Manzi, Ouelette, Morrill). A lot of these got talked up pretty good on the closed circuit TV broadcasts and on the Meadowlands TV show. If you bet 100 of these races, you invest $200, collect 14 times for $7 a shot or $98, sounds to me like you lost half your money! You will only lose 18% by throwing darts!

So what does this mean. If you follow this site, you have heard me in my analysis say, over and over ad nauseum, "must give him one shot on the track." I don't know about other tracks, but at the Meadowlands, I AIN'T KIDDING. If this don't convince you, nothing will.

So, the best strategy for handling shippers into the Meadowlands, is to eliminate all of them from your win betting, always, until they have a race under their belt. I don't give a good god damn how good they look or how many in a row they have won in Chicago or Canada, or Dover or anywhere, and for that matter, I don't care what class they were in out of town or who they were racing against either. They are considered OUT OF SHAPE until they have raced here at least once and accordingly, are NEVER a candidate for the win bet, unless you are betting "ALL" by design. Sure, some will win, but it's very, very tough here first start. I don't think people who bet these horses down like that realize just how darned tough this track is first shot.

Most tracks are more accommodating than the Meadowlands (you can bet shippers, for example, into Pocono with reckless abandon) - know your track. But the Big M is the most unfriendly confine for a first timer of any track I've ever seen.

Hope that answers your question --- take it or leave it! If it makes sense, use it. If not, chuck it -- it makes sense to me, and I've eliminated a whole lot of pain on first time starters wondering if they fit by just considering them out of shape.

Rob, from parts unknown, writes:

" ..... lets say horse A is a horse who races well on or close to the lead so he goes for the lead and ends up in the pocket around the first turn. He sits all the way around and as he comes into 3/4s he does not pull the pocket and gets boxed until late in the stretch. He finally gets out but still only gets third. So this would mean that he's out of shape because he got a great trip and never pulled and did less than he was suppose to do? ...."

Now their are a couple of important hierarchies in shape determination which together form criteria which are critical to making good shape distinctions. The first helps us to determine what constitutes better than expected, and what level of performance is acceptable for shape. My experience indicates that there is a big difference between a horse moving into shape (i.e. from poor or average shape to good shape) and a horse who is maintaining shape (remaining in good shape). I'm not going to talk in detail about this right here, because it's really best presented in detail later, probably as a quiz. But since most people reading this are already ahead of the curve in terms of what you're thinking and I've already gotten questions about it, I will spend some time now introduce it so that you stop wondering what’s missing.

If you've followed some of my commentary, you've heard me on many occasions say that a horse "has excuses but no accomplishments." Here's what I mean. In order to upgrade a horse from poor/medium to good shape, the horse must, at some point, do something positive which announces that his level of fitness has risen to the point we are looking for. A horse must prove himself to me to be in shape. An excuse is not good enough. The TV commentators miss this, as do many, many handicappers. Let's take the example of a horse who is boxed in during the stretch and has pace. Most of us would say, "ooooo look …. He's boxed in - watch for him next time!"

No good folks. you're gonna loose more money than you can imagine chasing these, trust me - don't do it! don't fall for it! People on the site email me with this all the time! Examine the situation more closely. Let's say the horse really wasn't used, sat the pocket while a duel ensued, and could not get out. Ask yourself the key question: what did you expect? You would expect that he would have some horse left, wouldn't you? So just because he has horse at that point, he is doing only what you expect, NOT MORE. Say this horse was in medium shape or even poor shape before. He gets a perfect pocket trip and wins. Do you now upgrade him to "in-shape" status? My answer is "no" - why? Because he didn't do MORE than expected, he did AS expected.

So even if he won this way, I would not say he was in good shape. So what the hell is the difference if he was boxed in? If I wasn't going to call him in shape if he won, I'm not going to call him in-shape because he didn't!! However, and this is a big HOWEVER - if prior to this race, the horse was positively in good shape, how would we interpret that race? If he was boxed, we would say "look, he was in shape and would have won" and if he won we wouldn't say "no good - pocket trip." ONCE A HORSE IS IN SHAPE, WE CAN ACCEPT SOME OF WHAT’S EXPECTED FOR THE PURPOSES OF MAINTAINING SHAPE and would not downgrade him for winning from the pocket.

For some odd reason, this fools a lot of people. There is tremendous value available in waiting for these type of situations, where the crowd discounts the effort of an in-shape horse because he got a perfect trip. (would you feel better if the horse did a couple of somersaults or pulled the pocket to go five wide, just to prove to YOU that he is still in shape?)

BUT FOR THE PURPOSES OF UPGRADING A HORSE TO GOOD SHAPE, merely doing what is expected, even if it results in a win, is not good enough. ONLY HORSES WHO ARE IN SHAPE CAN HAVE EXCUSES --- PERIOD. This is one of the privileges they've earned for being in shape. This includes boxes, shuffles, blocking, blindswitching, driver intent (or lack thereof) and whole bunch of other ones that I will cover at another time.

As I leave my brief coverage of this topic, the question I would want you to consider is: if a horse is not in shape, has one of these misfortunes happen and is able to do reasonably well despite this, can that be considered an accomplishment good enough for a shape upgrade?