Last week I gave you the tentative schedule of Handicapping Corner, and showing you my incredible flexibility, I’m departing from it in order to cover a matter of considerable urgency and importance.

When I did The Ten Commitments for the New Years edition, I promised I would go back and cover the individual topics, so today I’m going to do one. (Those of you who have only joined us recently - I strongly recommend that you go the Archives section and review previous editions of Handicapping Corner, the most important of which is the special new years edition - The Ten Commitments)

The commitment I’m going to cover today is Thou Shalt Not Bet Every Race. Now you all gave me lip service on this one, "Oh yes Steve, you’re right," "Absolutely, gotta do it," etc., etc. were the email replies.

Now let me ask you something - if you know I’m right .... If you know that you can’t bet every race or even most of the races and have any chance of winning in the long run, how come you still keep betting all the races, all of you? (Are you getting the idea Al, that this article is being written for you?)

Whenever someone isn’t doing what they need to do, it’s either that they don’t know what to do, don’t know how to do it, or don’t know why they need to be doing it. I think you know 2 of the 3, but let’s just make sure.

What to do: Bet a MAXIMUM of half the races you are currently betting on. Anybody having any problems following along so far? No? Good.

Why you should do this: Every time you wager a dollar, you are giving the track between 18% and 25% of your money, on average. This is an expensive proposition. Unless there is enough compelling value to outweigh this, you are SURE TO LOSE MONEY. This is not my opinion, but a mathematical fact. My experience indicates that maybe 1/3 of the races offer this much value. So betting half the races is still over-betting, but okay. Everyone with me? Fine.

How to do it: It’s easy for me to say, "just don’t bet" but this is like telling your teenager to "just say no" and doesn’t really fly with most people. You have to have some techniques, some ways of learning to focus on certain races. So here are some ways and methods, along with the pro’s and con’s and the how of each one. PICK ONE OR TWO THAT YOU THINK COULD WORK FOR YOU and try those for 2 months, and see how it works. By doing this, you can give yourself a structure - some hard and fast rules for which races you look at, and which ones you don’t. Many of you are currently following a hard and fast rule: Any time more than one horse gets onto the track with 4 legs, I’m in. That’s not good focus. We need some good techniques for narrowing down the number of races we look at.

1. Focus On Deserving Favorites - this is a very productive way to define specific target races for betting. This involves knowing who SHOULD BE the favorite for every race, and restricting your bets to only those races where the horse you feel SHOULD BE the favorite is not. The crowd has the right favorite about 75% of the time at the Meadowlands, so this will require patience. It also takes some good skill and practice to get good at noticing who should and who should not be the favorite. If you are very good at this, you can spot the other 25% of the time when they are wrong. In order to do this, you cannot be identifying the deserving favorite 80% of the time, because the crowd has it right 75%... this will not leave you enough races. And furthermore, most of the time, when the crowd has the wrong horse as the favorite, they manage to make him a close second choice. I’m not talking about these either. I am talking about when a horse you KNOW should be the favorite goes off as third choice or higher. These are potential races to bet.

A recent example of this was the second race on this past Saturday (March 21). Right off the bat, I KNEW that COLLECTOR’S PIECE deserved to be the favorite. This was with the full field. When the only other horse in the race that I considered in shape was scratched, at post time, I think he should have been 8-5. He went off at 9-1. A similar situation was with CA Connection later in the evening, but I’ll use that race to demonstrate another method of focus. But of all the ways of focus, this will give you the fewest plays, but the highest hit percentage, because every bet you make will be on a horse that you feel has the best chance to win the race. This will also give you lower prices because truthfully, they don’t give you 8-5 shots for 9-1 that often, really. Most of the time, when they overlook a horse who should be that low, they send him off at 5-2 or 3-1 - maybe 7-2.

2. Focus on Non-Deserving Favorites- this method of selecting races for handicapping and potential betting is actually a reverse type - it is where you see a favorite which is obviously wrong, and very much so - so much so that it’s not even close. You then approach the race from the standpoint of specifically going against this favorite. Obviously, if the crowd is betting a horse down to substantial favoritism who does not deserve to be a favorite at all, there MUST be value someplace, so you take the task of finding out where it is. Again, there are not going to be that many of these races, but if you are patient and watch, they do happen. The positive aspect of this is that if the heavy favorite is clearly the incorrect horse, you can almost bet anywhere else in the field and get value … you can go ahead, pick any other 3 that look good, box them and you are probably getting value in the exactas. The negative part of this approach is that you cannot usually prepare for this ahead of time - you must be there, watching the odds as post time approaches in order to make this call.

This past Saturday(3/21) there were 2 notable cases of this - one was the race with Ramses Two, and the other was with My Favorite Martin. Even if you did not have a key horse in these races, these two horses were, as we said in advance, absolutely miserable favorites, and they were pretty solid favorites too. These happened to be more predictable errors by the crowd, but often they are not. If you are there, and you see these type of gross errors, you can step up to the plate and take a swing.

3. The Visual Spot Approach - the way you use this is quite simple. You watch the races, and when you see something eye catching, like a horse who is boxed or has some other problem, you jot it down, and when his next race comes along, you look at the race. Notice I said "look at the race" - I did not say "run down to the track with your wallet open." You look at the program, make shape determinations and decide whether he fits, and whether or not he’s worth a bet. You might look and find someone else that is worth a bet in that race instead of him. Fine - at least you have narrowed down the number of races you are examining. The big problem with this approach is that you must know what to look for, and if you saw it, odds are, everyone else did too. Furthermore, you have to immediately go to the charts to see if they confirm what you think you saw, and few people do this. Midnight Stalker from Saturday was initially a visually spotted horse, confirmed by chart analysis.

4. The next race is actually 2 related types of races, so we’ll call them 4a and 4b.
4a) The Many-In-Shape Race Approach - the way you do this is you specifically limit your bets to races which contain many (at least 5) in-shape horses. These are highly competitive races, the type that most people complain about because they can’t find one horse who sticks out like a sore thumb. But these are actually the best type of betting races, and as I have said previously, the favorite in this type of race is usually a bad bet. Again, the majority of races do not fit this, but if you want these types of races, there’s no better place to be than the Meadowlands on a Saturday night, where you get more of these than anywhere else. The way you do it is you bet on only these races under the assumption that they can’t bet them all down, and there has to be value when there are enough horses in shape. You bet on one or more of the in-shape horses. It’s simple. On last Saturday’s card, the 1st race was an example of a totally wide open race - you keep betting these types of races, and not the favorites - if you are a reasonably good handicapper, you will make money.

4b) is actually the mirror image of 4a), The Few-In-Shape Race Approach - the way you do this is you just wait until you see races where there is only one, maybe 2 tops - horses in shape and you get in and bet those two horses, either in exactas, or keying in trifectas, or if the odds permit, you bet one of them to win, or you bet them in the doubles, etc. I don’t care for this approach, but I know some good players who do it this way. Of course, I love it when I can combine this approach with #1 and #2 - which is to say, that you find a race with only one horse in shape, who should be a heavy favorite, but is going off as like the 5th choice, and instead, some other out-of-shape horse is going off at 6-5.

5. The Chart-Spot Approach - this is my favorite approach, and is the basis for 90% of the races that I bet on. The way this works is that every night, you study the charts of every race, looking for certain specific things, and when you find them, you write down the name of the horse. Then you continue as you would with the Visual Spot approach, determining whether he’s bettable later depending on the shape of the field he draws into, post position, driver, odds, etc. Often, you will want to see a tape of the race to confirm what you feel may have happened. BY THE WAY, YOU PEOPLE WHO FOLLOW OUR SPOT LIST WILL NOTICE THAT I DO NOT FOLLOW UP ON MOST OF THEM. This is what I mean - you spot it, look at it, but if it doesn’t make sense later, you say goodbye to it and move on the looking for other horses. You don’t do what many people do: spot it, then bet it automatically next week. On this past Saturday’s card, for example, WOODMERE TOPCAT was a chart-spotted bet. RACEY’S BIG GUY was also chart spotted.

6. The final approach is The Printed Program Approach - the way this works (follow me closely on this - it is very complex) is that you buy or download the program, turn to page one, handicap all the horses on that page, circle a few of them, and write down a few wagers in the margin at the top. Then, you turn the page and repeat this process until you finish all the pages in the program. This is a very effective way of limiting the number of races you bet - you will limit them to only those races which are actually taking place tonight. Does this approach sound familiar to some of you? The good news is that by doing this, you will never bet on a race which, in fact, is not being run, unless of course, you happen to be using the program from the wrong night. But this method is sure fire for one thing - if you use this method, you are 100% sure of losing your money. I have no examples of this because I never use it.

So that’s the menu. You cannot do them all, and do them all well. So what I recommend is that you pick one method, maybe 2 as your principal ways of screening races. Remember, the goal is to find reasons NOT to bet races - to limit the number of races that you bet, not expand them - to increase the quality and decrease the quantity. Choose based on your personality, access to the track, amount of time, expertise, etc. For example, if you do most of your betting off track or only get to the track on occasions, then you cannot use #2, because this absolutely requires you to be at the track in order to use it. Studying charts is the most time consuming of all these methods, and by far the most enriching, but if you are short on time, then you cannot take this as your primary method of screening races. You see where I am coming from?

Good. So here is your homework - those of you who are betting too many races - pick one or two of these, and DO NOT BET ANY OTHER RACES - in fact, do not even analyze or look at any other races - throw the program sheets away. It frustrates some people who chat with me online … they say "Hey Steve … who do ya like in the 8th, huh, huh??" or "What do ya think of Reactor Lobell - think he could be ready? He was boxed last week - ya see it Steve, huh…huh? And I say … "no opinion - not interested in the race" and they can’t understand. That’s because I threw the pages away after I determined that the race didn’t meet the screening criteria - I could care less at that point, really.

P.S. When you pick one or two, you cannot pick #6 for those of you jokers out there.

Next week - the race selection - handicapping cycle or What I Do Step By Step Leading Up to a Bet.