Chapter 16 - Enter The System-The Bettor’s Best Friend

A solid combination of the variables and a steadfast player can be a winning combination.

By the time a player knows enough about racing to recognize the major and minor variables, he begins to move in one of two directions.

He may have picked a few winners by manipulating the variables in certain ways and his success convinces him that he either is smarter than most turf fans or that he has a "gold touch." As he cashes his second or third ticket, he may ask himself: "How long has this been going on?"

Sooner or later, however, Lady Luck catches up with him. Then he begins frantically to revise or change his "rules" until he winds up doing little more than making pure guesses.

He may take another direction. The importance of the variables and the uncertainty in manipulating them may convince him that the best way to pick winners is to shut his eyes and stick a pin through his program. Or he can do as the wag suggested who said his wife uses a fork instead of a pin and is able to pick win, place and show at the same time.

He has a third direction left if by that time he hasn't tried it. He may be sure in his own mind that the only way to get winners is to be on the "inside." He may begin a mad round of paying tipster after tipster in the hope that one time he will find the right man who really does know about winners. After being "burned" as many times as his pocketbook can stand, he finally, bitter and disillusioned, gives up racing as being too "crooked" for him.

Such players are victims of their own follies. They enter a new sport and expect within a few days to know as much about it as the men who have been following the turf for years. They throw together hurriedly a few rules and then become discouraged when horses do not always follow those rules.

The losing record of professional selectors (or handicappers) should tell the average player that selecting winners is not a feat that can be done easily and readily by everyone who buys a track program or a racing paper.

True, the professional selectors are restricted because they must choose for every race. Some races are bad because every entry is a cheap horse whose performances are erratic and unpredictable. Other races have so many good horses that anyone may come down home first with a little racing luck.

Then, too, the professional selector's record is tarnished because in close races he still must pick a winner. A truer test of a selector's ability might come from considering his three top horses.

With more than 20,000 horses in training, the average player cannot hope to get as much information about them as the men who make a living from the races. A Sunday golfer doesn't have the same chance to become a top professional as does the player who is out on the course every day for hours on end. The man who keeps at a sport persistently does more than develop skills and techniques. He also develops an intangible "feeling" for the game. It's that "feeling" that tells him when some phase of his game is not up to standard.

Baseball pitchers, and all good athletes, have a "feeling." A baseball pitcher can soon tell if he is in "shape" today. He may feel fine mentally and physically, but within a few minutes after he steps on the mound he knows whether this is his day. An actor, within a few minutes after he steps on the stage, can predict whether he will give an "inspired" performance or whether this will be just another routine evening.

The professional selector, through years of experience, also develops a 'feeling'* about his work. It is more than "hunch" or "inspiration." He can run his eye over the entries and their past performances and tell a lot at almost a glance. He knows right then whether this will be a race in which the winner will be a toss-up among three or four horses or whether one or two horses will dominate the running.

Without any paper work, he may be able to narrow down the list of contenders to the point where his final selection is made in a relatively short time. What he actually is doing is subconsciously applying his usual rules and formula which now have become so much a part of him that he is doing most of the "spadework" automatically.

A rough comparison might be with driving an automobile. The novice driver must constantly and consciously remember every action. He must remember not to step on the starter after the engine is running, must remember to release the emergency brake before he takes off, must think about disengaging the clutch before he shifts gears and must think of looking both ways before he comes out of his driveway. Soon, most of these motions are done automatically.

Although a professional selector can do a lot of preliminary work automatically, it doesn't mean that he ignores his own method of arranging the variables. He is just weeding away the non-essentials so that he can concentrate upon the factors that really count.

A good professional selector also holds "post-mortems." He tries to find out why his selection lost. He can't always dismiss such happenings as due to poor racing luck. He is not looking for alibis or excuses for his failure, but for reasons why the winner probably deserved more consideration than he gave it. Sometimes the fan can join the professional selector in his post-mortems. In Chapter 24, see System No. 2, the one in which Trackman's BEST BET, if it loses, is played the next time out.

Naturally, some winners cannot be spotted except by a psychic who can read the minds of both horses and men. A horse that hasn't won for two or three years suddenly pops down in front and the mutuel board lights up with figures like a Christmas tree. Such occurrences are rare and can be dismissed with: "It was just one of those things."

The player, who finds that "inside information," hunches, and his own attempts at "handicapping" do not produce consistent results, begins to ask whether there may be some purely mechanical rules for trying to snare winners. Or, at the most, he wonders if there may be some mechanical rules that will weed away most of the need for subjective judgment, especially in the more doubtful areas.

What the player is seeking is a set of rules that can be applied to all races, day in and day out, and be so automatic that anyone using them would arrive at the same selection. What he has in mind is a set of rules that are popularly referred to as a "system."

The word "system" is used incorrectly about as many times as the word handicapping. Many articles and even books have been written about systems but no two authors agree on just what constitutes a system.

Some hold that a system is an entirely mechanical way of picking probable winners. Others hold that a system still can leave some room for subjective judgment by the player.

Furthermore, some argue that a system must be based entirely upon logical rules whose validity can be tested. Others do not go that far but leave room for rules that show results, or at least fairly consistent rules, although their exact logical basis cannot be determined.

For the average player, a system can be considered as a set of rules which the player applies to each horse in a race. When he is through, he hopes the result will point out the probable winner.

The result may come in the form of a total figure which is arrived at by assigning definite points for specific things. For example, a player may have a system which credits a horse with two points if he won his last race. He may get another two points if he came from behind in the stretch and then won easily. Each possible factor or condition earns the horse points which then are totaled. The horse which winds up with the highest total is the selection.

Some systems are based entirely upon a set of elimination rules. One rule may eliminate all horses whose last races were more than two weeks ago. Rule two may eliminate all horses which were more than two lengths behind the winner in their last races. More succeeding rules eliminate other horses until the player has gone through all the entries. He hopes at that time there will be only one horse left to qualify. If not, he starts applying more rules until finally he either has only one left or has decided to pass up the race.

A system tries to do what the professional selector does—it tries to arrange all the variables into some distinct pattern which will permit the probable winner to stand out in the final checking results. The system points out a pattern of past performances, and the user of the system hopes that pattern will continue.

We have seen that favorites, year in and year out, win one third of all races. This pattern has been constant not only in the United States but in other countries. There is no reason to doubt that it will not continue to hold true, give or take a few percentage points up or down. There is a chance that the percentage might even go higher. This could well happen since each year the public becomes more experienced in following racing as a sport and should, therefore, be less inclined to set up "false" favorites.

On the other hand, if the public, through a strange quirk, begins to rely more upon tea-leaf reading, hunches, and "inside information," the percentage of winning favorites might decline in the years to come. The player, however, would do well to give up the sport if he insists upon "guarantees." A consistent pattern in the past is all that he can ask. And that's about all he needs.

There are many misconceptions about systems. Some players believe the more complicated the system, the more reliable it is and the more winners it selects. One "inventor" a few years ago peddled a system that consisted of 120 pages.

It fell into the same pitfall that snares many systems. Most of the rules were "negative." In other words, most

rules were designed to cut down the number of plays and to reduce losses rather than to point up winners. In other words, winners were to be chosen more on the basis of trying to eliminate losing horses. Few players would have the time and patience to wade through 120 pages, let alone try to apply the system to 8 to 12 horses in each of eight races on an afternoon's card.

On the other hand, a too simple system may ignore some fundamental rules that are necessary in order to determine a horse's fitness, whether he is in his proper class, going the proper distance and packing a weight he can handle. (In Chapter 20, see System No. 2) Here the consensus horse is played if 25 points better and if a beaten favorite. There can be few methods more simple than this one. The "trick," however, lies in the fact that professional selectors already have done the real work.

A system that is too simple usually is nothing more than hunches that the inventor hopes will be consistent. One player had a simple system—he just wagered on horses whose names began with the same letter as the day of the week on which he was at the track. On Mondays, he wagered only on horses whose names began with M. If a horse had two names and each name began with the proper letter of the day of the week, he regarded it as worth a double play.

His boasts about his successes had to be tempered a good deal. For he boasted only of his winning days and was content to let the poor days be buried under an avalanche of uncashed mutuel tickets.

A movie starts wife was quoted in a fan magazine as saying she bet only on horses with two names, both of which started with the same letters as the first and last names of her husband. About the most that can be said for her "system" is that there will be few plays upon which to risk any money.

A well-known sports cartoonist suggested several years ago that players might do well to play horses which had the letter "R" as the third letter of their names. Certainly, the presence or absence of an "r" as the third letter of his name should have no effect whatever upon the horse's talents. But on some days, the results have been phenomenal.

Taking several days at random, some of the results were: May 12, 1955—second race, Churchill Downs, Carlo C, $29.00; sixth, Churchill, Lori-Jane, $36.60.

June 1—fourth, Balmoral (at Washington Park), Sir Lori, $34.30; eighth, Balmoral, Sir Tribal, $7.60; seventh, Suffolk Downs, Chris Cross, $17.00; seventh, Delaware Park, Particolor, $6.80; eighth, Delaware, Darling Betty, $20.40.

June 2—fourth, Hollywood, La Ronde, $67.70; sixth Hollywood, Mary Machree, $7.40; first, Delaware, Corn-ishman, $8.40; third, Delaware, Cerulia, $8.40; fourth, Thistledown, Caribe Boy, $9.60.

How much subjective judgment a player should have in any system depends primarily upon his experience and his temperament. If he is the type who just must have lots of action, he probably should depend upon a purely mechanical method. He should stick by inflexible rules, too, if he is prone to be swayed by hunches or gossip, or if he is like a handyman around the house who is always tinkering with the appliances and gadgets. The toaster may be working perfectly but the handyman tinkers to see if he can make it pop up farther or louder and pretty soon he is buying a new toaster. It is this type of mind which starts out with a definite system and revises or adds to the rules from race to race and even from horse to horse in the same race. In the end, the selection is always the horse the player “likes.”

Changing rules in mid-races or playing hunches, intuition and dreams, may be fun when a winner is speared, but it also can be costly. But the player who enjoys this type of excitement and who can afford it, should continue along his merry way. After all, the purpose of following any sport is to enjoy recreation, relaxation and fun.

Individual temperament which compels one man to keep revising or changing or ignoring his own rules may be bad, but equally as bad is the man who slavishly sticks to a system without using any judgment. For example, his selection may turn out to be a horse which is top heavy in the betting. He may be able to win no more than 10 or 15 cents on the dollar. That is a small return for taking a risk because the player must bear in mind that every play is a risk.

Or the selections may have been done under rules which called for a fast track. The track suddenly becomes off or slow. The selection, however, might have shown several good efforts on such tracks. The player should think carefully whether to wager or whether he should follow the rules and pass up the race

Again, a selection may be advancing in company, and one rule might say there is no play when the horse selected goes today for more than $500 above his last race. Today he is going for $1,000, but despite the supposedly higher class he still is in with horses of about the same caliber with which he has been running. The added risk of higher class might be worth taking.

How well a player wants to stick to his set of rules depends, as has been noted, upon himself. The player who makes a sincere effort to learn about racing will soon reach the point where he can trust his judgment in many cases. He might then arrive at the point where he permits a set of rules to eliminate a number of horses in a race until he has only two, three or four to consider with serious study. A sure bet is that no matter what plan he uses, there will be days when he regrets it as well as days on which he is thankful. For no system, just as no one fan, can pick them all.

A player, .however, must not approach a system as a device for producing any results except on a long-range basis. An individual horse in a particular race is not going to develop wings suddenly just because some system picked him out as the probable winner. It's just as foolish, of course, to expect a horse to win because some tipster says the "stable is leveling today."

The tipster doesn't know, but if the stable were "leveling" it could not be certain of winning. If a stable won every time it "shot the works," no one would need to work for a living. All a person needed would be a $2,000 horse and an announcement that today it is "leveling."

The number of systems devised down through the years is endless. Every "inventor" or "originator" believes he has stumbled upon something entirely new. But any system that has merit is based on a definite arrangement of the major and minor variables. The difference between systems comes in the stress placed upon the variables individually and in the way they are combined.

A system for picking probable winners can be compared roughly with a plan for rating baseball players. However, we must have two ratings for baseball, a defensive and an offensive mark. A horse needs only one rating because all his efforts are "offensive."

In rating horses, every selector must deal with the same variables which we have thoroughly covered. Many sellers of systems like to advertise that their methods are based on new discoveries, or a hitherto unknown factor.

The buyer should study such advertisements with a critical mind. What the seller really means is that his method places major emphasis upon a variable, or combination of variables, not usually emphasized.

He hasn't found anything new: he merely has changed the old variables around like a housewife moving furniture. And the horse may not like it any more than the husband does when he finds his home re-arranged.

And after all, it's the horse's physical system which makes the biggest difference.

Are You Ready To Move Onto The Next Lesson? Click Here….