Horse Racing Tip Sitemap

Preface by Bill Corum - Nationally Known Sports Writer and Late President of Churchill Downs

Although there have been many books written about the art of picking horses, this one is different. The author recognizes an obvious fact—that handicapping is a science mastered only by those who spend long hours at it. Racing fans, with few exceptions, must have the "spade-work" done for them, and that is exactly what Bet the Horses—and Win does. It gives Mr. Joe Turf Fan a better chance to leave the track in the black.

01. Money Makes - Horseracing is the most exciting of all spectator sports.

Each year its hold on the American public grows and brings new attendance and betting records to practically all tracks. More than 50,000,000 people every year watch the horses run and now are plunking down the astronomical sum of $2,600,000,000 to spur on their favorites.

02. Man Meets Horse - Growing track attendance means greater rewards for the skillful bettor.

Mr. John Q. Racing fan is fast outnumbering every other sport fan as racetrack attendance has almost doubled in the past ten years. While many sports are singing the blues over attendance, the little fellow who has taken over the avocation of the bluebloods in the past forty years is making racing the fastest growing sport in the country.

03. Day Races - Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons, aged dean of American horse trainers, once shook his head in amazement as he watched the crowds stream from the special trains at Belmont.

"They pour off trains," he said, "buy a tout sheet for a quarter or half a buck, and hustle inside to get down their bets. Some of them buy three or four of these tout sheets and how they ever arrive at a selection is beyond me.

04. Racing Honest? - About the surest thing in horseracing is to wager that a man, seeing a race for the first time, will be handing out inside tips by the time the fifth race rolls around. And he probably will end up playing them himself and be astonished when he goes broke.

The next surest thing is to bet that of any 100 persons stopped on the street, 95 will say that racing is not entirely honest and that four of the other five probably will hedge with some qualification such as: "It's probably honest most of the time."

05. Betting on Horses - Today's racing favors the fan who knows "the variables."

The sight of eight or ten or more horses pounding down the stretch raises the blood pressure of even the most phlegmatic fan, but it goes still higher if the horse of that fan's choice gets down front at the finish. The fan doesn't care particularly if the horse wins by a city block or by a nose except that camera finishes impose five or six more minutes of wear and tear on the nerves while the photograph is being developed and studied by the judges.

06. Can It Be Beaten? - Racing has inspired more slogans than most sports.

Damon Runyon was credited with originating the saying that "all horse players must die broke." Runyon, however, disclaimed credit for it.

"You can beat a race but not the races," is another slogan quoted frequently at tracks, especially by fans who not only play all eight races but usually bet on more than one horse in each race.

07. Law of Probability - Knowing a few cold statistics steers a bettor's money to warmer horses.

Next to "I just bumped into a horse owner's brother,” the expression heard most around tracks is: "The law of probability favors Ragged Ann in the fifth."

08. Mathematics - Frequency patterns can guide the wise pla yer.

Any intense study of racing cannot fail to convince even the most skeptical that mathematical odds ride along with each horse.

True, mathematics alone cannot point to a particular horse and say: "There is the winner of the fourth race." But many times it can point to a horse and say: "Here is one who has little chance."

09. Handicapping - How to win by using the track handicapper.

The newcomer at a race track soon observes a curious phenomenon.

As soon as a race is run and the "official" sign goes up, the lucky ones skip to the cashier's windows to collect the rewards of their perspicacity and to engage in banter with those who also had the same courage and convictions.

10. Your Friend - How to take advantage of professional selections.

Professional selectors generally fall into two classes, the cautious and the speculative. However, it is hard to follow either class without worrying because, as we have seen, neither ever finishes in the black. A more speculative selector may pick only half as many winners as a colleague but because he stabs for long shots may wind up with more money.

11. No Man - Using "speed" to help you pick winners.

Of all the major variables, the one respected most by the majority of players and selectors is time.

In a way, one of the premises upon which racing was built involves time, for the rallying cry of sportsmen and gentlemen down through several hundreds of years has been: "Racing will improve the breed of horses." It follows then that the surest way to tell if the horse has responded to man's noblest efforts in his behalf and whether he has improved is to check his racing time.

12. Weight + Fate - A few pounds ma y lead smart money to winners.

One of the most frequently quoted axioms of the turf is: "Weight brings them all together."

As with fair play, justice, patriotism and motherhood, everybody believes in the axiom but no two turf followers have the same theories about weight. And once the fan makes up his own mind as to what he believes the axiom means, the horse he selects may have a different version.

13. Consistency - How to pick a horse that wants to come home first.

Consistency can mean many things, but the player sums it up in a simple expression: a winning habit.

Horses, like human athletes, develop winning ways which enable them to give good performances, year in and year out until they pass the natural life span for competing in sports.

14. Little Things - The importance of age, distance, track conditions and jockeys in picking winners.

Time, weight and consistency are the "big three" of the variables that might reasonably be expected to be fashioned into some method for predicting probable winners.

15. Tips + Touts - The truth about "inside information," short cuts, and sucker traps.

By this time, you probably are pretty discouraged about the chances of winning the battle with the horse. At every turn, the horse seems to be winning.

However, the cruelty of horse to man is really soothing compared with the tricks man plays upon man. For every player, sooner or later, comes upon the man who professes he has "inside information" for sale.

16. System - 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?"

17. Dabblers' Delirium - How to avoid systems that can't possibly work.

Most players, when they talk about their "systems," believe they are being as "scientific" as the man in the laboratory with a test tube and Bunsen burner.

Most times they simply have put together a collection of illogical rules, ranging from a mumbo jumbo of hunches, tea-leaf readings, dreams and astrological observations, to a sincere but misguided effort to arrange the major and minor variables into some kind of an orderly pattern.

18. Expert Selecting - How to work out a scientific system.

The player who relies on "hunch" and "inside information" will go merrily on his way until his bankroll contracts leukemia and he finally abandons racing as a sport, avocation or pastime.

19. Playing Percentage - Betting plans recover the losses.

The purpose of a system is to reduce the percentage against the player and to give him more winners.

But there are two parts to any system. One is the selection method and the other is the plan of wagering. Just as the selection method is designed to increase the percentage of winners, betting methods are drawn up to increase the "take" from those selections.

20. Security Systems - When Mussolini was Italian dictator, he once told American correspondents that he felt it was better for man to

live ten years as a lion than 50 years as a lamb.

Some players have about the same philosophy. They would sooner go broke stabbing around for long shots than make money playing more conservative selections. Other players like to dream about long shots but to confine themselves more to reality when they are awake. Their aims are:

21. Medium Security Systems - In the shadow land between the solid, security horses of the last chapter and the long shots to come, there are many horses that show a fair degree of consistency and which return better mutuels than the most substantial selections.

22. Long Shot Systems - Few players can be as phlegmatic as the oil tycoon who had $25,000 bet to win on a horse in a race in which there were several strong contenders.

The oil man's horse came down front by the barest part of a nose. He turned calmly to a friend and shook his head:

"I thought the horse was better than that."

23. Multiple-Entry Systems - An argument that will last as long as racing itself endures comes up every time someone raises this question: can more than one horse be played in the same race profitably?

The length of time a player has been following the races has nothing to do with his convictions on this question. Many old-timers view with alarm any attempt to play more than one horse in a race. Other veterans believe it might be even more easy to show a profit by multiple selections than by playing just one individual horse.

24. Follow-Up Systems - The owner of a thoroughbred, even a cheap animal, must spend about $15 a day, or more, in sheltering him, feeding him, caring for him and training him. Then he takes a chance that the horse never will earn enough to pay for his board and keep.

Some players like to have all the fun of "owning" a stable without paying all the bills. About the best way to pull off this trick is to draw up a list of horses to watch and follow.

Appendix - ACROSS THE BOARD A bet that includes win, place and show.

ADDED MONEY Some races, such as the Kentucky Derby, are listed as for a definite purse "added." The Derby, for example, is $100,000.00 "added." That means the track puts up $100,000.00 in addition to the money paid by owners who nominated horses for the Derby.

THE END