The Art of Handicapping: The Ins and the Touts of How-to Books

First, by way of what this blog is not: I am not going to give you the winner of the Travers, or any of the Breeders' Cup races, or next year's Kentucky Derby, although I'm sure I'll let you know who I like and why. I'm a decidedly unprofessional horse player, although I have spent a season making a meager living at it, albeit many years ago. I know a handful of full time bettors, a few owners, and one trainer. I want to repeat this: I am none of those things. I am a fan.

Today, I wanna rant a bit about how one learns how to handicap by the book. Or, more precisely, how one learns one does NOT learn to handicap by the book. Any book. The fundamental problem with learning the methods is there are dozens of methods. It depends on what you decide you want to embrace. There are very clearcut books on how to handicap for speed, for pace, for form, for trainer angles, and a half dozen other criteria. The most popular generalists, like Tom Ainsley, Dr. Z (William T. Ziemba), Bill Quirin, James Quinn, and many others, give very detailed and useful information on what to look for, how to understand what you're looking for, and how to rate that information.

The problem that I have is compiling the information into an actual method to handicap your horse. It's almost like learning how to skillfully make every single part to a jet engine perfectly, and then have no clue how to actually assemble them into something that actually makes a plane fly.

So, even generalists have to be specialists. Speed handicappers will tell you the fastest horse wins the race. Sound reasoning. Until you talk to the pace folks, who will say that a speed duel up front early will wipe that front-runner out before midstretch. And then you talk to the form handicappers who can show you with statistical precision, the patterns that almost all horses go through in their racing lives, with wins coming in nice, reasonably predictable patterns.

Ultimately, you need to find which mantra you give the most weight to, and do your due diligence on all the others. Even the venerable Andrew Beyer (love him or hate him) who developed the speed figures that bear his name, devotes chapters in his books to the other disciplines in handicapping. But it's a safe bet which one he pays closest attention to.

It's an odd thing really. So many handicappers spend so much time on the figures, plotting out par times (a VERY useful tool, btw, but that's another article), and working on the numbers down to a fifth of a second, and the final call for each of them rides on a "feeling" of how those numbers should get weighted, and what catches their eye. The longer you do it, the better you recognize what matters, even if it's just instinctual. You DO need to learn to build those parts to precise specs, but assembling the engine really is more of: Zen encounter meets practice, practice, practice.