Customer Reviews

Handicapping Trainers: In Search of the Long Shot Winner

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John Whitaker, Handicapping Trainers: In Search of the Longshot Winner (Liberty, 1990)

The problem, sometimes, with reading old handicapping books is that the information has since been revised and updated by someone else in the interim. In this case, trainer handicapping has had much light shed on it in the past fifteen years. At the time of this book's publication, though, it was definitely a worthwhile read, something new and interesting. (And even now, much of the strongest work to be found on trainer handicapping is restricted, having never been published except in obscure articles in even more obscure magazines. So there should still be a market for this book.)

The basics here will be familiar with anyone who's handicapped more than a couple of races since the last time the Daily Racing Form changed its format; Whitaker talks about keeping trainer stats. (For the record, the ones kept by the Daily Racing Form are always suspect and never to be trusted.) It seems obvious now, but no one was doing it back then. Whitaker gives an easy, if time-consuming, approach for doing this that allows for very quick lookup of any given trainer whose record you may happen to need quickly.

All in all good stuff, but for most it will be outdated. Worth having in your handicapping bookshelf as a collector's item, though.***

The samples used in this text were only included as a guide to show what information is important in determining how a Trainer will perform in any given situation. They show what is to be included in the database you must set up and maintain on a daily basis in order to learn which Trainers are successful and inder what conditions.

Only by daily logging in the relevant details of each Trainer's performance can you create the electronic library that will (when you have sufficient data), kick out in seconds, all the worthwhile plays on any given day.

Before you make your first bet, you must have a database of the past six months (minimum) of activity at your track; a year is even better. Once you have this in hand, and you continue to update on a daily basis, the betting method descrobed in HANDICAPPING TRAINERS will work for the rest of your life.

This author shares his name with an english billionaire unless they are one in the same. I found the book very interesting and if you do the work and follow the guidelines exactly you are sure to meet with success 75 percent of the time. Anyone who knows horseracing knows these are very good odds. Still I was left with more questions than answers. It might be interesting to meet this author to discuss these findings further.