Overlay, Overlay [Paperback]

Bill Heller (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 20, 2004

Heller shows a bottom line mentality: he wants you to be a better handicapper than you now are, regardless of your level of betting sophistication.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Bill Heller

Product Details

• Paperback: 228 pages
• Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing (February 20, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0933893868
• ISBN-13: 978-0933893863
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #401,331 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not too bad..., September 12, 2000

By 

"dmckimiii" (Colden, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Overlay, Overlay (Paperback)

I thought the book was pretty good. Some good straightforward advice that is good to take with you to the track. No systems or guarantees, just common sense. The only drawback is that the analysis is using older formats of the Racing Form that doesn't include Beyers, and other newer things. The insight from the Mig, PG Johnson etc. was helpful.

3.0 out of 5 stars Marginally Helpful, June 3, 2011

By 

K. R. Edwards "KRE" (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Overlay, Overlay (Paperback)

In general I like the book. Its an honest approach to racing and expectations for investment at the race track. It doesn't pretend to sell you a secret system and it doesn't pretend to give you a magic number you can calculate that will predict winning wagers. What it does is tells the horse player to use a variety of tools to get to the point where you can make an estimation of a horse's realistic chance to win, and pick from a number of horses with legitimate chances to win who's odds are higher than they should be.

The problem is most experienced horse players should already know that. And after reading the sentence that you should use form, class, speed, or pace as separate tools and parts of the subjective judgment of a horses chance to win and wager on the horse the crowd underestimates you pretty much have the content of the book covered.

There's some nice stuff for beginners on basic form, class analysis but the example of past performances use old past performance examples and much more info is now available. The speed figure chapter is dated and not that relevant to current speed and pace figure calculations using computers or even the information from the current figures provided in the DRF.

The money management chapter is decent and worth reading as is the putting it all together examples in the 2nd to last chapter.

So all in all its somewhat helpful if you can make the leap yourself to modernizing the work to what is out there for current handicappers in the Beyer Speed - Sartin Pace figures + computer handicapping era or if you are a flat out beginner looking to see how to create subjective evaluations of horse racing value using a comprehensive approach to handicapping. It should probably be part of a good horse racing library. But if you are looking for modern methods, using technology to get to that same point; or if you have already realized that wagering under bet horses with a reasonable chance to win is more profitable than wagering on the "best" horse regardless of its odds then you are not really going to gain much in the way of handicapping skills by buying this book.

I give it a 6 on a 10 point scale because the approach and information is legit, its just pretty dated.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Decent book, December 31, 2002

By 

K. Slape "hulabird61" (Hammond, in United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Overlay, Overlay (Paperback)

This one is ok, not one of the best, but not the worst either. It did have some decent tips and strategies for spotting an overlay and has been somewhat of a help to me in my handicapping.