Customer Reviews

Trainer Angles: Maximizing Profits using Formulator Software and Advanced Trainer Stats

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Go to any track and you'll overhear the regulars in the stands discussing the top trainers, typically through a trainer/jockey angle, as certain combinations seem to "always" get a decent percentage of victories.

But from such a raw statistic or simple observation can yield information that may give any handicapper an advantage in making plays to turn a profit at the track.

Author Dean Keppler - in a Daily Racing Form publication - shows how to research a variety of trainer angles through the DRF's Formulator software and other available handicapping material. By delving into such angles as runners going from turf-to-dirt, dirt-to-turf, first time on Lasix and layoffs for specific time periods, the handicapper may uncover available, but little known facts, on the strengths or weaknesses of trainers.

For those who do not want to invest in the software, there are a variety of lists that may be used and tips on how to go beyond the basic facts in the racing forms at local tracks.

Trainer Angles is part of an ongoing series of DRF handicapping books, but this volume may not be for beginners. It is an essential read for those who have an interest in seriously playing the races and want to take the time to do real research in this important - but oftentimes overlooked - area.

The title is inappropriate. The treatise focuses entirely on the use of DRF's Formulator for analyzing trainer angles. If you do not have or do not desire to use Formulator, the material is useless.

This book is mainly something to use with Formulator software, to give you some tips on what to look for. However, you don't really need the book to use the software. In fact, in all of the lists in the book of the top trainers, if you look for updated information you'll find that their hot streaks in those categories haven't continued. So, the book won't do you much good unless you have no creativity to figure out how to use Formulator. However, Formulator itself can still work for you, since you can find out what trainers are doing RIGHT NOW and what is working. So, I'd take a pass on the book but check out the software (or similar software from other companies).

Dean Keppler, Trainer Angles: Maximizing Profits Using Formulator and Advanced Trainer Stats (DRF Press, 2006)

When I was disappointed in Lauren Stich's book for DRF Press, something I never thought could possibly happen (Stich's articles have been a mainstay of my handicapping reading since my days on @derby some fifteen years ago), I started forming a hypothesis that recent DRF Press releases are less workable handicapping manuals than advertisements for various DRF products. Dean Keppler's Trainer Angles has done nothing whatsoever to disabuse me of this notion; in fact, it provides solid evidence of that, as the book never masks the fact that it's an extended advertisement for Formulator 4.1. If you've never taken the time to study DRF's trainer stats in detail (in Formulator; the ones that are actually reported in the DRF are often worse than useless), you might find a few tidbits of use here, but most of it is common sense, and has been since Formulator introduced trainer stats a number of years ago. For the DRF Press completist only. **