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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Is it worth it?, June 26, 2001
By A Customer
I have very low expectations of handicapping books. What makes me think that this person knows so much? What are their real credentials? Look at all these books on roulette, where there is no real way to beat the system and it takes 10 pages to teach you to play and what bets are slightly less efficient. Having said that, with horseracing, a book if not teaching you how to win, can at least help you have fun handicapping more informed. If it doesn't improve your chances, it can at least guide you along the way to doing so with more commitment.I think this book partially accomplishes this limited expectation. The book lays the ground work in an understandable manner for how to read and understand the rudimentary relevance of horse statistics (eg, those in the Daily Racing Form). The author gives us the big warning signs not to bet on horses and positives that suggest better chances of winning. These insights, for the most part, is simply a summary of what most handicappers know and bet by, and will only help you eliminate big longshots or understand why a particular horse was bet a favorite. If this interests you, its probably better to read this book than go to the track and ask alot of people questions. Though, some of these basics can be obtained for free online without any excess fillers. You can tell the author really stretched this book out to get the 181 pages (including a 28 page glossary) that would make the book look worth it in the stores. However, the author's statistics and in some cases logic falls short. For example, on one page she suggests that class in harness racing is irrelevant. Yet on another page, she suggests that a horse moving down in harness horse moving down in class should be viewed as a positive. Which is it? Should this tell you there was not a great deal of thought put into the book? One of the few (and I mean few) cases when she goes against conventional and basic wisdom, is when she suggests that post position is irrelevant in harness racing. Real statistics that I've seen published by tracks show otherwise, especially in twice around tracks (she doesn't even mention twice around tracks and their effects). While I give this book credit for having 4 chapters on harness racing (most books don't), which may have been useful if I was new to that sport, I cannot say that as a semi-experienced harness racing player, I gained any huge new insights. Many of her thoughts on thoroughbreads maybe flawed too, but I do not know because I am still learning the basics of the thoroughbreads. As a beginner in this area, I did benefit more from the section on thoroughbreads then on Harness Racing, though I must read and/or experience more to weed out what's really important in this book. However, overall I would say that the book lays out a few of the basics of handicapping. Don't consider reading this an intellectually intense experience (which is positive and negative at the same time) but you can get some grains of common sense and practical knowledge of how to read and look for the most important statistics in the forms. Those I think should buy: casual trackgoers who want to learn the minimum and have fun, novices who need a "beach head" to read more advanced books or sharpen some very basic fundamentals. Those who should not: Someone who already knows as much as the average schmuck who goes to the track alot and has an IQ over 100, someone who is really into the statistical side of horse racing and odds making, someone who is on a winning streak (the book could jinx you).
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by Tom Brohamer
