Table of Contents
Title Page Table of Contents Copyright Dedication Acknowledgments Charting My Course Gulfstream: Palmy Days Pimlico: There’s No Place Like Home Saratoga: Graveyard of Champions Barrington Fair: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Crime Making Figures Epilogue Appendix A Appendix B About the Author Footnotes
Copyright © 1978 by Andrew Beyer All rights reserved. No part of this publication ma y be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, inc luding photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without p ermission in writing from the publisher. For information about permission to reproduce selec tions from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing C ompany, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003. www.hmhbooks.com Past performances and result charts from theDaily Racing Formare copyright © 1978 by Daily Racing Form, Inc. Reprinted with permissio n of copyright owner. The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edi tion as follows: Beyer, Andrew. My $50,000 year at the races. 1. Horse race betting—United States. 2. Beyer, Andrew. 3. Gamblers—United States— Biography. I. Title. SF332.B49 798'.401 78–53918 ISBN 0-15-163693-1 eISBN 978-0-547-83978-3 v2.0513
Acknowledgments
I am peePly inpetep to theWashington Staranp former sPorts epitor Davip Burgin, who Permittep (anp even encouragep) me to comine m y newsPaPer puties with my PeriPatetic gamling. I also wish to thank Davip Ost anp Dan Okrent, who conceivep this ook; Tom Stewart, who epitep it; Dick White, who offerep valuale comments on the manuscriPt; anp the Kip, without whose assistance I woulp not h ave exPeriencep a $50,000 year at the races.
1
Charting My Course
When I started playing the horses, I often dreamed about being a great professional gambler. This was more than a materialistic goal; i t was a romantic vision. A man who could live by his wits at the racetrack would have the most independent, exhilarating, satisfying existence that I could imagine. By the start of 1977, my fantasy had become a real possibility. I had already paid my tuition as a student of handicapping for many years . I had bet avidly, and lost consistently, while I grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania , attended Harvard, served in the Army, and worked as a sportswriter in Washington, D.C. Finally, in 1970, I achieved my first breakthrough. After making more than a hundre d trips to the track, after devoting practically all of my mental energy to theRacing Form,after pushing nearly $20,000 through the betting windows, I showed a profit of $ 99.60. No matter that my hourly return was less than that of the average migrant fa rmworker; I could (and often did) proudly say that I beat the races. Over the next few years I continued to beat them steadily enough so that I felt qualified to write a book on handicapping,Picking Winners: A Horseplayer’s Guide.But my pride in my own modest accomplishments was begin ning to turn into frustration. I thought that I should be able to win $50,000 in a y ear and prove that I could make a good living at the track. Instead, I had won slightly less than $10,000 in my very best year, which hardly certified me as a legendary high -rolling gambler and didn’t even justify the enormous amount of time I invested in h andicapping. I felt like a track star who can run a mile in 4:02 and knows that somewhere within himself he has the potential to break four minutes and join the elite. But how does he bridge that gap? I wasn’t sure, but I was determined to try. I wante d to make an all-out effort to realize my full potential as a horseplayer. And I would nev er find a more auspicious time to do it than 1977. I possessed a healthy bankroll; I was free of financial pressures and responsibilities; I had a job as the horse-racing c olumnist for theWashington Star which allowed me to go to the track wherever and wh enever I wanted. But before I could undertake this serious gambling venture, I had to understand the reasons why my past successes had been so limited. And I had to formulate an intelligent strategy for the year ahead. So I turne d for guidance to the only gambler I knew who had achieved the goal for which I was striving. Charlie had grown up in a lower-middle-class New Yo rk neighborhood where playing the horses was a way of life. He was probably not e ndowed with significantly greater intellectual gifts than the pals with whom he cut c lasses in order to play the daily double at Aqueduct. But Charlie had become a paragon of th e professional horseplayer. Even in the jealous little world of the racetrack, he co mmanded the respect of everyone who had ever watched him operate. “Is there anything,” I asked him, “that you and all the other pros in New York have in common?” His answer was a revelation. “One thing,” Charlie said. “We’re all specialists. I know one guy who does nothing but bet horses who have been running in sprints on the main track and now are going a distance on the grass for the first time. He doesn’t get many plays, but he wins enough of them to make money. There’s another bettor here who only plays maiden two-year-old races according to the prices that the horses were sold for as yearlings. It sounds crazy, but he makes it work.” Charlie, too, was a specialist. He knew how to watc h the post parade and tell which
horses were ready for a maximum performance. He kne w how to watch races and observe things that no one else could see. He would judge horses according to his own very subjective visual impressions. A few times a y ear, he would find a situation where a horse had impressed him in his previous races, lo oked good on the track, and was entered under optimal conditions. From these rare s ituations, Charlie would earn his livelihood. He had no desire to broaden his handica pping skills. “I’ve got a good thing going for me,” he said, “and I don’t want to tamper with it.” Charlie had become an extraordinarily successful professional gambler because he recognized his own narrow areas of expertise and ca pitalized on them. I had not. I had begun my handicapping career the way most people do , looking for some universal formula that would produce nine winners a day. And I never quite relinquished the hope that I could master every facet of the game. AfterPicking Winnerswas published, my ego was so inflated that I refused to acknowledge m y own shortcomings as a horseplayer. I wanted to use every handicapping too l and master every type of race. I paid for my hubris. I was like a good singles hitte r in baseball who suddenly gets delusions of grandeur, starts swinging in vain for the fences, and then finds that he can’t even hit singles any more. After my conversation with Charlie, I finally realized that there is nothing shameful about winning money with limited, specialized skill s. So I took an inventory of my handicapping methods, looked back over my past triu mphs and failures, and identified my own strengths. Obviously, I wasn’t about to igno re the fundamentals of the game, but I wanted my serious bets to be grounded in one of the three areas of handicapping where I felt confident of my ability. Speed Figures. I became a winning horseplayer when I discovered speed handicapping, a technique as intellectually stimula ting as it is profitable. I was enthralled by the mathematics involved in exp ressing a horse’s performance as an unequivocal figure. I translated the time of his race into a numerical rating. To this I added the track variant—the product of some elabora te calculations—which indicated the inherent speed of the racing surface over which the horse had competed. The resultant figure gave me a whole new way of looking at the sport. Never again would I have to judge a horse with such crude yardsticks as the class in which he competed and the number of lengths by whic h he was beaten. Now I could say that Horse A had earned figures of 82, 86. 84 in his last three starts. Horse B had run 79, 88, 78. So I would prefer Horse A unless I saw a reason why B was likely to duplicate his next-to-last performance. When I started using figures I was dazzled by horse s who had run extraordinarily well in their most recent race. But I soon found that sp eed handicapping is most effective when one horse has earned consistently higher figures than the other horses in the field. If I locate an animal whose last three or fo ur performances are better than the last three or four races of all his opponents, I know from experience that he has a solid 70 or 80 percent probability of winning. There is no m ore reliable type of bet. As I played horses like this in the early 1970s, I felt like a practitioner of an occult art. At that time most horseplayers were skeptical about the utility of speed handicapping; no book had ever explained how to make figures. So I was able to collect big prices on outstanding horses that the public overlooked. Those glorious days are gone.Picking Winnersand other books helped create a legion of new speed handicappers. Hucksters are adv ertising figures-by-mail services. And almost all horseplayers have increased their aw areness of the importance of the
times of races. This is unfortunate, because in ord er to win significantly a gambler has to stay a step ahead of the general public. But while the payoffs on figure horses have decreas ed in recent years, I observed one common situation in which most speed handicappe rs went wrong. If a Maryland horse figured strongly in a race at Bowie, the peop le there would bet him accordingly. But if the same animal were shipped to Aqueduct and entered against a weak field, he would be overlooked. Speed handicappers can make fi gures for the horses at the track they follow, but they don’t know how to evaluate an out-of-towner. If I could calculate figures that were interchangea ble from track to track, if I could predict how fast the Bowie horse was going to run a t Aqueduct, I would possess a powerful handicapping tool. Its uses could be far-reaching. One of the most bewildering periods on the national racing calendar is the start of the midwinter Florida season, when the ranks of the local horses are suddenly inv aded by stables from New York. Nobody knows how to compare the two groups with any precision, but with a sophisticated set of figures, I could. I did not kn ow how I would calculate them, but I knew that if I could find the answer, I would not h ave to worry about making a profit in 1977. Trainer Patterns. Some of my most rewarding days as a bettor have c ome not from understanding horses, but from understanding the me n who train them. The trainer always plays a fairly important role in the outcome of a race, but sometimes his methods are so overwhelmingly significant that they render every other handicapping factor irrelevant. InPicking WinnersI cited Allen Jerkens as a trainer who occasionall y merits an automatic bet. Jerkens is astonishingly effective w hen he acquires a horse privately; he transformed Prove Out and Group Plan from run-of-th e-mill allowance runners into stakes stars almost overnight. He is also a master at taking a sprinter and turning him into a distance runner. His sprinter Onion upset Se cretariat at a mile and one-eighth; his speedster Beau Purple beat Kelso three times. During the winter of 1976, I was enjoying a week’s vacation at Hialeah when I encountered the archetypal Jerkens horse. Love Bird had been a nondescript sprinter under a different trainer the previous year, but no w Jerkens had taken over his management. He gave the horse a pair of one-mile wo rkouts, which suggested that he was aiming for a distance race. Next he entered Lov e Bird in a six-furlong race, which could not have been his principal objective, and th e horse finished out of the money. After that, Jerkens worked him a mile again. And finally he entered Love Bird in a cheap allowance race at a mile and one-eighth on th e grass. To a student of theRacing Formunfamiliar with the trainer, Love Bird was a horse with a dismal record and no prospects for any immediate improvement. But to an admirer of Jerkens. he was a fabulous betting opportunity. In view of the traine r’s long-established record of success under similar circumstances, I thought that Love Bi rd had an even-money chance to win. After he led all the way at 13 to 1,1 was flying to New York the next day for a shopping spree at Cartier’s. I knew only one other trainer whom I could bet with the same blind faith that I bet Jerkens. Although few horseplayers would recognize his name, the Fat Man is the most astute crook in American racing. He evidently devotes his life to executing one or two great betting coups a year, and he almost never fai ls. A horseplayer-sleuth could profit handsomely by following all of his intricate, larce nous machinations. I planned to follow the Fat Man very closely during 1977.
But there had to be other men who were similarly efficient with their own specialties. Trainers who score regularly with first-time starte rs. Trainers who win consistently with horses who have been laid off. Trainers who always win when they drop a horse in class sharply. It is not easy to identify these men . The only way to find out who they are and what they do is through hours of drudgery. I wa s going to have to burrow through stacks of oldRacing Forms,look for horses who had won under interesting or u nusual circumstances, and then analyze the overall record of their trainers to learn if they had a consistent method of operation. I would probably have to travel down a hundred blind alleys before I found one reliable trainer pattern. But if I could locate just one or two men who were as reliable as Jerkens—and, preferably , more obscure—I would be amply rewarded for my labors. Track Biases. During August and September of 1976, I had an unp aralleled opportunity to make a fortune. I did not take advan tage of it. I spent four weeks at Saratoga, where the racing su rface was like two different tracks in one. The rail was so hard and fast that the hors e who got the lead on the inside won almost automatically. Horses who tried to rally on the outside foundered in the deeper going. But when the New York horse population moved back downstate to Belmont Park, the game changed so drastically that one frie nd of mine suggested, “We ought to handicap here while standing on our heads.” The ins ide part of the Belmont strip was a bog, and the track was so generally tiring that not a single front-runner won during the first week of the meeting. The horses who won at Sa ratoga could not win at Belmont, and vice versa. Under such conditions, a perceptive handicapper oug ht to win easily and steadily. At Saratoga he should jettison all his usual methods a nd approach every race by looking for the horse who figured to get the lead on the ra il. At Belmont, he should bet the horses who had been trying in vain to rally on the outside at Saratoga. I knew horseplayers who did just this and enjoyed the most profitable weeks of their lives while these unusual conditions prevailed. At Saratoga I had quickly recognized the track bias , but I waited patiently for the perfect opportunity to capitalize on it. Toward the end of the meeting I finally found my horse. Introienne had earned superior speed figures while running on the outside part of the track. Now he was entered against a mediocre field, had drawn an inside post position, and figured to get the early lead along the rail. I made my biggest bet of the summer on Introienne, at 7 to 2, and watched in dis belief as he faded to finish out of the money. Evidently he hurt himself in that race, because he didn’t run again for several weeks. At Belmont I made an even worse mistake. I wasn’t there. I was tired after four weeks of intensive gambling at Saratoga and I went back h ome to Washington instead. It was only after this period of track biases had ended, a nd my New York friends were telling me how they were planning to spend their winnings o n new cars and fabulous vacations, that I realized how foolish I had been. I should have recognized that these track biases gave me the sort of rare opportunity that might not recur for months or years. I should have been taking advantage of the b ias nine times a day at Saratoga instead of coyly waiting to put all my eggs in one basket. And I should have ignored my home, my job. and my cat in September in order to p lay nine races a day at Belmont Park. Golden opportunities do not occur often. But when they do arise, a horseplayer has to be prepared to bet aggressively and to keep betting as long as the conditions are in
