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The Skeptical Handicapper
By Barry Meadow

The book shows you exact methods on how to make the most money at the track. Barry Meadow, the book's author, is the publisher of the award-winning Meadow's Racing Monthly, a handicapping and money-management newsletter. He's also the founder of Master Win Ratings, power ratings updated daily for every California thoroughbred. His Pluto Press book Capitalism’s New Clothes (2011) draws on critical theory to explore ideological imbrications of enterprise, ethics and enjoyment in times of capitalist crisis. He is currently writing a monograph on consumption for Zero Books. Adrian Danks is Senior Lecturer and Head of Cinema Studies in the School of.

The mountain meadows with the beech and birch trees; the green mountain rivers and the quiet streams with the lone figures scattered on the banks: that is the Balkans! Where two butterflies dance with each other and appear as three: that is the Balkans! A Serbenwerk—there is a strong element of exaggeration, but with this new book his. W e have chosen his book The Best of Thoroughbred Handicapping, Leading Ideas and Methods as one of the 10 best racing books of the last 20 years. In this exclusive extract, Quinn pays tribute to the work of fellow US professio nal and former PPM columnist Barry Meadow. Barry Meadow is the author of Money Secrets At The Racetrack. For seven years, he published the newsletter Meadow's Racing Monthly. In 2014, he won the first-ever Ron Rippey Award for handicapping.

Just for starters, music comes in classical, jazz, rock or country. Houses might be ranch, A-frame, Cape Cod or Victorian. You might buy a peacoat, warmup jacket, wool coat or leather jacket.

The point: Just because you don’t handicap the way I do, or the way your friends do, doesn’t make you wrong. You simply have a different style.

Once you’ve identified your style, you can decide how best to approach the races. Unless you’re preparing to deliver a handicapping seminar, there’s no point in spending hours researching every fact about every entrant in every race. Instead, identify the approach you’re taking to the game, then figure out how to get the most out of your handicapping time.

For instance, if your main goal is superfecta bombs, why waste time looking at seven-horse fields? Instead, turn to the races with big fields and a less-than-stellar favorite. If, on the other hand, you prefer to make two big bets a day on solid exactas, look to find races where the competition doesn’t run deep and you can zero in on the main players quickly.

Some popular approaches to the game, with some suggestions:

You are a longshot player. Rather than handicap each race in detail, look for races with large fields that may have a vulnerable favorite and perhaps a false second choice as well. Concentrate on horses with high morning lines (6–1 and up) that figure to improve enough to run a winning a race. Angles such as early speed, trainer changes, distance switches and surface changes may be more effective in locating live longshots than simply calculating speed ratings.

You are a show bettor who likes to cash a lot of tickets. Look for consistent, in-form horses in short fields. Better to bet on a guy whose Beyers are 70-69-70 than one who shows 70-85-55. Cover all the general handicapping bases: decent numbers, acceptable pace scenario, good trainer, no negatives in the area of workouts, no distance questions, etc.

You’re a weekend player who plays as a hobby. Get help from those who are doing this full time. You won’t be able to watch every replay, but you can subscribe to a trip-notes report. You haven’t got the time to compile your own trainer data, but an Internet site can do it for you. Study the comments of the handicappers in Daily Racing Form and listen to your local radio handicapping shows. You might choose to subscribe to a handicapping service.

You try to predict what the public will do en route to identifying horses that are likely to be overbet. Like the oddsmaker that sets the track’s morning line, your goal is not to pick winners but merely to predict how the public will bet the race. Emphasize such factors as speed ratings, odds in recent races, class movements, trainers and jockeys. You will make no attempt at this stage of the handicapping to judge whether the horse you make the favorite is worth betting. The goal is to understand why they’re betting an individual horse. Later, you will compare this evaluation with your own assessment of the entrants.

You concentrate on betting exchanges. If your strategy is to offer prices against horses you don’t like, look for horses that have little chance to win. They have slow speed figures, low-percentage trainers, questionable workout patterns, etc. You’re looking for contenders not because you plan to bet any of them but to form an “entry” against the horses you consider throwouts.

You are a tournament player. Like the longshot player, you have little interest in spending an hour finding a 9–5 shot. Go right for the competitive races with full fields. Unlike the day-in, day-out handicapper, you don’t care whether an 18–1 shot you think can win should be 10–1 or 20–1. You need big prices, whether overlays or not.

You play for rebates. Making a profit is not as important as volume, both to qualify for the biggest rebates and to increase the post-rebate net. Assuming you get a 10 percent rebate, you might use a computer program to identify situations that have shown an ROI of at least 0.91. With a successful program, you don’t have to handicap at all. By betting many tracks, you spread your risk.

You prefer trifectas and superfectas. Big fields, big payoffs. Look for “chaos” races where there are a lot of questions. You may be confused, but the public will be, too. Look especially to toss the favorite and/or the second choice. Don’t be afraid to key longshots to finish third or fourth.

You look to exploit match-bet opportunities. Play with places that offer 10-cent lines such as Pinnacle Sports. Look especially to bet against horses whose style is all wrong for the race, though they might have good final figures. Monitor the lines because sometimes they’ll move in a beautiful way so that you can bet on one horse at +1.20 early, then bet his opponent later at +1.10 — guaranteeing you a profit no matter who wins. You’re not handicapping to pick the winner but to see which horse offers the better gambling proposition.

There’s more than one way to make money at this game. Discover what appeals to you and concentrate your handicapping time on areas that help you get the most of your own preferences — instead of doing what a handicapping book might tell you to do.

Barry Meadow is the author of Money Secrets at the Racetrack. For seven years, he published the award-winning newsletter, Meadow’s Racing Monthly. His Web site is www.trpublishing.com.

If you consider yourself a thoroughbred handicapper and a reader, there is a new title available that would be a valuable addition to your bookshelf.

Author and long-time professional horseplayer, Barry Meadow, has written, in my opinion, the best and most comprehensive book on thoroughbred handicapping in recent memory — maybe ever — with his new release, The Skeptical Handicapper: Using Data and Brains to Win at the Racetrack.

As Meadow says, “It is crucial to differentiate between truth and opinions.” This book is Meadow’s way of seeking truth through the analysis of real statistics from real race results.

If there was ever a “right man for the job” to write this book, it is Barry Meadow. He has been a respected handicapper for decades and is the author of multiple books on money management at the track, such as Money Secrets at the Racetrack;Secrets of the Pick 6, Players Guide to Nevada Racebooks; and, Blackjack Autumn. You also might know him through his near decade of work on award-winning newsletter, Meadow’s Racing Monthly, or his 14-year column in American Turf Monthly magazine.

The Skeptical Handicapper is 430 pages of pure statistics and information that any horseplayer and handicapper would find valuable. Meadow guides the reader through meaningful statistics gathered from four full years of actual race results—168,000 races in all—and arrives at fact-based conclusions, not hasty opinions, that help horseplayers win.

The book is broken down into five sections: Class, or finding the level at which a horse can compete with success; Condition, otherwise known as form, including speed figures; Circumstances, such as track, surface, distance, pace, etc.; Connections, the jockeys and trainers; and, Mentality, otherwise known as the psychology of winning. It is this final area that Meadow says is drastically underwritten about in handicapping books—addressing the areas of goals, attitude, planning, stress management, and luck.

Meadow states that his book is not only dedicated to the facts, but also to the interpretation of the facts. It is in this arena that The Skeptical Handicapper is unrivaled. The book also does a tremendous job of examining the variables.

There is more than one way to go about playing the races, Meadow acknowledges. Handicapping is often oversimplified. Meadow does not oversimplify. Instead, he delves into the endless number of variables involves with every nugget of information he presents.

The main premise of Meadow’s advice is this: Winning at the races is not just about handicapping, it is about handicapping and betting correctly. You are not just asking yourself which horse is the most likely to win the race, you are really looking for the horse(s) that are going to be under-bet.

You need to be a contrarian to beat the races. You need to figure out when the public is wrong (the odds), and bet when you have the edge. You need to “allocate your time and money to races where your opinion differs from the crowd’s.”

It’s not all about beating favorites. A favorite can be a bargain at 6-5, if his real chances of winning are closer to 3-5.

Meadow advocates that “you’re going to succeed by predicting change – improvement for longshots, declines for favorites – not by going to the obvious.” Again, it’s about being a contrarian. Your challenges as a player are exploiting discrepancies in the odds, identifying over-bet and under-bet horses, and then using what you know and learn to bet successfully. If you are not doing those things correctly now, perhaps you will be doing them better after reading this book.

Meadow is not a fan of angles, stating that “Even though angles may be useful, more useful is knowing when an angle can help you. Racing is a complex game. Angles can help, [but] blindly following angles won’t make you money in the long run.”

Nevertheless, the information in the book leads you onto so many good angles through statistics.

For example, did you know first-time starters (and second starters) win much more often without blinkers than with them?

Did you know that you can hit the winner of 20-21% of all maiden races just by finding the horse who has run the fastest first quarter-mile so far in its career, with no other handicapping needed at all?

Meadow is also fan of the QWSR designation – a quality work since last raced – and references it throughout many sections of the book.

You can invest in a system or new software program designed to pick winners, but you probably are not going to attain steady profits betting the races without good statistical data and the ability to analyze it correctly.

Ultimately, The Skeptical Handicapper will give you hours of entertainment, and leave you armed with strategies and mindset you can use to become a better handicapper and more successful bettor. This is a highly-recommended, must-read book for anyone who calls themselves a horse race handicapper.

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To order, you can go to www.trpublishing.com for information, or email the author directly at barry@trpublishing.com, or call 805-712-5060. Copies direct from the publisher are autographed and cost $37.99 including shipping.

Barry Meadows Books