Most people who become inter­ested in racing, if pinned down and forced to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, would admit that they know very little about horses, racing and the figuring of winners. Whether or not they admit these facts to you or to me, nevertheless they know them in their own hearts. The net result of this condition is to throw a substantial majority of bettors on the mercy of those who claim to know what it is all about. Hence, at a track, you will see spectators running about with a racing sheet, their eyes glued on the selectors' pages rather than on the pages where the cold past performance records of the horses are displayed. Or you will see them consulting the graded handicaps of a single selector employed by a daily newspaper, or perhaps a consensus of the opinions of selectors on several papers in the same city. If they are not following the selectors on a racing sheet or a regular newspaper, the chances are they will be following the choices of a scratch-sheet or a tip-card sold at the track. And if they are doing none of these things the odds are that they are betting what they fondly believe to be stable information, or a friend's tip, or anybody else's tip.

Inability of the public to figure fields of horses results in their turning avidly to any other source of information * that they believe to be better qualified than themselves.

Therefore they support the appalling mass of printed tosh that clutters up the newsstands of the country, as well as (lie nondescript crew that "hustle" at the tracks in person, dealing out supposed information and winners to the credulous in hope of a cut on the profits if something they mention happens to come in.

The game cannot be beaten by buying newspapers or by sleuthing around for stable dope or listening to hustlers at the track. No racing sheet or daily newspaper selector in the country ever shows a profit on all his top horses over a period of a year; therefore anyone who plays selec­tions of horses from among such selections is certain to wind up with a healthy loss. No scratch-sheet ever has shown or ever will show a profit from all its top horses in all races, so that one who picks around among them also is bound to wind up in red ink. Some stable informa­tion is worthy of respect, but mighty little of it. Nothing but grief can come from following the guidance of a hustler who has tipped each of the horses in a six-horse race in the certain knowledge that something is bound to win it and he can get a trifle from the player who hap­pened to get the winner.

The sources from which a horse-ignorant public gets the names of animals on which to wager can be broken down into four main categories. These arc: (1) Touts or hustlers at the track; (2) tip-cards sold at the entrances to a track and at a few newsstands in a near-by city; (3) weekly turf sheets sold by subscription and at newsstands; and (4) scratch-sheets, standard racing sheets and daily newspapers offering the selections of handicappers em­ployed by them. Each of these sources will be taken up briefly in the following sections of this chapter.

I. TOUTS OR HUSTLERS

A tout, in simplest terms, is one who seeks a precarious living by circulating among the crowd at a track, by scraping acquaintance with strangers to whom he presents himself as knowing something, and by giving the of a horse for play if the man approached will bet something on the side for the tout himself. Or that informal laden gentleman may be willing to wait for a mere if the animal wins.

Nearly all hustlers operate in the same manner Equipped with nothing but nerves of brass and a good memory for faces, they try to cover each race by giving each horse in it to a different person in the very sure; expectation that something they have dished out will corned in first so that they will have given a winner to someone,. In the event of a dead heat they will have had two win­ners with two different suckers and can attempt to collect twice for their unerring information. The whole racket' is as simple as that.

A hustler may be—or may have been—anyone. He may be a stable hand, who grooms horses and walks "hots'* when he is working and victimizes the innocent when he is loose among the crowd. He may have been a trainer or a small owner who has fallen on evil days, lost his license or his horses, and is trying to make a living the best he can. He may be a former jockey, grounded by weight or for misdeeds. But whatever he may have been, and what­ever he claims to be, he is nothing for a player to follow with money.

A tout may be a person of relative integrity and confine himself to tipping just one horse in a race. In fact he may be so hopelessly mired in the swamp of the tracks as to think that his own opinions are worth something, and rush about dealing out his next hoped-for winner to all and sundry in the utmost good faith. But hustlers who give out only one horse in a race are scarce because this kind starves to death much sooner than the tout who follow* the tried and true procedure of covering each race by giving each horse in it in turn to a different individual or group.

Obviously a tout's stock in trade consists of a plausible manner of approach, a good line of patter, and an excel­lent memory for faces. Thus equipped a competent practi­tioner of the art of racetrack fraud can promote nothing into a couple of meals a day, a few drinks, and a place to sleep,.

The total volume of play on horses influenced by touts operating in person at the tracks is of course microscopic in comparison with that controlled by scratch-sheet and daily newspaper and racing sheet selectors or handicap-pers. But the hustlers do influence some few people, par­ticularly novices, so that they call for mention in a book concerned with what not to do before dealing with what must be done by a player of horses if he is to have the least hope of being successful in the financial sense.

I read or was told an amusing story about a tout not long ago. It seems an old Negro, a former stable hand, had been working the racket with great success for a long time. He had no memory for faces and dished out many horses to a great many people in the course of an afternoon. To enable him to identify all to whom he had given winners he kept a piece of chalk in his right hand and marked the post number of the horse issued by him on the back of the shoulder of the man to whom he had given the tip. One afternoon a chap who had been watch­ing his proceedings went through the crowd before a race and marked fifty or sixty different post numbers on the shoulders of men the gentleman of color had not ap­proached at all. After the race the darky began to ask for his cut from the people duly marked with the number of the winner, and naturally was more than a little aston­ished at the various receptions and denials he got. It finally dawned on him that something he could not quite figure out had gone wrong, so he took off his cap, scratched his head3 and muttered, "Guess someone stole copyright."

Very few newspapers in the United States accept advertising copy from horse touts, although standard race sheets like Daily Racing Form and The Morning Tele** graph did so up to a few years ago. And now, on Saturday mornings especially, the few papers that accept tout advertising blossom out on their race-result page or near with extravagant ads offering horses for play. These are inserted by hustlers who have enough money to pay for': the space and so do not need to search for customers ins person at the track. Always these ads breathe forth an urgent come-on-sucker, get-rich-quick aroma, and in nine;, cases out of ten the people back of them and paying for them are working the same old tout racket, that of giving each horse in a race to a different group, so as to be sure: of pleasing someone and getting his continued custom.

These people have nothing to sell, and the mere tone of their advertising copy is enough to drive away any;; sensible person. Yet they continue to advertise and there-' fore must take in enough money to pay for the space and their hole-in-wall offices.

All their dodges are old, but nevertheless they seem to work. Dan Parker, the able New York sportswriter, once devoted his entire column in the Mirror to exposing the fraudulence of some tipster. The net result was that he received a considerable flood of two-dollar remittances the next day from readers who asked him to forward the money to the tipster as subscriptions to his junk!

Some years ago I sent the required fees to a number of these advertising touts in order to check up on them and get factual material for an article on their thieveries." One of them wired me a horse in a couple of days, which | promptly finished out of the money and up the stretch,-. as it figured to do. But the next day the tout advertised that he had issued to his clientele the day before another animal which had won and had paid a very long mutuel, something in the $60 range. So, just for the merry hades of it, I went over to the tout's office to ask him how come and to have a little fun with him. I was ushered into a dirty, bare room, with a plain plank floor, where a "horse­man" was slouched over a cheap table. He assured me that the $60 winner I didn't get was a track "release" too late to admit of substitution by wire.

Some time ago, before the standard racing sheets be­came moral and pure, they used to accept advertising from touts. All these ads followed a stereotyped formula. Wednesday, for instance, they announced that on the day before they had issued to their clientele as probable winner a horse which did win and paid a straight price of $96.40 or some other figure of the extra-long order. And at the end the advertisement readers were referred to the fact that the wire "releasing" the particular horse had been "filed" the day before with the particular sheet in advance of post-time. Of course it had been filed; so also had six or seven other wires indicating as probable winner each of the six or seven other horses in the race. No matter which animal in the field won, the tout had advised play on him, and the sheet most cynically would back up that claim with documentary evidence if inquiry were made.

I can't forbear mentioning one particular sub-species of the advertising tout. An animal of the sort referred to usually specializes in parlays, advertising, that if the tip for which he is paid falls down, the next one or two or three or the next week's "service" will be sent absolutely free. So what? He already has someone hooked for the initial fee; sending out more horses costs him practically nothing; and if something in the free series happens to win, the player will come right back for more—and pay more fees.

I doubt if very much money is influenced by hustlers at the track and by advertising tipsters. But these gentle­men continue to do business at the same old stands and in die same old phony way, so that a few words about them may save some readers a little money.

II. TIP-CARDS

As players enter the approaches to a race track they are assailed by a mob of pitchmen with green, yellow, orange and other colored cards in their hands and stuck in their hat bands. Like everything else tendered a race player they cater to his only interest, which is to get winners, and therefore indicate a play in each of the seven or eight contests programmed for the afternoon.

The frauds who put out these cards have no more to sell than touts who hustle in person or advertising tipsters who work through a few daily newspapers. Anyone who follows the cards will be disabused most speedily of any notion that their information is worth two cents. So, to keep the racket alive and flourishing and to snare a new crop of suckers each day, the tipster prints a new ticket after the fifth race and distributes, free to the departing crowds, these phony cards which of course have all the winners right down to the fifth race. The printing is done on a small press near the track, possibly housed in a truck, and the free cards, advising play on so many winners that very day, serve as bait for the next day's sales.

These cards offer nothing worth while to a player. The crook who puts them out can't handicap, has no special information from stables, and is merely a cheap thief working a racket. Anyone with sense, of course, knows that if the proprietors of the cards could pick horses themselves or get good information they would bet for themselves and not be encumbered by a printing press and half a dozen pitchmen. And that's why enough of the cards sell to keep alive those who issue and those who peddle them, and the pitchmen with cards stuck in the bands of their hats continue to clutter up the approaches to racecourses together with beggars exhibiting their sores.

I have no means of learning how much play is influ­enced by these cards. The amount may be less than that controlled by touts and advertising tipsters or it may be more. It certainly is much less than the amount of money swayed by selectors and handicappers employed by scratch-sheets, standard racing sheets and daily newspa­pers. But I am reviewing in this chapter all sources of winners relied on by a public that cannot handicap fields for itself and realizes the fact, and the tip-card is one such source.

III. WEEKLY TURF SHEETS

The large city newsstands of the country are loaded with a multitude of turf sheets, pamphlets, magazines— call them what you will—brought into being and kept alive by the urgent demand for winners by a public which insists on trying to make money by betting horses although acutely conscious of inability to figure fields and get win­ners on its own.

Touts and hustlers are fraudulent, as previously ex­plained. Daily tip-cards are fraudulent and worthless, as also explained. And like everybody and everything offering winners at a price the weekly sheets are fraudulent in intent and operation if not in the strictly legal sense. Their week­ly period of publication excludes them from the tout's racket of endorsing all the horses in a race. The same fact prevents their getting out a new free edition each day giving all winners available down to press time—the dodge used by tip-cards. But the weeklies also, utilizing the ignorance and gullibility of the public, operate a racket in the following way.

In each issue they print long lists of horses supposed to be in fine present condition and ready to win next crack out of the box. And, of course, out of so many horses tipped, some are bound to win at good mutuels in the week prior to the next issue of the pamphlet. These few winners, with the long prices they paid, are printed in ; bold display type on the front cover of the following issue * as certification of the sort of horses a buyer can expect to get from it. Of course some of the horses tipped have won, but how about the dozens or even fifties of others tipped that lost? And of course the proprietor of the sheet can rely on getting some long-priced winners each week from among the fifties and hundreds he tips. He deliberately confines most of his suggested plays to the cheapest and most erratic platers1 on the tracks because such horses are least, predictable, never have much money on them (except a few sucker dollars), and pay long prices when they do manage to win. The cover of a weekly rag consequently is emblazoned with a list of good or long-priced winners; but the pages inside recommend as plays for the current week scores of horses of which 98% will lose. The few winners will appear the following week in display on the front cover.

Weekly tip-sheet proprietors have another dodge to sell their piffle. In newspapers that will take their money they

1 Some definition of the term "plater" should be given for readers not familiar with racing terminology. It is an abbrevia­tion of "selling plater," a term formerly used to describe the less valuable horses on the tracks which could win only when en­tered in selling races. These races were limited to animals en­tered at a fixed valuation, as $1,000, and after the race the win­ner was auctioned off with the bidding starting at the entered figure. Races of this type have been supplanted by the modern claiming race, where each horse is entered at the valuation or a valuation permitted by the racing secretary's conditions for the event. From such a race any horse can be claimed at the fixed price by any owner who has a horse in the same race or who has started a horse in a race at the same meeting—depending on whether the "closed" or the "open" claiming rule is in force at the particular track—and a claimed horse belongs to the claim- . ing new owner from the time he goes to post, although the purse goes to the owner who entered him if he wins any money. This is true even if the horse drops dead or is killed in the race, in which event the claimant gets a mere carcass but must pay over run advertisements offering in code a certain extra-special horse for the particular day and referring readers to a page of their weekly for instructions as to how to decipher the code. This secret code stuff has proved itself a marvel­ous come-on over the years. The horse is identified in the ad only as "Joe—11—9—3—6"; the reader must know what the horse is; it must be pretty hot if so much pre­caution has been taken to keep it under cover. So off he gallops to the nearest newsstand and becomes one of the sacred inner circle by spending 25c for the code-contain­ing pamphlet.

The code nonsense must be rather effective for the week­lies continue to use it and to get up money to pay for adver­tising. Usually these ads appear in greatest volume on Saturday, when the horse players have a day or half a day of leisure, most of a week's pay in pocket, and so feel sportively inclined. The whole trick is merely the tipster's special development of the old racket of selling a pig in a poke.

If more than one claim is put in for the same horse, lots are drawn to determine which claimant shall get him. Theses races are programmed to force the entry together of horses of about equal class and value so as to promote good contests. No owner, unless desperately pressed, is going to enter a horse at much less than his real value merely to win a purse and a bet at short odds. Also such races tend to prevent monopoliza­tion of purses by a few really good horses at each meeting. A good horse can beat an erratic cheapie without going through more than an exercise gallop—hence claiming races. A player should remember that their primary purpose is to enable inferior horses to win money, and should be skeptical of attempting to handicap cheap fields in races programmed merely to keep alive the small owners and bad horses necessary to fill over-long daily programs. There never are enough good horses to fill eight-race cards for weeks at a single track, and cheap horses are not figur-able anyway. All this amounts to saying that most races for cheap platers, horses entered for less than $2,000, possibly $1,500, should be passed.

Inside pages of weekly tip-sheets, wherever they print comment on races and racing affairs and not merely horses' names, are loaded with copy emphasizing the in­fluence of smart stable tactics or outright crookedness in racing. This is the same sort of patter put out by a tout at the track, and the tout's spiel and the tipster's copy both originate in the same motive. Each wants to impress bettors with the thought that wins result from manipula­tion of horses and from little else. To do so gives each a leverage to sell the player something. He reasons that the tip-sheet he reads and the tout he listens to are on the inside, else how could they know so much? In this way he is softened up to the point of betting through the tout, or to the point of continuing to buy the sheet. And of course the weekly sheets all offer extra-special horses for extra fees. A sucker may reach for one of these, with a five-dollar bill in his hand.

Track dope, and the slush that gets into print about horses in weekly sheets and other fugitive media, always are saturated with the thought that a high percentage of races are affected in some way by outright crookedness or clever underground tactics, and that wins result from such practices and from little else. The mind of a novice, in all its beautiful simplicity, is a most receptive seed-bed for notions of the sort. He is merely gullible, to put it bluntly, given to looking with awe upon the rich and great of the earth, the owners, trainers and jockeys, and to wondering dimly how they do it. The touts' and the tip-sheets' patter about fixed races and secret "preps" offers a ready explanation to the simpleton's rudimentary intelligence. He always is convinced of his own righteous­ness, also of the other fellow's innate and chronic de­pravity. He sees but dimly and not far, yet he can recognize a helping hand when extended to him. So he grasps the tout's or buys the sheet and starts a merry-go-round of loss that leaves him with a flat wallet. But he has one consolation. He always knew the game was crooked, any­way, and he has proved it. Everyone knows you can't beat the races.

Of course anyone who believes the tracks are mere sewers of manipulation of horses and of general crooked­ness is foolish to bet at all. But any player can test the the real fact, so far as it concerns him, easily enough. If he can make money betting on the basis of his own judg­ment there is not enough funny business in the sport to affect him. And if he can't make money he had better quit betting.

IV. SCRATCH-SHEETS, RACING SHEETS AND NEWSPAPERS

Touts, tip-cards and turf weeklies are all definitely fraud­ulent and entirely useless to a player of horses. But the publications I propose to discuss in this section arc neither fraudulent nor useless. The scratch-sheets do give all scratches from races, except the very latest, and so show the fields made up of the horses which really were intended to go when entered. The standard racing sheets, with their detailed past performance records on all horses entered at several tracks, are absolutely essential to any player in enabling him to make a scientific analysis of each field in an effort to uncover cither the best horse or the horse best placed in the race. Even ordinary daily newspapers are of some very slight use to a player; they at least give him the names of entrants in races, the distance of each con­test, and the weights to be carried by the horses.

But no single one of these various publications is of any use at all to an individual player when it indicates to him the probable winners of races selected by handicappers employed by the particular sheet. I will emphasize this point in more detail shortly and analyze the underlying conditions that effectually prohibit any follower of legiti­mate public selectors from being successful in the finan­cial sense.

Scratch-sheets are those little four-page papers, with, green or red decorative headings at the top of the first page, that one sees on newsstands awaiting purchase at 10c up by people who wager a few dollars a day with the off-course bookie or bookie's agent who is making a living from their losses. They show the scratches, or withdrawals from races, except the very latest, but they are not bought because they show scratches. They are purchased as a guide to winners. On the two inside pages the field for each race at all tracks represented is listed in the order in which the sheet's handicapper expects the horses to finish. , Program selections also are given for any track where the official track handicapper makes them, and on the front cover are shown a consensus of opinion of news­paper selectors, weighted by points, and a first, second and third horse prediction by another handicapper or selector working for the sheet.

Two standard racing sheets are published daily at many points in this country. These are Daily Racing Form, in its several editions, and The Morning Telegraph. All sell for 25c a copy, all publish complete past performance records on horses entered at tracks covered by the particu­lar sheet, and all offer selections to run first, second and third made by a staff of half a dozen handicappers em­ployed by the sheet.

There is no need to state what a daily newspaper offers to readers interested in racing and betting. It prints only entries and selections made by a handicapper or several members of its staff; also, possibly, a consensus of other handicappers or selectors on other papers.

Competent players buy a racing sheet only for its past performances, but a high percentage of its circulation must be attributed to purchase for the selections rather than for the records. This is even more true of scratch-sheets and daily newspapers, which are bought for selec­tions as they offer little else.

So the question is: Just what do all these selectors and handicappers really do for the public? The answer is short and sweet. Nothing, except to lead into loss.

Summaries of results achieved by all public selectors having a national or semi-national circulation arc tabu­lated and published throughout the year by a monthly-turf magazine.2 These statistics uniformly show that no public handicapper or selector over a period of a year ever succeeds in showing a profit on whole-card selections at all tracks, assuming that $2 or any other flat amount is bet on all his top horses in all races he has covered. And on best bets, so-called, where the selector has indicated just one horse in one race as affording the most logical hazard on the whole card—on his super-selections, in other words—the story of final loss over a year is almost always the same. I say almost always because once in a while one or two selectors will manage to stay triflingly ahead in the best-bets checkup. But these exceptions are not significant, for two reasons: (1) any profits shown on best bets are always microscopic when expressed as a per­centage of the total amount wagered over the year; (2) if one or two selectors manage to make even a trifling profit on best bets in any year, they never repeat the next year.

On whole-card selections the public handicappers are always unsuccessful; all of them. Any one of them will pick from 25% to 35% winning horses, but the average price secured on winners is never sufficient to result in profit from playing all the selections. On best bets a few of the public handicappers will get as high as something over 40% winners, but the average price secured on win­ners of this type is so low that normally no profit will result from backing all the best bets of any single selector over a year.

Of course no player in his senses is going to back all the choices of any single public handicapper, whether in the whole-card or best-bet category. But, if it is a fact that loss must result from betting all of any one man's selections, how is it possible for any player even to hope to make money by picking around at random among a succession of daily selections which as a whole always have been and always must be basically unsuccessful?

A track's secretary prepares his condition book of races at a meeting to fit the types of horses stabled at the course, and then", within that limitation, to present good—which means close—contests. He does the best he can, and usual­ly he does pretty well. The net result is that a very high percentage of all races programmed are much too close between two or three or even more of the entrants to per­mit choice of one over the other or others by a margin wide enough to serve as basis for a sensible bet. Yet the various sheets employing selectors require them to indicate the winner • in each race of an eight-race program at several tracks. The selectors comply, and the public follow­ing selectors risks its money on many races where the result never was pre-figurable, by selectors or by anyone else. The result always is loss, though of course public handi-cappers do tumble on a winner on an average of once in every three or four tries.

An individual player who picks his own can do some­thing, if he is sufficiently expert, by avoiding tough, close races and withholding his fire unless the horse he likes for definite reasons is going to post at a price sufficient to com­pensate for the risk if he is successful.

Public selectors fail in picking whole cards simply be­cause, in view of the high percentage of close and there­fore unpickable contests, they are up against an impossible task. To that extent they have an alibi, although the publications that make them attempt the impossible have none. But as regards their best-bet selections they have no alibi at all. Invariably competent handicappers, check­ing over their selections in this category, will find that they have taken as best bet the horse which strikes them as having the most certain chances of winning—totally dis­regarding the factor of price or odds. But consideration of price is as much a part of any process of selecting an at­tractive bet as is consideration of bare winning chances apart from price. Although the public selectors or handi-cappers get a higher percentage of wins on best-bet selec­tions than they do on whole cards, the result of playing their super-selections is normally loss rather than profit over any prolonged period of time. Selectors tend to agree on best bets simply because the factors favoring standout horses are apparent to all, and their agreement puts so much public money on animals of the type that they pay nothing even when they do win; certainly not enough to compensate for losses from inevitable losers.

And it is astonishing how many times in a year a num­ber of selectors on scratch-sheets, racing sheets and daily newspapers will agree on a horse as best bet that is as full of holes as a sieve.

Take a particular case. In the first half of the 30's, at Belmont Park, New York, a six-furlong sprint for three-year-old fillies was programmed. High Fleet, owned by one of the Wideners, was entered. She had been most definite­ly one of the better two-year-old fillies of the year before, a stakes-winner, fast and game in the sprints where two-year-olds race. But this particular sprint was her first start at three, so that none of the public handicappers could see her. They went heavily for another filly in the same race which had won her last start. The lady was called Danise M., and many selectors took her as their best bet. The consequence was that the books at the track opened her at odds on, the public sent their money in on her, and she went to post at odds on, around seven to ten. High Fleet, neglected in the betting, was something over five to one. But at the finish High Fleet was the easy winner she figured to be. Danise M. never had shown anything much, never had raced good ones, and was a quitter to ^ boot. But the public, misled by best-bet nonsense, took her; hence the debacle.

I remember another race where the public took the wrong horse under guidance of newspaper and scratch-sheet experts. In July of 1941 a mare called Ai-Ling was entered at the short six-furlong distance at Empire City. The affair was a $1,500 claimer, possibly a $1,250 event, at any rate a race for very cheap horses. Entrants other than Ai-Lang never had shown anything, but she, al­though a cheap one herself, had been quite successful against similar or better company. In other words, she had won a substantial proportion of her starts when placed against cheap horses. And again, as in the case of High Fleet, the experts could not see her. At any rate—this race was under the mutuels—the money poured through the windows on something else in the race, under the guidance of newspaper and scratch-sheet selectors, but Ai-Ling won off by five or six lengths as she figured to do with a sound handicapper. And she paid a mutuel in ex­cess of $15—better than six to one.

I could give dozens and dozens of similar examples from memory over the past ten years where a pre-figurable winner coasted home easily at a long price simply because the public selectors seemingly had become quite blind or moon-struck. But space is limited, and the two cases will suffice.

I mention them merely to lend point and force to the following series of statements: (1) the flow of public money on this horse or that is controlled and guided, basically, by the selections of racing sheet, daily newspaper and scratch-sheet handicappers; (2) these opinions of selectors may be valid or invalid, but unless a player can analyze a field of horses for himself he cannot tell when they may be invalid and hence cannot take advantage of price-spots created by most of the selectors' being wrong;

(3) the hazards of racing around oval courses arc so ma­terial as to tend heavily to invalidate any handicapping figures, even the best. This statement means that no handi-capper can expect to win more than about 40% of his straight bets—wagers to win only. And this maximum percentage means that no material profit can result from his wagers unless he realizes on winners an average price is about two to one. Therefore, it being granted that newspaper and scratch-sheet selectors chiefly guide the public's money, and that horses liked by them go to post at an average price of less than two to one, or a $6 mutuel, it follows that an individual player-handicapper's only real chance for profit is not to follow the selectors but to equip himself to out-figure them and to detect when a horse which they have overlooked is in fact well placed and has a superior chance of winning. Just then and only then can a player realize on a winner selected by himself a price that will make up for inevitable and unavoidable losses on other bets.

To say that a bettor should wager against the public is to say that he frequently must bet, if he would be success­ful, against rather than on the choices of newspaper and scratch-sheet selectors who guide the public. If usually he wagers on favorites, primarily because the experts have indicated them as probable winners, then his operations are going to wind up in red ink as surely as God made little fishes. As a matter of cold statistics, play on favorites always shows a loss at the end of a meeting, a month, six months, a year or any fairly prolonged period. Play on the choices of any single expert, or on the consensus of opinion of several or many experts, also always shows a loss if continued long enough to let the basic averages develop. It matters not a whit whether the bettor is guided only by experts or money, or whether he attempts to figure fields of horses for himself but lacks confidence to bet what he likes unless everyone else also endorses the particular horse's chances. The final result will be the same. He will 1 be backing the chances of a series of short-priced or near-favorites, and, over a period, inevitably will lose money.3

I am not writing in this way to condemn the newspa­pers, racing or other, or the men who work for them. But the fact is that opinions made available to the whole pub­lic through these publications are entirely worthless to an individual bettor who wants to make money. The gullible general public accepts the opinion of the experts on a race, and sends horses endorsed by the experts to post at prices so short that play on them never can result in profit over a period of time.

At this point I want to emphasize to the reader of this book that he will derive no benefit from the price he paid for it, unless he washes out of his mind any notion that the whole motley crew posing as experts knows anything more about figuring a field of horses than a bright fifteen-year-old boy who has devoted two hours a day for the past two or three years to study and analysis of the printed past performances of racing Thoroughbreds. If you as players do not approach the game with a fixed, confident and justified attitude that you know as much about the chances of individual animals as anyone else, then you will fail to make a reasonable proportion of your wagers on horses well placed but not liked by so-called experts. And if you fail to make a fair proportion of your wagers on lightly backed horses you never will secure an average price on winners that will put you ahead over a pro­longed period.

To recapitulate, no handicapper that ever lived, betting with some freedom and making one, two or three wagers a day, can hope to win more than about forty of one hun­dred bets. And if he does get 40% winners he must secure an average price of about two to one if he is to realize a profit of about 20% on all money risked. To get 40% winners over a period he must confine himself to animals really solid as placed in their races, so that some of them will be short-priced through having been taken by public selectors. It follows that he must realize on some of his winners prices in the range of three, four, five or six to one, or even higher, if the average price on all winners is to work out at two to one or anything like that figure.

3 For the mathematics underlying this statement, see Chapter 4, Mutuels and the Real "Take," and Chapter, 7, Section III, How to Bet.

The whole problem analyzes somewhat as follows. The average man—if there is such a person—has a certain limited betting capital. If the conditions of the game—as they do in fact—limit profit in betting to about 20% over a period, it follows that a player must turn over or re-bet his capital quickly if his profit of 20% of what is bet in a year is to be a really significant total of dollars. And my experience has been that it is impossible to find enough plays in a year all of which are sound both from the angle of winning chances and the equally important angle of price. But the campaign will work out if one takes a horse that he really likes, even though some of the public selectors endorse the animal, but also takes other horses that he really likes even though none of the selectors give them a chance. One playing in this way will get some short-priced winners, of course; he also will get enough long-priced ones to keep his operations satisfactorily in the black—if he is a first-class handicapper.

Public selectors on scratch-sheets, racing .sheets and daily newspapers are of no assistance to an individual bettor. If he backs their choices as a practice he will lose money. And his chances of getting a good price now and then are seriously diminished by the fact that a solidly pre-figurable winner must have undergone the scrutiny of the selectors without detection before the animal can go to post at the sort of price that will profit his backer materially.

I have been surveying the field of selectors, tipsters and touts—the people who offer winners to those who realize they can't pick them for themselves—merely to emphasize the effect they have on individual players of horses. If a man in any business is strictly on his own, and must make up his mind on his ventures on the basis of his own knowledge and reasoning, then there is some probability that he will learn from experience. If he goes into this deal or that and suffers loss because he proves to have been wrong on the facts, or his deductions from the facts, the chances are that he will remember the transaction and be more cautious next time when confronted by simi­lar circumstances. But if he proceeds on the advice of another, more or less blindly and in reliance on that other, he will have no idea at all why he made money or why he lost money. He merely will have the fact, and—if that fact is a loss—a slight or severe headache.

A player who is convinced that most races are fixed and crooked, or that wins result from smart stable tactics and little else, inevitably is going to try to turn himself into a one-man detective agency and snoop around the tracks in search of "info" from the feed-box. Or, if he thinks the public selectors are possessors of the horse-wis­dom of the ages, he is going to continue to put his money on their choices without making the least direct effort to find out what it is all about for himself. And if he thinks touts and tipsters are selling fortunes for pennies, then he is going to follow them--God help him! It makes no difference, in effect, whether the individual follows stable information, selectors employed by the public prints, or advertising touts or track hustlers; he has abandoned any attempt to learn. If he would confine himself to the horses, and an analysis of their performances, he might have a chance. As it is he just stumbles around for a few weeks or months, then adds his voice to the chorus chanting the races can't be beaten.

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