Foreword - As even the most casual observer of the sports world must admit, the racing of Thoroughbred horses under saddle has undergone a most tremendous expansion in the United States in the past ten or fifteen years. Racing and betting on the races have been made legal and have been instituted in many states that never hoped to see a horse under silks; new tracks have been opened and have enjoyed heavy patronage and most conspicuous suc­cess; there are now many more days of racing in a year than formerly; and the total amount of money wagered on the runners, both on-course and off-course, has reached staggering and almost astronomical proportions.

01. Public Horses - Mostpeople 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.

02. Common Procedures - The gyrations indulged in at a race track by novices at the game are so fantastic that this chapter might be written in the form of broad bur­lesque without getting too far away from the facts, but I will try to be factual and analytical about matters almost too absurd for serious discussion.

Take a case like this, for instance. In the early 30's, just when the depression was sinking its hooks in deep, I was daily at the spring meeting at Belmont Park.

03. Progressive Betting - A player of horses who finds that he has lost money in flat betting, or in wagering varying amounts without system, frequently becomes in­terested in progressive betting as a possible means of ac­complishing what he has been unable to do otherwise, namely, make money.

Of course not all progressive betting is system play, nor is all system play progressive betting. A man may wager larger and larger amounts after each losing bet, doing so without following any predetermined pattern, but that is not system play.

04. Mutuels - New York joined the ranks of all the other racing states and legalized betting in the mutuels to the exclusion of bookmakers. J Although certain tracks in various states became war casualties, nevertheless in 1947 over $1,500,000,000 were poured through the mutuel windows in straight, place, show or daily double betting on thousands of horses in thousands of races. A reader of course should understand that for every dollar wagered legally in the machines at the tracks possibly $5 to $10 are wagered on the same horse with illegal handbooks away from the tracks.

05. Extra-Hazardous - Before discussing the science-art of handicapping, it may be useful to indicate certain wagers that always involve extra hazard and hence should almost never be made. These will be covered rapidly, for no lengthy discussion is necessary.

Aged horses. Thoroughbreds are brought to racing at two years of age, and are used on the tracks as long as they last. Colts and fillies of two, raced only in sprints until the fall of their first season of competition, frequently are referred to as juveniles.

06. Handicapping - At this point, having explained the bare mathematics of mutuel betting and attempted to clear the reader's mind of novice and sucker plays that he may have favored, it is possible to take up factors in­volved in any handicapping process. This handicapping process is the basic thing a player must master before he can entertain the least hope of making money by betting on Thoroughbreds. A number of the lesser details of the art of handicapping will not be touched upon here, for lack of space, but a player who gets a real grasp of the essentials will find that he will begin to improve.

07. Intelligent Betting - What remains, after a probable or possible winner is found by handicapping procedures, except to let fly with a bet of some sort? Something most certainly does remain, and a player who has sense enough to find out what that is, and self-control enough to apply his knowledge, is the only type of bettor who has any real chance for success at the tracks.

Intelligent betting involves three questions. The first is what to bet, and the answer, in the abstract at least, is easy—always bet the best horse.

08. Psychological Factors - The nervous and emotional tension apt to be generated in an individual visiting a race track to make bets, renders him vulnerable to impulses which may be inimical to his chances for success. He has come to the course to try to make money, but in the aver­age case has no well-defined idea of how to attain that end. Even if he has worked out a plan of operations, it is improbable that he will have enough confidence in it to permit averages to develop if the scheme gets off on the wrong foot and a high percentage of losing transactions is experienced.

09. Attainable Results - My experience in betting for more than thirty years has been that a first-class handicapper can expect to make as profit over a year about 20% of the total amount of money he has wagered, pro­vided that his betting has been flat, and provided that his play has been straight, not to place or to show.

I have found that this 20% profit can be radically in­creased by not betting at all on the winter tracks and by refraining from play until the major northern circuits, from Kentucky and Maryland up, have been operating for a month or so, and by ceasing to play even the major cir cuits about the first of October.

10. Self-Control - In the eighth chapter I had something to say about the amazing vacillations in play produced by the mental pressure generated by race tracks. The matter of self-control, now to be discussed, does not involve quite the same factors. A player may be cool and quite free from any such pressure and yet make so many foolish bets in the course of a season as to affect seriously the net profit he secures from logically worked-out wagers.'

11. Press + Turf - Something remains to be said about the literature available to a novice seeking sound direction on how to handicap fields for himself and how to bet his selections once he has secured them.

Some years ago I wanted to make a Christmas present to a friend who was a rather uninformed bettor, so I thought I would give him a good book on handicapping. Much to my surprise I found that no real books on handi­capping had been published.

THE END