Your story is almost the same as mine!

I was studying what this guy told me and thought I was getting pretty good at it. (It was 1983 and I was not yet a winner player.)

So, one day I am at HOL. I came to play Star Gem in the 9th race. Frank Olivares is the jockey. Of course, I showed up for the 1st race - and bet all the way. I had planned on betting a my BIG bet - $20 on this horse.

It was a cheap claiming sprint - $12,500 claimer, as I recall.
I visit the horses as they're being saddled and as they walk out to the track Star Gem looks like he is dragging his right rear foot.

Seriously... I thought the horse looked like Igor limping around. I said to myself, "He'll have to be a vet scratch!"

I left my $20 in my pocket.
Sat down to watch.
Star Gem is 20/1. (Well, that proves it. Nobody likes the horse.)

Olivares pops the gate and is just gone down the backstretch. Nobody ever got close to him.

That was the last time I ever used physicality. LOL

This sounds like a lot of work. As such, if one is good at putting it together, I'd assume it could be quite lucrative.

Back in the '80s, I had a guy in SoCal teaching me body language. He seemed to be a winning player - but who really knew back then?

What I was really interested in was his "warm up system." Never knew how it worked but I was astounded at how often he'd peg a chalk as "didn't warm up well" and be right.

As for the body language... well, let me be kind to myself and say I WAS TERRIBLE at it!

We should have a phone call soon because I've made some interesting improvements in the OPP as I use it. BTW, it is the OPP with my mods that I credit with making me so difficult to beat.

Our dear friend, Dick Schmidt, deeded me a strategy he used very successfully with Forex. I melded that with the OPP to make it extremely powerful. If you have a positive expectancy, it actually raises your $Net! (As does both HMI & the Opp.)

Maybe I should call it OppEx. LOL

They have huge barns but mostly focus on the cream. — Gregory Byrnes

I recall someone who worked in [name redacted] barn talking like that about him when it came to 2-year olds. The actual quote was that [name redacted] had a "churn 'em & burn 'em" approach.

He went on to explain in more detail: Let's get the horse on the track and see if he/she is precocious. If the horse gets hurt - oh, well. Wasn't going to amount to anything we can use anyway.

Love to hear stories about "First time at the track."

Over the years I've always asked guys the same question after hearing their "First Successful Day Story:"
Do you find that your handicapping is biased towards your remembrance of what caused you to win on that day?"

In all the years of asking this question, only a handful have said that they didn't still expect the winners to come from similar handicapping. (i.e. early speed, top jockeys, long prices, whatever.)

How about you?

Makes sense.
Thank you.

Drag & drop of both graphics and PDFs SHOULD be working now.

I wouldn't know what to do with them.

How would you use them?

Thank you.
I, too, see the need for this community, but perhaps nobody else does.
You know, I tried this once before and couldn't get anyone to post. It could happen again.

It's nothing special that I do all I do is download past results charts from Equibase then using my own observations for tabbing what horses are what running styles along with 1c/2c beaten lengths plus my mini track bias notes I can complete this in under 1-2 hours tops for 4 days — Conley

1-2 hrs Per track?

I'll work on it.

This is excellent work.
Care to show a screenshot of how you do this work?
(Dang, I wonder if you can do that here.)

Everything we do is one track at a time.
I can do that one track at a time but cannot give you a sorted list without putting in maybe 4 hours of work.

I started to run a query on this question.
However, my software is designed to easily answer questions about THIS track as opposed to which track(s) are best at something.

Frankly, it is too much work to produce that answer.

30% is a little light.
The 1st call leader (as I recall) is like 52% in sprint races.
IOW, that would be NORMAL.

In light of Dave's series on early speed, what are the early speed favoring tracks and surfaces? thanks. — Jim Michalak

I know this may sound basic, but... How would you define a speed-favoring track?

Is it based upon total wire-to-wire wins or something else?

I've watched all 6 ES video's, and Dave's research and stats go right along what I have discovered in the past 2 years, using his HSH software. One of his video's showed a nice NET$ profit on ES 0-5 horses, who happened to be on the lead at the 1st call. I actually stumbled upon that exact situation, while studying longshots. It's such a powerful situation, that I've now incorporated it into my own handicapping. — Greg Hawley

That's coming when this series continues in episode 7.

BTW, I think the videos need to be LONGER.
What do you think?

No. It is the version I wrote about in Percentages & Probabilities.
There is a minor modification.
Has to do with lightly raced horses.

Thank you.

Two things Tony left out.
First, he is a professional player.
Second, he and I recorded a podcast a month or so ago. I think you guys will enjoy it.

One of the smartest things I ever did was to take the Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics program just after I got out of the Army. (Age 22)

It all started with a 3-hour mini-lesson at a local Holiday Inn. They promised that you would double your reading speed and improve your comprehension in just 3 hours!

It started with a benchmark test.
National average was like 250 words per minute and like 50% (or less) comprehension. As I recall, I tested at 325 and 60%.

Sure enough, 3 hours later, when they tested us again, I was right at 700 words and and slightly over 70%!

It was really quite impressive. So was the $500 price tag in 1973 dollars!

But I bought. The class was like 3 days per wee for 3 hours per day, for 6 weeks, with a guarantee that you could come back to the classes for life!

Improvement was simply about making the effort to concentrate on the techniques.

After about 6 months I reached my peak of 1,700 words-per-minute, with 85% retention, and for about a decade I read 700 books a year. (Yes, I know that is 2 books a day.)

Years later, I got lazy and lost most of those skills. Then, about 10 years ago, I decided electronic reading was the thing and retrained myself. (The techniques are different with eBooks because there is no physical page turning but that is more than compensated for by the ease of turning pages. Just can't use your fingers to do it.)

I'm now back to around 1,700 wpm, but my retention is like low 70s.

Also, technical materials are MUCH MORE INTENSE. I read about 600 wpm in tech materials.

BTW, Reading Dynamics is still around but the company is pretty much dead. Wouldn't recommend them.