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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (88938)	1/28/2001 1:17:06 PM
From: Freedom Fighter	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Mike, I know a few that make their living also. I think that route has huge downsides. You actually work harder and longer hours than most people do at their jobs and you make less money in most cases. I never read the "sheets" book, but I am very familiar with the way the sheet numbers are actually made and some of the techniques they use to predict future performance. I think they are very sharp. Here in NY, the sheet players are very influencial on the odds board. So to be quite frank, I occasionally try to exploit situations where I think they are wrong. I think that's a fundamental idea in my approach. No one has a monopoly on accurate and complete information or a method that gets at the whole picture. So I try to view horses' performances and ability from a lot of different directions. Sometimes that gives me an edge over more single minded handicappers. Here's an example: Many people are aware that a fast pace kills off the front runners and vice versa. But many competent pace oriented handicappers disagree on how best to measure whether a particular pace was fast, average, slow and to what degree. Some look at fractions and develop complex time tables and track variants. Others don't like clock type measurements so they use one or more approaches like this. Some look at the action of the jockeys and whether they are urging their horses hard out of the gate. Some look at the actual competitors in the race and whether there were a lot of speed types in the race or not. Some look at the class at which the speed horses have been completing. Still others look at how far the front runners separate themselves from the rest of the field during a duel etc... There is merit and weakness to all these approaches and limited combinations of them. You simply can not see or estimate fractional times (where a few 1/5s of a second is the difference between stakes horses and claimers) as well as a clock can measure it, but lots of folks refuse to admit that. At the same time, accurate time measurements are also very difficult because of varying wind conditions, the placement of the starting gate (the runnup length before the clock actually starts), and because of general track conditions. Lots of folks refuse to admit that. There are also intagibles like a horse's acceleration between calls or out of the gate that are important. Rather than dismiss any one of these (which virtually everyone else I know does), because of some intellectual preference or thickheadedness, I use all of them. In some cases they are mutually reinforcing and in others they contradict. That in itself is very valuable. I know when I am right and when I might not be. Most everyone else is betting based on what a narrower methodology is telling them is correct. But they are betting with the same confidence of right and wrong as I am - even when they are dead stone wrong and don't know it. The same is true of the "class, comparative handicapping, and final time speed" intellectual battles. They are all useful, they are all flawed, they all fit together, they all verify or contradict each other, and all the while they interrelate. Yet most handicappers pick one route as the way, light, and truth. I could go on and on. Of course this sounds like a lot of work, but really it isn't. I buy the pace figures from someone for about $1 per day. I taught him how to make them and he is very competent at it (probably better than I was). He also supplies me with trip notes and Beyer-like speed figures. All I need is the Racing Form and the charts. I did all the research on class, trip, track bias, and pace/speed years ago etc.. So I already know how most of it all fits together - including a few insights that I don't think many others share. I also limit my betting to certain types of races. That reduces the time demands. OK I'm out of breath..... Wayne