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HANDICAPPING FEATURE NOVEMBER 14, 2007 Your Personal Year-End Review by Steve Zacks All players have good years and even some lean ones. Even long-time successful and winning players go through losing streaks or losing periods. One of the things that make them winning players in the long run is their willingness to stand back and examine just what has transpired. They do not tell false tales to themselves; they go looking for the whole truth! For only when they are completely honest, do they discover the true reasons for their success or failure. From this starting point they can and do the make the necessary adjustments to their game plan. Here are a few thoughts which might help each of us self-evaluate with a view to making better New Year's resolutions for 2008. Shakespeare, the writer whoever he may have been, and not the recently retired horse, may have said it best when suggesting that "the fault lies not in our stars but in ourselves." Hopefully, you keep some kind of records. That is the best, if not only, way to track precisely what has been going on and the best way to learn whether changes in your own performance are due to either intentional or inadvertent alterations of your game plan. Another influence is a change in the external circumstances: a period of extreme weather or these days, the switch from real dirt to artificial surfaces! Either way, the simple recognition of the root cause of the problem is very often the first step in the turnaround. Now that the Breeders' Cup and classy boutique-type meets of Oaktree, Keeneland and the Belmont Fall Championship are history, a fall letdown is normal for many players. A break in routine may prove beneficial; so too might a look back with an eye to the future. Whether you have had a great year, or a poor one, this process of self-examination with an open mind can always lead to improvement next year. Some honest answers to several questions will tell you if any applies to your game. As a long-time player, I am very aware of the fact that there have been fundamental changes in the racing game over the decades. The whole "recency" factor is different now than it used to be! While a fastback (a quick return to the races, be it five days as the BRIS stats utilize or 10 days) is still a positive move, it is far less common nowadays than it was 30 years ago. When Frederick Davis and Bill Quirin first introduced a wide array of statistics to the racing game three decades ago, the majority of races were won by horses returning to the races in about 14 racing days. That was a key number in most successful players' book. In those days, there was far less year-round racing and the 10 to 15 starts that the average runner made usually came in a compacted period of time, usually between April and November. Layoff winners were not as prevalent as they are today. (A layoff used to be 31 days and not the 45 days many use currently.) According to my own personal database for major-circuit racing, the majority of winners are absent from the races about four weeks or longer. If one was not aware of these changes, one might not understand why his performance had deteriorated. Over the years I have found that the answers to the following three questions go a long way to finding out just what has been going on and pointing me in the right direction in search of solutions. You have to have to be able to honestly answer the questions in an informed manner for the process to be truly meaningful. QUESTION #1: Did you make any fundamental changes to your own play, either by design or accidentally? QUESTION #2: Is there any fundamental change in the game which is causing your results to change? QUESTION #3: Are your horse running as well as anticipated but you are not profiting? Does your betting profile fit with your handicapping skills? #1: Very often a player starts off the year with a game plan. Unless this is purely a pastime, racing should be viewed as a business and this is good business planning. Very often one then makes some adjustments to the plan; sometimes these are planned and based on information. However in some instances, they just creep in without a total sense of awareness. Here are two subsets from one example of how and why these changes might occur. The focus of play is the five-day, five-furlong work. A player has learned from his research and records that a horse with a five-furlong work within five days is both not that common and wins its share of races at decent prices. This angle may be used by some, but is not easily quantifiable and is unlikely to appear in racing publications; so if he can make it work it is likely to stay profitable for some time. The player follows two major racing circuits in depth. He has a list of some 20 or 30 trainers that use this work on an occasional or regular basis. Over the course of several weeks at the start of one of his key meetings, he notices that one of his favorite trainers for this pattern has been winning races with five-furlong works, but six days out instead of the usual five. He has also noted that this has nothing to do with the fact that these are young horses or fillies. However, additional research reveals that there have been a lot of carryover races and that the intent of the rule still applies: the trainer worked the horse five days in advance of the scheduled race, but the race was run one day later. So without being fully aware of it, he starts to allow more five-furlong works six days out into the mix without ensuring that there was a carryover every time. He is still winning a little but not quite as much. There are a few trainers that he would like to have on his list, but while they often work horses close to a race, they either do not use the five-furlong work at any time, or as in the case of some, they use it as the penultimate work and finish off with a three- or four-furlong work closer to the race. So he makes a few exceptions to his play for certain specific trainers based on additional research. Here too, he starts to bet occasional horses sent out by trainers not on the special four-furlong list. He is still winning overall, but there are more losing bets creeping in and the bottom line is slipping a little. The point here is that he may have tried to mess or finesse with success and in the process, by making one exception you start to allow more in. At least if you become aware of what you have done, you can go back to the basic rule or ensure that the qualification process is tightened up! #2: If things have changed from one year to the next or started heading south at a particular time of year, there might be external reasons for this change. If you have done the evaluation in question one and have not found the answer in your own work, then perhaps the change originates in external causes. When I first started going to the races, periods of extreme weather, then usually the long dry spells of summer or prolonged rainy periods in the autumn, could have significant impact on the track surface thus affecting one's normal performance if you did not adjust. Nowadays, the switch to the variety of artificial surfaces, many of which play very differently from one another, has severely affected the play and the success rates of many. Suppose you are an expert at evaluating early speed and pace plays. Keeneland, particularly at the spring meeting, could once have been your key meeting for the year. Now that has, for the most part, gone by the wayside. There could have been positive effects too; if your focus is normally on sustained running styles, you might have had a career year in 2007 due to the switch to artificial racing surfaces. External factors can work both ways too! Another question to ask: does what you are doing still have the same impact as when you started using it? The change in recency outlined above is indicative of this type of change. While the game itself may not have changed, the returns from certain angles may have been altered by the widespread distribution of certain information. The easy access to speed and pace figures and trainer stats severely lessened the returns for many of these factors turning once profitable angles negative. If you did not adjust, you might be hitting at the same win rate, but the dollar returns may have been sharply reduced. #3: It is just possible that the game you play from a handicapping perspective may not match up with your preferred wagering style or profile. There is more to winning than picking winners. You must know how to take advantage of them. This involves both developing and matching your handicapping and wagering skills to your bankroll. Playing trifectas and superfectas on a small bankroll is a lot different from playing on a large one; you need to have the mental capacity to cope with long losing streaks to carry out the former. This is one of the problems that I constantly encounter in my personal play. My game is tailored to finding overlaid longer-priced winners. I get my share and do okay, though I am not yet ready to retire to a Polynesian Island. I often have long losing streaks and more frustratingly many streaks where there are few winners and numerous seconds and thirds paying generous prices behind. This is the nature of the game I play and most of the time I deal with it just fine, though I experienced a very frustrating two hours last week when four out of five $10 win selections placed with returns of $50 and $30, $25 and $12, $20 and $10, and $24 and $11. And of course the fifth one failed to win, leaving me with a $50 loss. Playing the game I do, I know that there are just too many horses that do not show up; my game is not as profitable playing across the board as it is to win -- though the frustration level can be higher. If I possessed greater skills in putting together vertical plays perhaps I could do better. But I know that as a longshot seeker, I tend to pass over too many logical horses to be successful and with a limited bankroll and being anti-ALL button, I have to live with the consequences. At least I am aware of what I am doing, and at least I have done the necessary work to know that betting to place or show is not the answer -- in the long run anyway! I can only hope that some of these ideas will help you to make yourself more aware of your game and hopefully lead to improvement in the future. Now it is time for that island in the Pacific. Best wishes for a great holiday season and may the goddess of racing shine on you in the months to come. Good Luck!
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