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HANDICAPPING INSIGHTS DECEMBER 9, 2006 by Dick Powell Know when to say when. And I don't mean when to stop sipping your favorite brewski. An eternal question facing all handicappers is when to pull the trigger. With full-card, multi-track simulcasting, there's no shortage of races to bet on. But you can't bet them all and expect to come out ahead. With all the races on the menu and realizing that you can't bet them all, there's nothing worse than passing on a race and having the horse you like win. Or is there? One thing I have learned from playing in handicapping tournaments is picking my spots. Most tournaments give you 10 or 12 bullets to fire each day and you have to use them judiciously. You don't want to run out of bullets too early and miss out on opportunities late in the day. But you also don't want to run out of opportunities by saving your bullets to the end and have nothing at which to fire. What I try to do is consistently make sound decisions on when to play and when not to play. I can't control bad trips but I can control my decision-making process. If I decide to pass a race and the horse I liked wins, I try to be more concerned with why I didn't play the race. If it was, in retrospect, for the right reason, I can't get too down. Sound decision-making over long periods of time will yield positive dividends. If the decision-making process that led me to pass a race works, it stands to reason that the decision-making process to play a race should work as well. Thus, if I am having a day where I let some solid winners pass by, I still try to maintain a positive outlook that it will turn around. The worst times are when I get in a streak where my decision-making process is way off and I wind up zigging when they are zagging, and zagging when they are zigging. If I feel strongly that a horse is the most likely winner and the price is way below what it should be, I have a legitimate reason to take a pass. Ask me who I like and I'll tell you that I am going to El Paso. Betting undervalued horses is one of the many paths to pari-mutuel ruin. It's just as bad to change your mind and go with a different horse in the same situation because of the price. Stay with who your handicapping skills came up with and then either pass or play. It's not like the old days when you came to the last race on a live card and you either played or waited for tomorrow. Handicapping tournaments force you to hone your decision-making skills which then carry over to the daily ritual of playing horses. By limiting the amount of bullets you have in your arsenal, you are forced to make numerous pass/play decisions instead of digging too far into your bankroll or visiting the ATM. All you have to do is listen to the horror stories after a tournament. Most of them are about passing on horses that wound up winning. Very few of them are about having a bad day by playing slow horses. Yes, it's frustrating when a horse you pass on wins and you miss an opportunity to move up in the standings. However, it's great practice in developing your pass/play decision-making skills. Another major factor is fatigue, be it mental or physical. A three-day handicapping tournament can fry you brain by making about 100 pass/play decisions. Vince Lombardi once said that fatigue makes cowards of us all. Dick Powell says that fatigue makes morons of us all. How do I avoid fatigue in three-day handicapping tournaments? Try to get in shape for them. If you are in Las Vegas and are out all night, good luck the next day when you are trying to make crucial pass/play decisions. I'm not saying stay in your room and handicap all night, but try to maintain your regular routine, which I hope includes a lot of sleep. Get to the gym, do some cardio and you'll at least be ready and alert for a long day. I am at the University of Arizona's Symposium on Racing and while handicapping and wagering isn't on the agenda, I have been able to gather a lot of information on synthetic racing surfaces. As we have observed from the start, and have now been told by the representatives of Tapeta, Polytrack and Cushion Track, moisture makes them faster even though they will always be listed as "fast." As far as the track superintendent's role in maintaining them during the races, they all recommend that they be pretty much be left alone. None of them recommend that they be watered during the races since they do not want a heavy water truck driving over the surface and compacting it. The tractors that are used to maintain it are very small compared to the giant tricycle ones you see at New York Racing Association (NYRA) tracks. There is no floating of the track, just a light apparatus that smooths the first inch or two and then dresses it up with a shallow harrow in the back. They have had some problems so far, but none so bad that they could not be fixed. Tapeta has been in use for more than eight years at Michael Dickinson's Tapeta Farm and has been used around the world as mostly a training surface up to now. It will be installed for the Golden Gate meet that begins next May and it will be interesting to see how that surface plays in terms of winning times and running styles once it has been raced over for a few months.
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