How I started to love the Races

[djr2000]

Since it is a slow horse and work day, I thought I would bring up what could be an interesting topic to kick around.  How did we get into betting the horses.  I was introduced to racing in the early 1970\'s by a friend in high school and went to college in Long Island close to Belmont Park.  I used to be a terrible handicapper, just guessing on favorites, or listening to punters, and finally read the Form.  Took me a while to figure out the numbers, but when Beyer and the speed figures came out with some success, I was hooked.  Won a 500 dollar exacta with the back figures. It also didn\'t hurt that the 70\"s may have been the best time for racing in the last fifty years with three triple crown winners and Forego as a handicap horse. I also used a device which is no longer around called the Kelco Class Calculator which was a small computer which helped you to determine class vs purse.  I had some good luck with it in combination with figures.  Did some nice class analysis and came up with longshots also. It took a long time to use for a nine race card though.   Below is the link to some of the early devices used for handicapping.

http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~hl/g.btech.html

[miff]

Great stuff and some still around in updated format.By sheer random, they all get a winner from time to time.

Data has come a long way, from the Morning Telegraph speed/variant numbers to computer generated stuff.Basic handicapping principles still stand up well to all data/theories.

Mike

[Boscar Obarra]

lol, yeah I still have my beat up Kelco calculator. All it really did was calculate the  AVERAGE purse value the horse had run in the money for.

 A second and a third in a $10,000 race got the same rating as two wins. Nutty, but yes, because of the purse structures in those days, and some of the elimination rules, it did pick its share of decent priced winners.

 With purse values all over the place due to state bred races, and slots, I doubt the method is all that useful today. (haven\'t checked in about 35 years, so don\'t hold me to it)

[alm]

My Uncle Louie took me to Aqueduct for the first time when I was 16.  I was hooked immediately...kept going on my own every Saturday...until the Pinkertons caught me and were ready to throw me out because I was too young to be there on my own...I pleaded with the head of the detail, explaining that I was a far better patron than the degenerates who frequented the place...I guess I was so earnest they kind of adopted me and kept an eye on me...after telling me to stay on the third floor of the grandstand and never to utter a sound.

I saw the great ones...Kelso was a natural favorite...I spent years trying to beat him and won my share of upsets: Gun Bow, Beau Purple and the relatively unknown Iron Peg...maybe the fastest horse I ever saw up to a mile, before Dr. Fager.  Won the Suburban in 1964.

Uncle Louie taught me how to read workout patterns and I was a daily double freak...never betting more than $2, but winning payouts of $250, $180, $170 and so on.  Eventually became a progressive bettor who thrived on betting the Clocker Lawton and Powell tip sheets that way.  It seemed easy and I eventually spent an entire summer during college without having a losing day.

Used all the \'intelligence\' available from Tom Ainslie to the Kelco Calculator, but nothing took the place of understanding the connections and their placement of horses.  Or reading the tote and spotting what I believed to be anomalies in the action.

The most important lesson I learned early on was how to lose.  I learned that I would never have a winning streak if I couldn\'t take the pressure of a losing streak.  I became a very patient bettor.  It paid off.

Shuvee became my key hero, or heroine.  I fell in love with her when she followed Kelso\'s 5 Gold Cups with 2 of her own...running away from colts with ease.  Years later I bought a broken down granddaughter of hers off the track and began the second phase of my racetrack life as a breeder owner, but that\'s another story.

[miff]

Al,

Lawton\'s \"Most Preferred\" was my big $20.00 win bet every Saturday, no form or anything,just the Lawton Sheet. Amazing how he never aged, picture the same for 50 years.

Of Gun Bow,my greatest early thrill when one of the descendants of the speed boys told me he would wire Kelso that day, he did at like 13-1.


Mike

[Lost Cause]

A dingy OTB on Sutphin Blvd next to the Queens courthouse where half the guys in the joint probably belonged..I started at around 9 years old.  Dad would bring me in and tell me to stand in the corner (no seats in there).  My whole family was in the place so I was taken care of when I walked in.  Pizza for lunch from an uncle.  A soda from a cousin.  An occasional dollar from one of the family members if they won.  Forget Disneyworld this was my Magic Kingdom.  2 blocks from the house so I would walk over and go in without my Dad.  The Manager would tell me nothing because he used to drink with my cousins when the place closed.  The smoke in the place made my eyes tear when I walked in but that wouldn\'t stop me because I had a job in there.  I would have to write out the little rectangular bet slips for the guys who could not read or write because the tellers took no verbal bets. I got a dollar or two thrown at me if they won. There was no video and no audio just a screen that said PC (pools closed) when you could not make bets anymore at which point everyone in the place stopped talking and stared at the screen until they flashed the letters up on the screen..

A
C
E

...or something like that at which point everyone screams how they got it, almost had it or got shut out..

Then Dad started taking me to the racetrack with him and it was really over at that point

[joekay]

This is 34 yrs. ago, went to the Med (it was in the next town) just to watch the races.  Liked the color and excitement, taught my self to read the DRF and then started making dime bets as I learned.  After getting pretty good with fake bets, I tried it with real money.  My first night I hit 7 straight winners.  HOOKED!

[richiebee]

My father a compulsive gambler, big on sports betting and card games.

My mom\'s father, Grandpa Spike, an old fashioned bookie, half the year in
Brooklyn, half the year in Miami Beach.

Bred top and bottom, I didn\'t stand much chance of avoiding the inevitable.

Tough game. For every glorious day at the Spa, there\'s five miserable days in the
dead of winter in Ozone Park, pitch black in the parking lot at 4:40 in the
afternoon, the speckled sea birds fighting over the last part of your half
cooked/half frozen pretzel.

In days of old, closing day at Saratoga was always Sunday; Belmont would reopen
the next Wednesday. The advance edition of the DRF would hit the sidewalk on
Kings Highway at E 16th Street in Brooklyn on Tuesday morning at about 1:30 AM. I
would stand with a look which was probably borderline homicidal waiting for the
plastic around the bundle to be cut.

Its a Sunday at Belmont Park, and there\'s been a heavy rain shower in the middle
of the card; the sandy oval has been turned to oatmeal. After a particularly
close photo, a photo which took the stewards and placing judges a lifetime to
decipher,ends up in a tough beat, you watch the super slow motion replay of the
finish, time and time again, the mud flying up in parabolic arcs, the jocks\'
helmets buried in the horses\' manes, the horses\' ears flattened to near
invisibility, a poorly tied tail partially undone. You lose each time you watch,
transfixed, but as John Hawkes wrote in \"The Lime Twig\" \"Love is a long close
scrutiny like that\".

You are able to tear yourself away from the screen, and you notice that a large
rainbow has appeared, spanning from North Shore Towers to Creedmoor. Considering
my bloodline, I am happy to have ended up somewhere in between.

[BB]

A lifetime top? At your age? Bravo!

[Edgorman]

In the early 70\'s there was not a more exciting place to go than the Cloud Casino at Roosevelt Raceway.  With a cast of \"characters\" to match.  It was a quick and natural progression from there to Thoroughbred racing, trading Jack Lee\'s calls for those of Dave Johnson.

[alm]

Here\'s a good story for you, Mike.

In 1990 I returned to NYC after living away for 15 years; I go out to Belmont on a Saturday and buy Lawton, for old time sake.  I have a good day, am up about a thousand going into the last race.

Lawton gives its \'Preferred\' selection in the 9th and the comment is, more or less, \'we own a piece of this horse.\'  I sat in the clubhouse grandstand for about 10 minutes thinking about and debating this and finally conclude that this is an honest offer.  Why else would Lawton put it out there?

So I bet everything I am up to win on the horse; it wins by 2 or 3 and I leave thinking the 9-5 I got was the all-time racetrack gift.  Very memorable.

[TGJB]

For crying out loud, Richie. You don\'t need a newspaper. Start a blog. I would read it every day.

By the way, the absence of \"oatmeal\" when it gets wet now is evidence of the change in soil composition. More sand, less clay.

[JR]

Wajima. 75 Marlboro Cup. $11.40. Beat the mighty gelding Forego.

[Bustin Stones*]

\'91 Travers. As a 12 year old kid I made a $2 dollar box Corporate Report/Hansel with money I made from parking cars with my grandfather a block from the Wright street gate. Think I picked up $60 or so. I was hooked. I vividly remember my grandfather (who busted his tail for every penny he made) telling me that \"Son, You\'ll never beat the horses at there own game.\" It wasn\'t until the \'08 Derby I proved him wrong and cashed for a nice chunk of change. In my early 30\'s if I quit today I\'d most def be way ahead of the game... Love ya and miss ya Pop\'s, but I also remember you telling me \"Nobody likes a Quitter.\"

[HP]

Richiebee - I still mourn Armando\'s Pizza there under the train station.  Sounds like you may go back that far.  I think the guy burned it down twice?  Those were the good old days.  HP