Well...

[HP]

JB - You have to hate yourself at least a little to bet on horses, and being stubborn helps.  Hopefully you will keep it going.  Thanks for the responses.  Good stuff in there.  HP

[Flighted Iron]

What are your feelings regarding 2 year olds with maybe 5-6 races who\'ve run fairly well and then are gelded?

Thanks,
flighted

[TGJB]

Don\'t really have any feeling about gelding, my guess is it\'s case specific.

[TGJB]

Tread-- about 85-90% of my action is exotics. This year about 80% of the profit came on Pick 6\'s, but that\'s an abberation-- as I said, historically it was not a good (in fact my worst) category. The key thing with exotics is to know when and how to use them-- somewhere on this site is a list of my situational betting guidelines. I say this again, in all seriousness-- almost everyone could benefit from doing one simple exercise while handicapping: ask yourself \"what do I like about this race\". The answer almost always defines how you should be playing the race (if at all).

[sighthound]

Horses are gelded at that time for usually two main reasons:  they are intractable with their raging hormones, or the testicles are physically becoming battered and painful during the running of races, causing the horse to run poorly.

So consider the horse in your example to be now pain free, or able to concentrate on his job.

Edit:  one other thing:  sometimes it\'s apparent by this point that their genes are going to be no great contribution to the TB lineage, and they will be gelded to keep them from forming the larger muscle mass of a stallion (and that larger mass is harder on thin-framed horses, thin legs, legs with a penchant for trouble etc).  Some like them to have those hormones while they are forming bone and muscle as 2-3 year olds, then get rid of it if there is no hope to be a stallion or they want to help keep them sound.

Generally if you always look at this gelding as a positive thing, you\'ll do okay.

[Flighted Iron]

Sight,

 Thank you.

Fwiw:Senor Rain, who was 45-1, got back to the Peter Miller barn bouncing like he had just won the race, leading the trainer to a different conclusion.

"He's going to be a gelding," Miller said. "We're looking for race horses, and he doesn't have his mind on business. So we'll change his mind – call it a form of brain surgery

from the drf 11/30/2011

[sighthound]

Black book that one\'s next race out end of January ....

[Flighted Iron]

what is the typical timeframe for recovery mentally and physically?

[miff]

\"Generally if you always look at this gelding as a positive thing, you\'ll do okay\".


Hi Beth,

Doubt the horse agrees:)

I\'st time gelding automatic play for some.Stats for 1 year(early 2000\'s) at NYRA tracks somewhat inconclusive with 2 winners from 19 reported first time geldings.
Anyone with more comprehensive data?

Mike

[sighthound]

\"Mentally\", they don\'t know what happened, nor do they seem to care about suddenly waking up post-anesthesia and saying, \"Oh. Had a bit of a blackout there! \".

Post-op:  forced walking for 7-10 days to reduce swelling, then by 21 days they are usually good to go.  So they are off training - walking only - for 3-4 weeks.  Three weeks is about the time you start losing noticable and significant muscle mass with enforced layoff, so they have to get that back, which takes about another 3 weeks.

It takes about 60 days for the hormonal influence to go away entirely (if a colt is really studdish)

And in a move ensured to make everyone groan, here\'s a detailed video of the procedure.  You can castrate a horse \"standing\" or lay him down under anesthesia.

http://www.vet.uga.edu/lam/teaching/mueller/castration/anesadmin.html

[sighthound]

I\'st time gelding automatic play for some.Stats for 1 year(early 2000\'s) at NYRA tracks somewhat inconclusive with 2 winners from 19 reported first time geldings.
Anyone with more comprehensive data?

Mike

Would Formulator pull that up?  Stats for first off gelding, and second off gelding?

I think it\'s the disruption in training - thus fitness - that\'s most significant, so that depends upon when the trainer gets the horse back in it\'s first race post-procedure.  

And gelding doesn\'t make them any faster (unless they were painful running, as some are)

*** And sorry, TGJB, for hijacking your thread - congrats again on a stellar year.

[Dana666]

Perhaps there is a book coming out??? I for one would be very interested to read it! Writing is my life, so I could probably help with that side of the equation (not saying you need/want any help).

Congrats though!

Sometimes these things can\'t be explained all that well, especially if you\'re not doing anything radically different than in past years.

The master of probability, my man Taleb, would interject a huge slice of chance and randomness above and beyond any and all expertise and ability into the situation; I realize we always like to take personal credit (that\'s just human nature), but the luck/randomness factor cannot be discounted. If we do discount chance, we usually have mighty crashes that follow the boom periods!  

I myself also think that confidence (and there\'s a fine line between confidence and ego--confidence is quiet and comes from inside while ego needs to let everyone else know how great we are) makes a huge difference and winning breeds more winning as does losing. So much is about mindset and trusting in your own time-tested and proven ways (and information!) even when they don\'t work in the short term. The great thing (if there is a great thing) about gambling on horses is you can have these intense winning periods that make up for long losing periods, especially if you\'re playing pick sixes and the like. That\'s kind of fun, like we get to speed up time or something!

In the end perhaps it is best to just enjoy it, and if you can take time off, why not do it? Fly first class (or in a private jet) to some beautiful island somewhere--get away from the stress. One habit extremely successful people have is after winning or positive periods in their life--they CHANGE something. Most people would say, I want to keep doing exactly what I\'m doing (DON\'T CHANGE ANYTHING), but the super-successful people take the opposite route. They evolve! They go off in new directions and keep challenging themselves in different ways--that\'s rare in most humans, very counter-intutive.

I\'d say you might want to give something away, but you already give a lot away as you have for many many years. I think few people on the data end of things are as generous as you, so maybe there\'s even a little good karma coming back at you! That wouldn\'t surprise me one bit.

[miff]

\"The master of probability, my man Taleb, would interject a huge slice of chance and randomness above and beyond any and all expertise and ability into the situation\"


Dana,

Well put. After many moons of research, study and review,it\'s fairly clear that many horse players win or lose depending on which side they fall of the unpredictable \"X\" factor, takeout aside. If you are on the wrong side of the X factor more often than not, you will probably lose in spite of the best data, planning, betting discipline, good handicapping knowledge/analytical skills.

If you think of all the serious horse players you know and add up all of their legit \"bad beats\" you\'d have many millions.The number of times you will get beat with the best horse will far exceed the number of times you win with a horse that was not the best, an X factor example, there are others.Incidentally 99.99% of the time,it does not equal out.
 
Have played the same way for many years, there are periods when I am delusional enough to think I\'ve got it mastered only to be completely humbled shortly thereafter.

Toughest game in the world, by far.


Mike

[Dana666]

I agree completely, and I think it takes an honest and wise person to admit that there are many factors that go into winning and losing equations -- we can take credit for is showing up and doing our homework -- after that there\'s a whole lot of randomness going on! I agree it is a tough game, strictly for masochists! If you just want to make money go into something \"simple\" like financial engineering! One of my former students is doing that, and I thought to myself, now there\'s a smart kid--21 years of age and he knows where the big money is buried! God bless him. At his age I was hanging out in an OTB in Staten Island!

[TGJB]

Miff-- there is no question that in the short term-- or even relatively short term-- the results of photos etc. outweigh everything else, as I have said here before. The results in this game are leveraged like in no other, and the difference between going 7-3 and 3-7 in photos with 5-1 returns over 50 races is so big that no handicapping can overcome it. But over the long haul, if that stuff doesn\'t exactly even out, it comes close. Not true for the small bettor, where one photo in a pick 6 race going one way or the other can be life altering, at least in terms of lifetime bottom line-- but true for a pro playing multiple tracks 150-200 days a year.

That is why I included the previous two (losing) years in my original post. The proper way to look at this is to take the three years as one big representative sample. Last year, I took two different tough beats for about 50-100k each within a week of each other, and definitely was a big net loser on photos-- in fact I would say that was true through June of this year. Since then, I definitely have gotten the breaks. So the key thing if you\'re good enough to win is to overcome sample size-- to get enough at bats. A great hitter is more likely than not going to make an out in one at bat, and over ten anything can happen. They even have off years. But give them enough at bats...

A couple of the breaks I got this year had nothing to do with photos-- two involved gate scratches. In one, in the second leg of a pick 5 at Hol I was using two horses against a 3/5 shot. They were about 5/2 and 6-1. The 3/5 shot got scratched, throwing all those who had bet him on to the 5/2 shot, who now was 3/5, and 1/5 in the pick 5 because of the money from both horses. The other one (who I liked more and had twice as many tickets with) won. He was 5/2 on the board, but 6-1 in the pick 5, and I had only one horse to beat, not two. Pure good luck.

The other came about a month ago, also at Hollywood. I made a pretty tight pick 6 play pressing two short priced Baffert horses in the sequence-- without either winning I could have it once, with one I could have it twice, with both 6 times but it wouldn\'t pay much. They both won (one winning a photo over a horse I didn\'t use), and I was live to 6 horses, 6 times each. One was gate scratched, so I now was live to the post time favorite 12 times. The two 5/2 shots ended up in a photo, I had no idea who to root for-- as it turned out the one who won had 2k more bet on him, he was the favorite. The pick 6 was only 5k but the way it worked out it was a score.

I also was lucky in my biggest score of the year (and life). In the scond leg of the pick 6, maiden claimers, there was a 6/5 shot in a huge field. He was a universal single for those who could not spread, but to me there were a lot of questions, I had strong opinions in 3 other legs, so I went 7 deep. The 6/5 shot ran second to a $50 horse I didn\'t particularly like but used for coverage, a second out lifetime who ran lousy first out but looked like he might wake up (relatives, trainer profile, Harrington, I use a lot of price horses second out). That race knocked out 99% of the tickets. If he had improved about 8 points instead of 10 the favorite would have won.

The previous two years the breaks went against me. This year they went for me. You have to get enough at bats. That means staying in action if you\'re good enough to win, and not beating yourself.