Book review: "Horse Racing -- The golden age of the track" · 10 hours ago

This is a collection of photographs taken from the 1930s to the 1950s by noted society photographer Bert Morgan. In following the “jet set” to the track Morgan gradually became interested in racing itself, and in fact became an official track photographer in New York in 1940.

The images in Horse Racing — The golden age of the track are mostly from New York tracks, with some from Churchill Downs and Hialeah. It’s interesting seeing old Jamaica Racetrack packed to the rafters on opening day in 1943, a sea of humanity — or rather a sea of hats, the crowd being overwhelmingly male, and most men in those days wore hats in public. Aqueduct looks overwhelmingly ordinary, even dumpy — by contrast, Belmont Park seems to ooze class from every brick and blade of grass.

The people:

The horses:

Horse Racing — The golden age of the track was originally published in 2001. If you can find it at your favourite used book store — or at Left Coast Racing’s Amazon.com bookstore, hint, hint — it’s worth picking up.

What do you think?

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"The High Tech Trifecta" · 5 days ago

I just discovered this article, originally published in Wired in 2002. Computer teams operating in Hong Kong use banks of computers to analyze literally hundred of variables for each race. Exotic bets are the main target — thousands of dollars are bet on thousands of combinations, but potential payoffs in the multi-millions make it profitable.

Working from mathematical models that are calculated to deliver a 24 percent return on investments, Hong Kong’s most sophisticated computer-assisted bettors operate with long-term certainty of what their profits should be. “Racing is becoming more and more like a stock market model,” says [William T.] Ziemba, who specializes in statistical analysis and edited The Efficiency of Racetrack Betting Markets, a collection of scholarly papers on the mathematics of horse wagering that includes a chapter by Benter outlining the system used in Hong Kong. Horses should be thought of as Microsoft or Dell, Ziemba says, and their past performances are the equivalent of economic charts that provide fodder for the Street’s quantitative analysts.

This is consistent with my own idea that betting the horses is not so much gambling as it is investing. Ziemba is a former professor at the university where I work — it might be worth tracking down some of his books and articles.

The article also mentions how the computer team wagering model was beginning to make inroads into North America:

[A]s the horses bolted from the starting gate at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale Beach, Florida, one day in February [2001], the odds for the winning horse suddenly went from 10-1 to 8-1…. [I]n a three-second span, 167 exacta wagers were placed from an outfit in Fargo, North Dakota, called Racing Services — a discreet betting parlor that attracts sky-high wagers with low commissions and liberal rules. Further snooping uncovered a computer team operating in the United States using handicapping software similar to the systems used by Hong Kong teams…. [The team leader] had a special interface that allowed him to batch his bets — to place dozens of wagers per second — into the Racing Services system. This allowed the team to lay down a skein of complex exacta wagers after nearly all wagers were in, the odds were practically set, and it was relatively clear as to how much could be staked before upsetting the odds beyond a tolerable degree. The bets, automatically placed by the computer, ultimately paid out $246,020 on a total bet of $25,569….

I discovered the Wired article via this AskMetaFilter discussion, which includes some intriguing follow-ups. Sorry to sound naive, but have computer teams become more prevalent in North American racing since the article was originally published? What long-term effect do they have on odds and wagering patterns?

What do you think? [2]

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Wagering habits · 8 days ago

I’m one of those people at the racetrack who doesn’t like using the terminals to place bets — I prefer going to the cashiers. I’m not sure why — maybe I prefer the personal touch; or maybe I now use ATMs and the Internet almost exclusively for banking, and dealing with a live human makes a healthy change; or maybe I’m afraid I’ll screw up at the terminal by deleting my wager or betting the wrong horse or something…. Does anybody else have a preference one way or another?

Anyway — when my horse comes in I like to collect from the teller where I made the original bet. And I’ll go back to that teller for my next wager — and keep going back until I lose. Am I the only one who does that?

And another thing: tipping. Jay Cronley at ESPN occasionally mentions tipping the cashier. I’ve never done it — mind you, I’m still a $2 bettor, so any tips I could leave would be so negligible as to be potentially insulting. So, do you tip the cashier after collecting a big payoff?

What do you think? [3]

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Random thoughts.... · 16 days ago

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B.C. Thoroughbred Racing Awards · 17 days ago

The 2008 Thoroughbred Industry Awards Gala was this past weekend. The following awards were handed out:

Mmm, love that Koffee....

This is the first year for the claimers’ awards — nice to see the blue collar horses get a bit of love from the sport….

No award for champion stayer — of course, considering what counts as a “marathon” at Hastings, the minimum distance standard that I advocate probably would have to be lowered from 1 1/2 miles to 1 3/8 miles for such an award to have any meaning — that being said, if there was a stayers’ award, her two wins in the local Marathon Series and her BC Cup Endurance victory would likely have earned Against the Sky another well-deserved title….

What do you think? [2]

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