“So, You Like To Bet The Horses, Do You?”

PROLOGUE

I have attempted to make this story as entertaining as possible but there is an important message behind the humor. As a devotee of the “sport” of horse racing for over four decades, and as someone who has tried every conceivable method to win known to man – and a few no one ever heard of – I have become convinced there is NO way to bet the races over the long haul and win. It’s absolutely true what they say – you can’t beat the horses.

With a fairly extensive computer background to go with my years of racing experience, I have tried everything I could think of to develop a winning system. Everything from pooling resources with a brilliant young man with a degree in mathematics from MIT and a Masters in Computer Sciences from NOVA University (whom you will meet later) – to viewing thousands of races on tape, was tried, all to no avail..

Over the years, I have still been unable to discover a single system that will pick race winners with any consistency.

I can’t tell you how many races I have watched with a clipboard in my hand, watching a race, taking notes, but let’s start with three thousand. I have also spent hundreds of hours fast-forwarding though tapes of races, looking for the answer, studying the pre-race data, making selections, then checking out the results, making adjustments to my computations and starting over again. I think the problem may be that horses don’t read newspapers so they don’t know when they’re supposed to win and when they’re not, they just run according to how they feel. If they feel good, they do well. If they feel bad, they do poorly. Just like people.

A long time ago, I was privy to a organization which claimed to be able to pick Trifectas. They had a number of computers and they worked on probable odds. In other words, they used the Morning Line odds and then their projected track odds and used the variances to select their bets. They would bet hundreds of different Trifecta combinations for various amounts of money. They claimed to be winning money in their second year but I was never able to substantiate their claim. Once I accompanied one of their “runners” to Aqueduct Race Track and watched him stand at a window for a full five minutes reading from a journal tape – “2-3-5 for $2 five times, 1-4-2 for $2 three times” etc. He made a couple of hundred bets like that spending many hundreds of dollars. And he won that race, that much I know but I don’t remember what it paid. Anyway, I don’t know what happened to them but their offices have since gone. Maybe they relocated or maybe their system went broke. The latter would be my guess.

See that’s the problem. Whenever I hear of someone who’s got a system that wins, I check it out and it turns out to be an exaggeration. It wins some of the time. It loses most of the time.
Speaking for myself, all I ever tried to do was develop a system that would produce a profit, no matter how small. But I couldn’t do it. Later, I will discuss the various things I tried with spectacularly unsuccessful results.

Actually, none of my systems looked like fun anyway. They were all pretty hard work. You had to go to the track every day and make mathematical decisions on every race – keep a lot of notes – then end up betting ‘figure’ horses which wouldn’t pay anything if they did win. The thrill just wasn’t there.

Over the long haul, nothing worked. (Sometimes I would go a hundred races looking pretty good and I’d get my hopes up, but then the whole thing would collapse and I’d be back where I started.)
I know that some people think a very disciplined betting system – where you handicap race after race without making any bets until you find what you think is a race worth betting - might produce winners even though it would be exceptionally hard work and not very enjoyable; but you can’t prove it by me. From where I sit, the odds are so much against you, I seriously doubt there is ANY way to bet the races regularly and win, no matter the system.
Later I will discuss the mathematical odds against you every time you make a bet. They are staggering. Most race enthusiasts never give this any real thought, but I’ll cover it with you. Hopefully, when you get done with this book, you will understand – perhaps for the first time in your life – why you always seem to lose. Why your horse always seems to get caught at the wire, or just misses catching a horse at the wire, or falls down when he has a lead, or gets stuck in the starting gate, or is hit by lightening, whatever.
The reason is the odds are stacked against you big time, so something is bound to happen.

I am certain there are books out there written by people who claim – but can’t prove – that they have a fool-proof system for beating the races (other then not betting, which is the best), but I don’t believe them. I think selling those books is their system for beating the races rather than betting.

Anyway, in this book the message is bet for fun NOT to win money. Consider your day at the track pure entertainment and enjoy it. Lose whatever you think that day’s entertainment is worth – but no more. If you do that, you will truly “beat the races”.
It’s the only way you will.

Here’s an interesting statistic for you: In a ten-horse field, there are ninety different exacta combinations, any one of which can win. How about that? If you box two horse in an exacta box, you have exactly TWO of those NINETY combinations working for you while the other EIGHTY-EIGHT are working against you. (That’s 44-1 odds. But don’t get the idea you are going to win once every forty-four races because that doesn’t work either. The odds are 44-1 against you for every race and those are tough odds to beat. You could – and very likely will – lose every single one of those forty-four races.)

So what does this mean? Well, it means you can’t win. Betting your two-horse box ($4.00) for ninety races will cost you $360.00. Mathematically, you should win twice (although you probably won’t) but you need two $180.00 exactas or one $360.00 exacta just to break even.

The truth is, you may not win any of those ninety races. And even if you do, the average payoff for an exacta is just $44.60 and that will never get you even. In fact, you could win three - maybe four – exactas and still not break even unless you bet longshots and if you do that, you will win even fewer races. It’s depressing.

CHAPTER 1

I remember the first day I went to the races. I went to what was then one of America’s finest racing showplaces: Atlantic City racetrack in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The date was June 10th. The year was 1947. I was just eighteen years old. I have been going to the races ever since and in all those years, one thing has never changed. I love the races.No, that’s wrong. There are two things that have never changed and that’s the first. The second is I still haven’t found a consistent way to win. But there is one thing that HAS changed with time. Where I used to think I could win, I now know I can’t.

As I said in the Prologue to this book, racing is a form of entertainment. You pay for that entertainment the way you pay for any other entertainment. And if on some rare occasion, you happen to win, take that as your lucky day. It doesn’t – and won’t – happen very often. That’s true no matter where you bet, how much you bet, how you bet or how much you know about handicapping. Why? Well as they say, horses don’t read papers. They don’t know the odds.
They win probably because they don’t know they can’t win.
But there’s one thing I always did like about the track. It’s a social place. Where other forms of gambling are more one-on-one solitary endeavors, somewhat anti-social, racing is fun. You go with friends or family. Or you meet people you know at the track and swap stories of how you almost won, they almost won, whatever. You hear it all the time. "See – I was leadin’ in the stretch – I think I got it won, you know? And then this freakin’ seven horse comes from nowhere like Nashua and catches me at the freakin’ wire! I got a 17-1 goin’ and this bum chalk-bastard catches me at the freakin’ wire and pays a lousy $4.20 and I’m left with nothin’!!!”
See? That’s racing talk. In racing, almost winning is like winning - but not quite. But at least it’s talk. People at the races do actually talk to one another and I like that. (Certainly the conversation is a bit limited, not too much current events and stuff like that, but it is talk We talk to each other all the time.)

“I study the whole damn race, you know? I like the #2 horse. He comes from a better track, his last race is deceiving’ because it was in the mud and he don’t like the mud, and it was a little bit long for him – you know? So I figure it out and I like the #2. So I go up to bet and there’s like four guys in front of me. By the time I get to the friggin’ window, who knows why – I said “give me the #4, four times”. Why did I say that! I study the friggin’ charts til I’m blue in the friggin face and then I go up there and what do I do? I BET THE #4 HORSE!!! Go figure!”

“Tell me about it.” This is from another friend who shares his pain. “I did the same friggin’ thing with the #7 horses in the fifth yesterday. Spend all that time working it out and then bet somebody else. And it never fails, the dog you were gonna bet wins the freakin’ race!”

Like my friends, I used to watch these things happen over and over and could hardly believe what was happening. There was always something that went wrong. Oh sure, I had my good days but mostly I had bad days or days where I didn’t lose all my money – also known in horse parlance as “good days”.

One day, many years ago, I was at Liberty Bell Park in Philadelphia, since out of business. It was a Saturday. The place was crowded. I was sitting in the grandstand. Right in front of me, two rows down, was a small group surrounding one interesting guy.
This guy was about mid-forties, short, slim, almost skinny, with a navy jacket on and a peaked hat turned sideways. He had a small beard. I was later to learn that he was Captain of some sort of tugboat. Anyway, he is losing. He has lost a few races and every time he loses, he screams that the races are fixed, his jockey pulled up his horse etc. etc., all things we hear every day at the track.

In this particular race, the guy’s horse is involved in a neck and neck race coming down the stretch. As you might expect, his horse is a long shot. As you might also expect, the horse running against him is the favorite. And as you might also, also expect the favorite wins.

The guy explodes. He is in a rage. He’s cursing (you hear that a lot at the track), he’s mothering this and that, the jockey is crooked, the races are crooked. Finally, he can’t take it any more and he spins around and screams at the crowd: "If I can’t win – how the f*** you’se dumb bastards gonna win!!!!!”

You hear a lot of nasty language at the track, especially from losers, which is most of the people most of the time. But you get used to it and before long, you learn to just let it go in one ear and out the other. This whole thing might be laughable except for an interesting anomaly. Betting on horses for years – and, of course, losing for years - is the only losing endeavor that makes you a qualified expert in the field. Where else can you be considered an expert simply because you do something a lot rather than because you are successful doing it? Horseplayers are experts if they have gone to the races a lot, over a long period of time. They assume this mantle of expertise which has little (or nothing) to do with winning, and for a very good reason. Nobody wins. So, race goers take the next best thing: someone who has done it a lot.
I guess that’s convoluted reasoning but it’s racing logic. At least, it is true to the spirit of the track.

I understand that kind of reasoning, (and believe me, I say that reluctantly). For years, I tried to win without much success. So now, after all these years, I am an expert on the subject. Losing a lot has elevated me to this pinnacle.

Now let me digress for just a moment. Later I will get into the mathematics involved in racing and you will see how the odds are always stacked against you; but first, I want to take a moment to introduce myself to you. I want you to know me and where I come from. For those of you who bet the races, perhaps you will see a lot of yourself in me. For those of you who don’t bet the races, but like to gamble, you can pretty much substitute your form of gambling for “the races” in this book. We are all in the same boat.
Most forms of gambling are losing efforts. As they say you can have a winning bet and even a winning day but you can’t win, gambling. By yearend, 95% of all bettors are losers.
Think of it like this: if anyone could figure how to win consistently, in time everyone would know it and there would be no more gambling. The reason you have Casinos and racetracks is because most everyone loses and that pays for these pleasure palaces. Let me introduce you to my family.

The year is 1957. The place is Atlantic City. The town is booming. It is the heyday of the “Playground of the World.” My family has been spending summers in Atlantic City since 1942. Since shortly after Pearl Harbor. That’s when my folks bought their first house on North Virginia Avenue. We were from Philadelphia. I don’t know how my folks did it since we had eight kids and my dad didn’t make a whole lot of money, but my mother was something of a real-estate natural genius and she pulled it off.
Virginia Avenue was the first of four locations we occupied In A.C. over six decades. At the time I am discussing, we were living on Arkansas Avenue, which was our second stop. The place was called the Newfield Hotel and it had about a hundred rooms, a couple of apartments and a storefront. Adjoining the Newfield, and attached to it, was a second smaller hotel, called the Frankford. My mom bought the Frankford simply because it was so close to the Newfield that the people could reach out and touch one another and she didn’t want problems with neighbors that close. Both hotels had wide elevated front porches and over the years, thee two wide porches became our “handicapping parlor”. Most of us could be found there most summer mornings, drinking coffee, eating donuts and pouring over the racing form.

Looking out from the Newfield porch, you could see up and down one of the most active, fun streets in Atlantic City. To the west, your right, was Pacific Avenue. At the corner of Pacific and Arkansas were four bars - I can’t remember their names - but Arkansas Avenue made a lot of the fact that this was the one place in the world where you could find a musical bar on all four corners. To the east, your left, was the fabled Atlantic City Boardwalk festooned with thousands of visitors parading in their finest, many pushed along in the world famous Atlantic City rolling chairs. Beyond the Boardwalk, hardly visible from this distance but there nonetheless, was the deep blue-green Atlantic Ocean that connects us to Europe. It was a fantastic place and a fantastic time. Or as they might say today: a cool place to be.

On summer nights – our street, Arkansas Avenue, was jammed-packed with people. Without any exaggeration, there were ten thousand people pressed bumper-to-bumper moving up and down the walk in front of our hotel on a Saturday night in July. Ordinary people, famous people – it didn’t make any difference, Atlantic City was happening.

As a point of reference for those who don’t know the old Atlantic City, Caesars Casino now sits on Arkansas Avenue at that spot. If then was now, our porch would be about a hundreds yards from the entrance to Caesars. (Later on, we were to move to Brighton Avenue where we would be ensconced just one hundred yards from the entrance to TROP WORLD – Tropicana’s fabulous casino. But that was later; for now, we were living on Arkansas Avenue.

Anyway, every morning, culminating with the weekends, a bunch of my relatives and a friend or two would gather on the Newfield’s front porch for a pleasant visit. They would gather for coffee and donuts. They would bring with them the Racing Form, the Philadelphia Daily News (with it’s racing selections), and various other racing tout sheets. They would start gathering about 8:00 AM. There would be two, then four, then seven or eight, each with his own special handicapping aids. The sociality would begin.

Uncle Ray: “Hey Chris, did you look at the fifth at A.C., yet?’
Sister Christine: “No, I’m looking at the double.”
Me: “I did what about it?”
Ray: “Did you see Mama’s Darling? What do you think? I think she looks pretty good.”
Christine: “Hold a second, let me look.”
We all turn to that page in the Form.
Me: “Yea, I saw it, I don’t like her much.”
Guest Arthur: “Anybody look at Monmouth?”
Christine: ”No, not yet. In a minute.”
Guest Arthur: “They got some good races today.”
Christine: “I’ll look at it in a minute.”
Bill: “Hey Ray, take a look at the double at A.C,”
Ray: “I will in a second.”

And so it would go. From eight o’clock in the morning until noon (when we had to leave for the track), the conversation was about horses. Then, whoever was going would get ready and they would go – together. The morning ritual had been so much fun that I remember it with fondness, still. At noon, we would all leave for the track.

At the track we would compare notes, talk about who looks good and who doesn’t, win together, lose together, borrow money from one another particularly if one of us was winning, and then come home together. Sometimes, one of us would have had a winning day but usually we didn’t.
Well I shouldn’t say that exactly. On most of those days we won, but it wasn’t money that we won. It was the fun of being together and sharing an adventure-filled day. And what do you think we talked about all the way home? The one that got away. The one where we were SOOOOO CLOSEEEEE. The one where we changed our mind at the last minute and watched painfully as our original horse won.
There were always excuses. There was always hope that next time would be better. And next time, for most of us in those days, was the next day. For we would go home, sit on the porch, tell the same stories to anyone who would listen, then eat dinner, go out on the “Boards”, come home, go buy the next days’ racing forms, and start the whole process over again. Those were the good old days.
A social success.

But an investment failure.

Our trips weren’t always just around the corner though. In those days, we would often go North to Monmouth Park (80 miles) or South to Delaware Park, Bowie or Laurel (80 miles) or even West to Garden State and Philadelphia. We didn’t mind the distance; it just gave us more time to talk about the races – the horses we were going to bet going in and those we should have bet, coming home. And we loved it. We were together and we were the personification of that old bromide: hope springs eternal in the human breast. We subscribed to the creed of the gambler: “next day, we’ll get ‘em for sure.”

I can see now that this whole experience wasn’t about gambling but was about something much grander, the conviviality of the people involved and the closeness this shared experiences brought to all of them.

Looking back, it’s obvious that we were naïve. Our naivete was rooted in the shared belief that you could actually win at the races if you were good enough – or lucky enough – or better yet, both. That was our mistake because you really can’t win at the races or at least 99.5% of us can’t. Later I will explain why I say that, but for now, take my word for it. There is no methodology that will produce winners with any regularity at the track, or with any other kind of gambling for the vast majority of people. But this story is about horseracing. Suffice to say, anyone who plays the horses can have a winning bet, a winning day, or even a winning week, but if you gamble regularly, at the end of the year you are a loser. How big a loser simply depends on how much you bet.

The scene I have described went on year after year for over twenty years, first in one hotel, than another. And I would state without fear of disagreement from any of the other participants, that no one who thinks back remembers the money we lost – but they all remember the fun we had and the time we spent together.

That’s why I say horse racing is different from Casino gambling. Going to the races can be a social thing – a fun thing, people can interact with one another. Going to the Casinos usually is more about gambling and less about being social.

Oh yes, one more thing. You can absolutely lose a whole lot more money – and a lot quicker - at a casino, than you can at a racetrack. That’s the good thing about the races. You lose less and it takes longer. But of course, you still lose.

So the years rolled by. I, like my friends and family members who liked the races, continued to go. Year after year, always for the fun and social contact, of course; but secretly convinced that one day, one day for sure, we would find a way to win. There had to be a way.

I am a statistician at heart. I should have been in basic research. I have tons of patience and I love to do research. I would put all of that “talent’ to work – for decades - trying to find a way to beat the races before I finally came to realize, it can’t be done. There are simply too many variables, too much luck involved to accurately or consistently predict winners. I guess deep down I might have always known that but I certainly never admitted it to anyone and neither did any of my racetrack companions ever admit it to me. During all those years, not once did any of them ever look me squarely in the eye and say with any conviction: “You know, Joey, we really can’t win”.

I guess that was because we really thought we could which is why they say there’s a sucker born every minute.

It really wasn’t until fifty years later that I came to understand the truth. I had hooked up for one last try with a new friend from MIT one of America’s premier science and mathematics school located in Massachusetts. Together we were going to merge racing knowledge with computer mathematics – blending science and horse racing knowledge – into what we were certain would be a dynamite combination. At least, that’s what we thought. My new friend, I will call him Andy since that is his name, had gone to MIT on a scholarship out of high school. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree from that school and then added a Masters in Computer Sciences from Nova University. Andy was one smart cookie, a math major and a computer specialist. I had also been in the computer business forever. (I started when computers were so big you opened the back and stepped inside to service them. They were called main frames then.)

I started in the business in 1957 so by the time I met Andy, I had about three decades of computer experience which included both operations and programming on main frame systems. Plus I had some considerable management experience having been Computer Operations Manager for a Fortune 500 Company as well as the President of a Computer Engineering company. We were certain we had ‘the right stuff’.

What we didn’t have in common was a love for thoroughbred racing. Andy had never been to a horserace in his life and he was certainly not a gambler. Nevertheless, we hit if off and I liked him and respected him and I think I showed him a fun side of life to balance off his seriousness. In any event, we teamed up and we made a formidable ‘daily double’, to be sure; the intellectual and the gambler, both with computer expertise. We also brought with us into battle, the absolute belief that there had to be a way to isolate potential winners from the pre-race data available at a sufficient rate to make it profitable. We vowed to find that way. After all, we had all the tools. It was as though we were on a mission.
As it turned out, we were. We didn’t learn until later that it was a fool’s mission.

End of Sample chapters.

"So You Like to Bet The Horses, Do You?" can be found on Amazon.com at J J Kusnell, Author.







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