Congrats...

[TGJB]

Kent-- seriously, you need to leave this alone. There are several people who post here that bet 7 figures a year (I\'m one of them),and you simply have no idea what you are talking about. I\'m not going to get involved in correcting all the misinformation and misguided reasoning (again)-- you are a total novice speaking to an audience that contains pros and lots of semi-pros.

The scariest thing is that you are SUCH a bad listener. Exactly what I want in a doctor.

[Lost Cause]

Interesting, Why would they be barred from the track unless they were going to set some races?..
Weird..

[mjellish]

Kent,

You probably are a fairly smart guy and a decent person.  But I really think you are beginning to cross the line on this board.  You simply refuse to admit that the winning pro horse player exists.  Fine.  We get it.  Several of us have CLEARLY pointed out that your logic is seriously flawed.  Rather than address this directly, you would rather be dogmatic and point out that you are a doctor and should know or selectively quote something Steve Crist recently wrote or some other irrelevant fact or whatever...  

You know, I have talked with Steve Crist, in person, albeit quite some time ago, and I can tell you that he would flat out disagree with much of what you claim he believes because he knows better.  No matter what he may write, he writes it for the massess.  He knows there are pro players that beat this game, and he knows they are better players than he is.  In fact, he would probably tell you that he would not even rate himself as one of the best handicappers that he has ever met, not even close.  In fact, he endorses Beyer Speed Figures in part because he has to...

My point is this.  There are pro players out there.  You can continue to try to to theoretically disprove their existence all you want, but I will be having a drink with my buddy Rem today at the Minneapolis Airport while he is on a layover.  And he has done nothing but play the horses since 1992.  Does he have losing days?  Yep.  Does he lose more often than he wins?  Yep.  But does he win more money, a lot more money than loses?  Yep.  He makes his own figures.  He has two clockers.  He has a part time assistant.  He is the best judge of horseflesh I have ever seen when it comes to just watching a horse move and predicting improving or declining form in the near future.  He subscribes to a few publications and a data service.  He talks to a half dozen or so handicappers he knows and respects across the country to keep tabs on what is going on at their local circuits, share some thoughts, etc.  But other than that, he keeps a very, very low profile.  He is 51 years old, not likely to change much and if you met him at the track you would have no idea who he is or that he does this for a livng.  Nonetheless, in two hours if I reach out and poke him in the eye it will hurt, because he is real.  AND NOTHING YOU CAN SAY THEORETICALLY CAN POSSIBLY INVALIDATE THAT.    

So get real buddy.  My advice to you is this.  Go ahead and not believe me.  Go ahead and laugh at me or anyone else you want to laugh at in private from a distance.  You are entitled to that.  But If you can\'t add something productive to this board, please at least afford the rest of us some common courtesy and stop posting your dogmatic b.s. I thank you for some of your earlier input because it seemed to lead to a productive discussion about the importance of rebates in the information age.

Moving forward, I don\'t think many of us care about the view from your box at Santa Anita, although I am happy you have it and glad you enjoy it.  Please continue to enjoy the game for your own reasons, but leave your ego at the door.  

MJ

[Dana666]

Thanks much for that! Always interesting. Personally, I could/would never structure a ticket like that - in my book you must have at least 1 single, preferably 2, and I usually won\'t spend over a couple hundred on a pick six; I don\'t believe the added cash enhances your chances much, and, in general, they are horrible bets, but we come from different schools of thought, I guess. But the gentleman had a very good opinion in the 7th and 8th races (those were bold/smart plays), and he was very lucky (as anyone would need to be to win 300+K) in the first leg - I think Tiz Argent is a nice animal and Solis was way too confident; I hate when jocks think maidens can easily cruise by horses; they\'re maidens, you know, they\'re not used to passing horses - Pincay was the best in a race like that - always ultra-aggressive. Using three horses in the last leg was too many, Champion Ride was as cold as a single gets, in my mind anyway - Conlon is lights out first time off the claim, especially with a decent horse - she knows her stuff.

Hey, God Bless him - that\'s a life changing score for almost anyone. I can see he\'s mostly going straight by the sheets, and I also believe if you do that in California, you\'ll eventually get creamed (even Thorographs, forget Ragozin\'s, you\'ll commit suicide in 3 months with those out there), but I\'ve found California numbers to be very questionable with the synthetic surfaces, and I always feel replays are essential out there. Has become way too much work for me these days. Andy Harrington hurts you a lot, too. I know he\'s right once in a while, but he will kill you eventually. I was a long time subscriber to his workout report - he doesn\'t really know what he\'s looking at, but to each his own. If I ever hit one, I\'ll post, but it\'s been a long pick six drought for me. I haven\'t hit a six-figure one since 2006!!! My investment that day was $256.00 which I went half on with my buddy. If I were that lucky fellow, I\'d take the cash and vacation in the South Pacific until the dirt track is re-installed at Santa Anita b/c, believe me, to win like that on that wacky surface is a complete miracle from heaven, and if you count on doing it again, you\'ll probably lose 600K chasing - sadly I speak from experience. Synthetics tracks s-u-c-k the life and bankroll out of you.

[Rich Curtis]

Dana,

  Thank you for the reply. There are a couple of things here I feel I should respond to:

   You wrote:

   \"I can see he\'s mostly going straight by the sheets, and I also believe if you do that in California, you\'ll eventually get creamed (even Thorographs, forget Ragozin\'s, you\'ll commit suicide in 3 months with those out there), but I\'ve found California numbers to be very questionable with the synthetic surfaces,\"

  My friend has been playing synthetics aggressively since shortly after they were installed: Woodbine, Keeneland, and SoCal, even travelling across the country to Del Mar every year to play every day of the meet. We are not talking about a small sample here. We are talking about years of daily play. He is a versatile handicapper, but TG is at the heart of his approach, and overall his results have been as good, if not better, on synthetic than on real dirt. And speaking only for myself, for what it\'s worth, I\'ve studied TG CA synthetic figures as closely as I\'m capable of studying anything, and I am convinced that the numbers are every bit as accurate and useful on synthetic as they are on real dirt. And why wouldn\'t they be? Synthetic surfaces have much in common with grass, and since the day I started using sheets, I was always struck by how many sheet players prefer grass to real dirt.

  \"Andy Harrington hurts you a lot, too. I know he\'s right once in a while, but he will kill you eventually. I was a long time subscriber to his workout report - he doesn\'t really know what he\'s looking at, but to each his own.\"

  Harrington will kill you from time to time if you grant him that power, and so will Bruno De Julio, and so will Turrell, and so will any other clocker, and so, of course, will refusing to use any clocker. Whatever one thinks of racetracks, they aren\'t wanting for ways to kill bettors. Again speaking only for myself, I\'ve read posts on this board that talk of \"those sharp-eyed CA clockers who never miss,\" or words to that effect, and I literally burst out laughing because the words are the kind of utter nonsense that could be written only by someone who knows nothing about CA clockers. However, my friend has been using Harrington daily for years, another huge sample, and overall he considers him a definite plus when his write-ups are kept in perspective and when the \"clocker variant\" has been applied to Bob Hess and certain other trainers--the guys who specialize in flummoxing clockers.

[Dana666]

Hey, if he\'s that good on synthetics, God bless him, he deserves the success and the cash because not too many people I know do well on them.

Your words are wise; I mean, one thing I\'ll say about those workout reports is it must be tough to watch all those horses and sort them out; I wonder if they had the wrong horse sometimes; also the synthetics tracks sometimes change dramatically from morning till afternoon, so that could also account for errors in judgment, and I\'m not saying they didn\'t help me at times, they did. I liked when they\'d tell me simple stuff, like the horse was happy and healthy, I wasn\'t so impressed with fast times and whatnot. I base a lot on what I would call (for lack of a better phrase) a horses\' reservoir of \"chi\" - whether that is based innately on his bloodlines or of a more immediate concern, how\'s he\'s being trained and raced and what that\'s doing to his health and vitality, as evidenced through his kidney chi- something I\'ve applied from my study of Traditional Chinese Medicine, anyway I\'m going off on a tangent here.

You have the right approach, one I don\'t always employ - don\'t let the data rule you, you rule the data. That could be my biggest error at times, whether it\'s workouts, sheets or even my own eyes. I tend to be a bit inflexible and stubborn (in case anyone hasn\'t noticed!) from time to time. It may not be good to have too strong an opinion regarding a horse because he will often make a liar out of me.

I\'d be lying though if I said I wasn\'t looking forward to the \"new\" dirt surface this fall at Oak Tree. Hope it happens.