And He's Off!

(Last of a Series on Thoroughbred Horse Racing)

As promised earlier, I celebrated my annual 21^st birthday at Golden Gate Fields in Berkeley last Saturday afternoon, along with my wife, Elizabeth, my sister-in-law Margaret and her husband Charles.

Comfortably seated in the exclusive Turf Club high above the track, we had lunch while seven races thundered by below. I bet a total of $72. I won back $68. I predicted it would go like this.

My biggest win was $35 on the fourth race, the $100,000 Pikes Peak Dancer Stakes. I placed an “exotic” bet known as the “superfecta wheel”: one horse to win for sure (the wheel), the next three to cross the finish line in any order. It cost me $6. The winning horse was Miss Empire, her jockey Russell Baze, the winningest jockey in North American racing history. (Note: “Bet Russell Baze” = good betting plan.)

SON, DO YOUR HOMEWORK!

Since my interest in horse racing sped from a slow trot to a cavalry charge, what has struck me is how intellectually strenuous, even exhausting, handicapping and betting horse races can be . . . that is,  if you choose to take it seriously.

Casual bettors don’t need to pour cans of brain fuel into playing the ponies. All it takes is a few minutes before a race begins, sitting in the Turf Club or with the hoi polloi in the stands below (who I think have the better view), studying the program, getting a sense of who’s good and who’s not so.

Make straight, modest one-two-three bets on horses with the best odds (factoring in their jockeys), and you’ll have an exciting time and keep most of your shirt on, plus or minus a few buttons. Serious bettors call it “good money management.” Maybe you’ll get lucky betting $20 on Last Place Nag, that 20-to-1 male in the sixth race, but more than likely not, (though my brother-in-law did, on a horse named Reigning Rubies in the fifth)

Played this way, a day at the racetrack is cheap compared to most other entertainments. (Admission at Golden Gate is only four to six dollars.) Most of the track’s money comes from off-track betting. The food is mostly fairly priced (though beware the liquor prices at the Turf Club.) I’ve easily wasted more on a Saturday evening on Piedmont Avenue.

But, as in all sports betting, betting to win more than five or ten bucks, the payoff for most casual bettors, takes serious concentration, analytical skill, and plates of moxie. because, in order to win the bigger money, you have to bet against the crowd, bet against the 2-1 horses . . . bet on those long shots. You have to do homework, just like our mean old parents made us do.

It also takes genuine sportsmanship—meaning a love of the sport and full embrace of its risks. No matter how I improve my odds with study, no matter how sharp my eye for that long-shot pony, they’re still against me. That bigger payoff a serious bettor is looking for entails bigger risk. When I lose, no getting mad and no getting desperate!—once I reach my bank limit, I must go right home.

Handicapping and betting on horse races is, without drawing a direct comparison, as complicated a game as chess, if you choose to play it that way.

The more I handicapped races, the more complications I encountered. The factors considered by professional handicappers are almost numerous beyond counting, and each factor is considered against other factors.

Further, these factors are always shifting in relation to each other: horse versus jockey, versus trainer versus track, versus condition of track, versus condition of the track the last time the horse ran on it versus others tracks the horse raced on versus the field of other horses the horse ran against . . . I’d better stop before you all surf over to “Roseanne for President.”

WHY HORSE RACING? WHY NOW?

I was ill with anemia when I started handicapping. Unable and unwilling to deal with anything both complicated and profound, I craved something complicated and dumb; something that mattered not a jot in the scheme of Creation, but at the same time would keep my brain gears greased. I didn’t want to think about God, Death or, most of all, Mitt Romney.

After my recent experience at the Alameda County Fair racing, thinking about thoroughbred horses running in a circle seemed to be a perfect workout for the brain. I could screw it up, stop when I got tired, and no one would give a shit, least of all me.

For a few weeks, I handicapped the Saturday race card at Golden Gate Fields (I didn’t bet. I didn’t have the spare change and have no desire to bet off-track). My first reference was Betting on Horse Racing for Dummies by professional handicapper Richard Eng.

Using i-Pad and computer, it took me over three hours of online study for each Saturday race card. I used several online information sources—the morning line on the program and house betting line report, both provided by Golden Gate Fields; the free handicapping calls by Chuck Dybdal from The Daily Racing Form via the GGF site; and links to Equibase, the enormous statistical database for North American thoroughbred horseracing. There’s also a helpful website for beginners, Hello Race Fans! By the end, my anemic brain was bloodless from trying to collate all the information sweeping under my eyes.

I seem to be fairly decent handicapper, though. Each weekend, at least three or four of my horses won; most all of them wound up in the money (placing at least second or third). More than once, a longshot—the hardest horses of all to research and pick--came in. I’d win theoretical, speculative exotic bets, made post-race—not many, but enough to spur my desire to go to the track and see what I could do with $100.

RACE DAY

The day came. Before we went, I added The Daily Racing Form Past Performance which detailed the record of every single horse on the card that day ($4.50), to my calibrations.

One part of my plan that didn’t pan out was visiting the horses in the paddock before each race. From our table in the Turf Club to the paddock was a five-plus minute maze walk, not including visiting the betting window before post time. The half-hour between races ticks by fast and after the second race, I had enough of the dash. This likely affected my results.

Outside of the stakes race, I didn’t do too well. Only one race, the sixth, had a longshot that seemed worth my money, but by post time, the rest of the pari-mutuel world was agreeing with me, raising its odds from 20 to 1 to 8 to 1. At that point I lost interest (and, as it turned out, the horse finished out of the money). The next race I got careless, abandoning my game plan for some longshots . . . well, lesson learned. Do my homework and, unless factors arise, stick with the plan.

To sum up, I got skunked in three races. We didn’t stay for the eighth and ninth, but when I checked my handicapping, I would have made back what I bet over both races. I only lost four dollars and had a good time in this year of hard times.

Copyright 2012 by Thomas Burchfield

Thomas Burchfield has recently completed his 1920s gangster thriller Butchertown. He can be friended on Facebook, followed on Twitter, and read at Goodreads. You can also join his e-mail list via tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net. He lives in Northern California with his wife, Elizabeth.

Dreams and Days at the Races

"The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's how the smart money bets."—Damon Runyon

A SIMPLE DREAM

This week, I’ll let you in a secret, one I’ve been keeping from you for the last couple of months: nothing soul-shattering, just another curious turn in my curious life.

I’ll start with a dream.

A couple of nights ago, I dreamt I was handicapping an afternoon of thoroughbred horse racing at Golden Gate Fields, the last equine racing facility still operating in the San Francisco Bay Area.

That’s all I did for almost the entire dream—handicap an upcoming race card, meaning I analyzed each horse and jockey and picked which might win, place, or show for each of the nine or so races on the card. I don’t recall any of the entries, but it was intellectually strenuous work. It was a long, singularly focused dream. I’m sure you’re dozy just reading about it, but I was fascinated.

I finally flipped to a new scene, this one co-starring Tim, a San Francisco buddy I’ve not seen for way too long a time. He and I were arriving at Golden Gate Fields. Tim went through the gate ahead while I hung back. It was my birthday and, I recall, I started haggling with the ticket taker about whether I would get an admission discount for this special occasion.

Then, damn it, I woke up. I always wake up. Just when I’m about to pick the money off the floor, pluck the fruit off the tree, collect my Pulitzer Prize.

The meaning behind this dream is simple, transparent--remember to ask about discounts and specials when I celebrate my birthday at Golden Gate Fields in a few weeks (probably the first weekend in November.)

(Yup, I just keep popping with the surprises, don’t I? Next week, I’ll tell you about my dream of becoming a Sumo wrestler.)

THE MAIDEN RACE

I attended my first thoroughbred race a few years ago when another now-faraway friend, Toni and her husband George, invited me to Toni’s birthday party at the Turf Club at Golden Gate Fields.

From the second the horses stormed out of the gate I was entranced--by the action, the energy, the drive, the thunder of those beautiful beasts and the brave jockeys as they galloped along the track, around the turns and raced toward home. Even from the high vantage point of the Turf Club, the power and genuine danger of the sport was as palpable as a storm. I felt a unique excitement lacking at other sporting events, even the Big Game.

I was lost that whole afternoon as my focus fiercely shifted from the track to the racing form, trying to get a sense of who would win, who would place, who would show. Then, after horses and riders zipped across the finish line, up I would leap and fly off to the betting window to collects my winnings and place my next bets. Aside from the sporty Runyonesque fashions worn by some of the other bettors, I recall little else of that singular afternoon. Whoever spoke to me, I probably looked right through them, my eyes as glassy as the lenses of my binoculars.

Because I was a pure beginner, I stuck with simple straight bets—win, place, show, two dollars per horse per race, no wagering on long shots, no “exotic” bets. Elizabeth and I came to the track with a hundred dollars. We left with around eighty dollars remaining. Later I found out that, for a novice, I’d done alright.

The glow lasted a long time, but I didn’t go back, not after Seabiscuit, not after the premier of the HBO series Luck¸ a drama I found thrilling and enjoyable, even though it never quite found its stride before being scratched.

 

REAWAKENING

This June, worldly magic struck again, at the Alameda County Fair in Pleasanton. (California is the last state to maintain the tradition of the county fair racing circuit.) We were there at the invitation of Elizabeth’s sister Margaret and her husband Charles.

We’d attended the races here last year, but we only stayed for one sprint, I think for quarter horses, before plowing on through the rest of that cheerfully gaudy, tacky, sensory experience whether you like racing or not--exotic farm animals, Roller Derby, has-been pop acts, and enough delicious bad food to clog the arteries of every vegetarian in the Bay Area.

This time around, I asked if we could stay at the track a little bit longer.

Forgetting my first experience, I blew my first bet, betting three horses to win, a betting strategy known as “dutching,” a legit way to go, but only with certain longshots.

The next race, the fourth race, I cooled down and studied the program. Then Charles suggested we visit the paddock, the circle where horses and jockeys parade before heading out for the post parade to the starting gate.

The second I got there, my brain lit up. I understood instinctively what to look for. County fair circuit races don’t feature the best horses; that is, they’re not the top-graded stake races you read about on the front page of The Daily Racing Form and seldom see on TV, leading up to the Kentucky Derby.

But even though these weren’t top grade horses, these thoroughbreds were some of the most beautiful animals anywhere: gleaming coats, rippling powerful muscles. Like so much of Nature, human hands could not create anything more beautiful, more moving.

Without prompting, I looked for horses with spirit, focus, and energy, the ones that enjoyed being there and were ready to run; those who walked with their heads held high, alert, their ears on end, who were one with their jockeys. No one had to tell me. It just made sense. Run with the one who wants to run.

A horse who bucked nervously about or one who plodded like a plow horse or office clerk, there just to punch the clock, collect their check, and go home . . . I passed on those.

In five minutes I found three horses worth my six dollars. After I placed my bet at the window, I rushed back to my group, happily waving my fists in dopey joy: “Elizabeth! I just bet all our savings on a twenty-to-one pick!” (I don’t know why no one finds those jokes funny, really.)

No joke this time though: My win pick won, a 6-1, six year old named Summer Suntan. However, I must admit, he won by disqualification. Running second, he was bumped out of his line by a horse named Fly Blue near the end of the race. Fly Blue was disqualified by the California Racing Board stewards. Summertime Suntan walked the winner’s circle.

Nevertheless, I was right enough about that horse, right enough to win me $13.80, the only winnings in our party.

But . . . it wasn’t my party. And so, with my hands in my pockets and Charles grumbling alongside, the two of us kicking up dirt clods like a couple of five year old boys, we left the racetrack behind.

“The next time,” I pouted, jabbing my thumb at my chest, “it’s gonna be myyyy party! And we’re gonna stay allllllll day!”

[To be continued]

Copyright 2012 by Thomas Burchfield

Photo by author

Thomas Burchfield has recently completed his 1920s gangster thriller Butchertown. He can be friended on Facebook, followed on Twitter, and read at Goodreads. You can also join his e-mail list via tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net. He lives in Northern California with his wife, Elizabeth.