Backward Is Forward In Racing Systems

( Originally Published mid 1950's )

The racing systems in this book use an approach which is directly opposite to conventional methods.

To paraphrase a coarse colloquialism, this system does everything assiduously backwards.

Instead of looking for positive values, we look for negative ones. If a horse has no black marks against him on any count, he automatically becomes a selection by a simple process of elimination, if he has one, two or possibly three very strong points.

This system defies the conventions on many other counts. As noted previously, speed and jockeys are disregarded almost completely, which will raise eyebrows in many quarters. The reason for all this is that the writer, after being unable to get anywhere by using accepted methods for many back-breaking years, decided to invent new ones.

The writer remembers that as a callow youth he figured out that the smartest thing to do would be to concentrate on the trackman's best bet, and double on it the next day if it lost. As have many other beginners, he figured that the racing paper's staff man, the trackman, being right on the scene, seeing the horses run day after day with his own eyes, and knowing all the owners, trainers and jockeys intimately, should get much better results than other handicappers sitting in distant offices and poring over stacks of dry records.

This initial experiment turned out to be an overwhelming failure. The trackman's best bet promptly proceeded to lose 18 times in succession. This financial disaster caused the writer to retire from the turf for an entire year.

From there he ran the gamut of the entire dreary routine of losers-betting successively on losing favorites, repeaters, horses with the lowest weight, horses with the highest weight, favorites to place, favorites to win, second choice to win, third choice to win, longshots to win, horses dropping both class and weight and what have you.

If you have good solid horses, progression investment is the best form of wagering. But if you don't, it's the worst.

The Rock of Progression, the Reef of Greed, the Shoals of Disaster-they all lie in wait for the unwary turf investor who tries to navigate the Sea of Success with a boat that leaks and sails that are full of holes, meaning a bad system.

Last Fall a friend said to me, "I can't understand it. Two days ago, I went to the track and my system worked perfectly. Yesterday, I used the same system, and every horse ran out of the money. And they looked just as good as had the ones the day before. I just can't understand it.