How Important Are Shoe Changes and the Shoe Board When Handicapping Horse Races For Profit?
By Bill Peterson

If you are like most people who handicap horse races, you probably ignore shoe changes, other than to note when horses are wearing mud caulks and racing on an off track. Have you ever heard the old saying, “For want of a nail, the shoe was lost, for want of the shoe, the horse was lost, for want of the horse the rider was lost, for want of the rider the battle was lost and for want of the battle the kingdom was lost?”

It is meant to teach the importance of details when trying to succeed at complicated or big tasks, It means that the little things can cost a lot more than just the price of the small thing, like a nail. But there is another message here as well. It also shoes that the shoe on a horse does make a difference in the horse’s performance. How many races are won or lost in a photo finish? Though the race may be a mile long, horse races are often decided by fractions of a second.

If a shoe is lost during a race, and sometimes they are, then the race may be lost because of the missing shoe. This doesn’t just apply to thoroughbred racing, but to harness racing and quarter horse racing as well. In fact, it applies to any equine event. Most good horse racing handicappers know how important the addition of lasix or equipment changes can be, but how many pay attention to horse shoes?

One of the problems is that many people do not understand what is involved in properly shoeing a horse. When I was racing harness horses we would take a new horse into the barn and change it’s shoeing and its performance would change dramatically. The reason is that the horse’s hooves are vital to its comfort and ability.

A good farrier will not only fasten shoes to a horse’s hooves with nails or adhesive, but will also trim the hoof and make adjustments to it as well. He or she will look at the horse as it stands still and determine if a hoof is off balance and turning the foot in or out. A thousand pound animal puts an astonishing amount of pressure on its feet as it thunders down the race track. Each shock as its hoof hits the hard surface of the track is absorbed by the bone and tissue in the legs sending shock waves all the way to its back.

Now imagine how that feels and the affect it has upon the horse if it’s feet are off balance. The joints are being twisted and pain and inflammation may result. Naturally, an animal that is running and feels that will compensate by slowing down. You probably won’t know how well a horse is shod by looking at the shoe bard which tells if there has been a change in the style of shoe worn, but you may tell by its appearance in the paddock or in the race. Another clue is a dramatic change in workouts.

For instance, if you see that a horse is running with a new style of shoe and its workout times have improved, it is a good bet that a farrier has made an adjustment with positive results. Keep that in mind when trying to determine if a horse is improving.

Am I being too picky by implying that filing a hoof a little and changing the shape of a shoe can make a horse win a race? If a nail can cost a kingdom, I think it is a safe bet that a shoe can cost a race.

The most consistent horse racing systems have to have the basics and a handicapper must understand the basics. I have been around horse racing for 50 years including as an owner. Without the basics the rest is not going to do any good. If you want to learn how a horse owner and insider handicaps just go to http://williewins.homestead.com/truecb.html and get the truth.

Bill Peterson is a former horse race owner and professional handicapper. He comes from a horse race handicapping family and as he puts it, “Horse Racing is in my blood.” To see all Bill’s horse racing material go to http://williewins.homestead.com/handicappingstore.html Bill’s handicapping store.

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This is one of those stream of barely consciousness posts that came to me this morning as I was meditating.  According to my bio-rhythms and numerology this may not be a good time to go public with my ideas or even to have ideas, but that has never stopped me yet, so why change now?

I have been pretty worried about being eaten by a snake since, while I was staying in a motel room, I caught part of a television show about a guy in a foreign country who had been  crushed and swallowed by a snake while walking in the forest.  The guy was walking, not the snake.  Then I saw a picture of that huge snake that exploded in the everglades after eating an alligator and I spent the winter in Florida, so that made it even worse.  Every night I surrounded myself with universal white light protection so the damned snakes and aliens wouldn’t get me.  I wonder if an alien was ever eaten by a snake?  My grandfather ate rattlesnakes when he was a cowboy in Montana.  See how my mind just wheels along from thing to thing?  The thing is that it really feels like I’m thinking about the same thing even though, technically speaking, I’m not.

So I told my friend, Debi, that I was afraid of being eaten alive while sleeping in the trailer but felt safe while living in Maine because there are no dangerous snakes in Maine.  Then there were two stories in Maine about reticulated pythons suddenly appearing out of nowhere.  One was in a lady’s washing machine and another was under the hood of a guy’s truck.  So that really shook me up and now I don’t feel safe in Maine.  On top of that I don’t know what reticulated means and keep forgetting to look it up.  I know articulated means jointed like the articulated lorries in England, but reticulated sounds like something to do with the eyes.  Maybe there is something called a reticula in the eye?  I don’t know.

Well, anyway, Debi said if I kept thinking about snakes I would draw them to me.  I replied that I thought about winning the lottery and having sex a lot and didn’t seem to be doing a very good job of drawing them to me so why the hell would it work with snakes?  A few days after that I found a damned green snake hiding in the moulding around my door!  It was kind of sticking out a little and when I touched it the damned thing stuck its head out and stuck its tongue out at me.  Debi said, see!

Then yesterday I opened the door and there was a striped garter snake on the flagstone outside the door.  Now this is getting rediculous.  If I can draw snakes to me why can’t I draw the damned powerball number?  All this is going through my head while I am meditating as well as the nothingness of putting my thoughts and awareness in the four parallel dimensions of reciprocal space where my own higher self exists as a principle and creates this four dimensional world.

Which brings us to the idea that we do not create our world from this domain of four dimensions we call reality or the conscious world.  It happens in the reciprocal domain so we are just going along following the motions of the urges our higher self subtley puts into our subconscious minds.  Therefore, like smoking, its not my fault.

I went into the tobacco shop yesterday to buy some of my favorite Nicaraguan hand rolled doobies and there were candy cigarettes on the counter.  I haven’t seen candy cigarettes since I was a kid and smoking was in vogue and especially embraced by my own parents, two of the vogue-iest people you’d ever want to meet, but you can’t because they are both dead, but before you say aha! Let me inform you that only one died from the effects of smoking and not necessarily directly. Still with me? Good.

I asked the clerk what they had candy cigarettes for since kids couldn’t come into the store.  He said that adults buy them to help them quit smoking and that sometimes they buy them for their kids.  Now that is interesting. My parents bought them for me, but not to help me quit smoking, even though I started when I was six and there were actually days in my life when I used both the candy and real kind of cigarettes. Therefore, in a way, candy cigarettes helped me to become a smoker and could, I said could, possibly help me to quit the cigar habit providing I wanted to, which I don’t at the moment, though I do when I walk up the steep hills of Dixmont, which I have been doing a lot lately.

So apparently, if you’re trying to quit smoking, sucking on a candy cigarette that you take from a pack that is much like the real thing, will help you to quit.  This intrigues me since I used to be a clinical hypnotherapist and helped a lot of people quit smoking, though I myself went back to smoking cigars because I really do enjoy it.  Candy cigarettes naturally led me to thinking about sex,  like most things do.

I worked with a few sex addicts when I was a therapist, though it wasn’t my specialty and I usually refered them to someone else.  I also worked with a few of the women who worked in the “massage parlor” that also was in the building where my office was when I was a hypnotherapist.  Some of them had issues about some of the things they were expected to do as part of their job, but once again you’re getting off the subject.

I thought to myself, if candy cigarettes can help you to quit smoking, would candy condoms help a sex addict?  I mean they already have edible panties, why not edible condoms, in fact, for all I know, they already do.  Let’s say a sex addict got the urge to have sex at an inappropriate time or place, but instead of acting on that impulse just reached into his or her pocket and pulled out a little condom package and opened it and popped a spearmint flavored or cherry flavored condom into his or her mouth, and started to chew.  Would that help? Huh?  I mean for a person like you?

It is hard to say, since I’m not a sex addict, but it seems it would help.  You just never know though, because we are all individuals, which of course, segues nicely into my thoughts on Michele Obama.  Apparently she gave a speech last night and assured everyone she was just plain folks, that’s nice, but she isn’t.  Why the hell do politicians and their wives seem to think they have to be like us?  I wouldn’t want me running the country, would you?  Yes, biologically she is like us and yes, she is a mother and wife and daughter, etc.  But her life is a million light years removed from the average American’s daily life.

Furthermore, we don’t want our leaders to be like us, we want them to be leaders, and to be great and do great things and to know more than the average schmuck.  Don’t try to be us, be you.  No wonder the State of the Onion stinks.  Next thing we know we’ll have Obama telling us he was born in a log cabin and McCain will tell us that though his daddy or granddaddy was an admiral, he started out as a mere cabin boy on Old Ironsides. Stop it!  Quit trying to bullshit us, quit trying to spin everything from adopting kids to dodging bullets, etc and tell us what your damned plan is, if you have one.

I don’t really know who the hell M. Obama is but I sure as hell know she isn’t just some average Jane Doe who happens to be married to someone who has led an unordinary life and is now prancing around on the World Stage a few hanging chads away from the White House. So cut the crap, all of you.  If you really want to impress me, do something about the reticulated python problem in America and invent an affordable edible condom.

I promise I will now go back to writing about horse racing, horseracing.

Thanks for your support.

Well my faithful readers, (all two of you) by now it is abundantly clear that I have been changing the look of the old blogeroo with some help.  It was about time to get rid of the old wordpress theme and find something a little spicier and usable.

I’m also adding articles from guest readers and articles I may have written under a pen name.  Look for more articles on greyhound racing and greyhound handicapping, too.  I know you dog racing fans have been chomping at the bit, or is that muzzle for more dog racing articles and help with your handicapping, so I’ve asked my friend Eb to bung some posts into the blog.

I just haven’t been going to the dogs lately (no really I mean it) and therefore haven’t had any fresh insights for you.

On the other hand I have been handicapping horse races and using horse racing systems, so I’ll keep you posted on the latest developments.  At the moment I am concentrating my efforts on races for younger horses.  This is the time of year when the two year olds and three year olds have all gotten some experience and start to show their true form.  It is a good time to find some stand out bets in races written for two year olds and three year olds.

I’ve found that pace plays an even bigger role in races for younger horses because they are intimidated by it more than older horses who learn to rate off the pace.  Many horses who will develop into fine runners later in their careers haven’t learned to settle down and chase a front runner down in the stretch, yet, so early speed wins a lot of races for younger horses.

Understanding Jockey Moves When Handicapping Horse Races
By Bill Peterson

One of the hardest things to figure out when you are handicapping a horse race is what the change of jockey means. Understanding jockey moves will help you to win more bets and lose less money at the races. For instance, the rider who rode the 3 in its last race is now on the 5 and the jockey who rode the 7 declines the ride so there is now a new one on the 7 and he got off the 8 and… well you get the idea. There are times when the riders stay on their mounts and you can handicap the race, but there are also times when all the rider switching will make your head swim.

Before you make a bet you want to know why these riders switched their mounts. Rider changes are usually due to the jockey, or jockey’s agent, making the change. If a trainer can get a good jock on his or her horse, they aren’t likely to make a switch, most of the time. So you can usually figure that if a horse pilot is making a switch, he or she figures to have a better chance of winning the race, or future races on that horse.

Probably the easiest switch to understand and handicap is the switch from one horse to another horse who looks better on paper. It seems quite obvious that the jockey thinks he or she will have a better chance of winning since he or she won or came close last time out with that mount.

But appearances can often be deceiving and the reason may be murkier. When a rider gets on a mount he or she may not plan on winning that race but realizes as the regular rider of the horse he or she may win several races in the future. It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes a rider will get off a horse that is in better form at the moment to get on a horse with more potential for the future.

Then there is the case where the trainer does decide that a different rider would be better suited to the horse. This is like trying to match up couples. Some jockeys are known for being better with younger horses, or hustling them out of the gate faster. Some jockeys are known for being able to rate on the front and getting the most from a front runner while there are others who specialize in closers. Knowing something about the strengths and weaknesses of the jockeys at your favorite track(s) can help a lot.

Some programs and data services now show a breakdown of which categories jockeys win in, They show how well each one fared on maidens, grass races, routes, sprints, etc. When reading them, bear in mind that it depends a lot upon how good the horses were that the jockey was riding. It may appear that a rider is great on the grass compared to the others, when in reality he or she just happened to catch a few very good turf runners.

The final bit of wisdom for picking winners and making bets is to be aware of their strengths, but like everything else in handicapping horse races, be prepared for changes. There are no absolutes and just because a rider is known for being good with maidens, it doesn’t mean he or she will win with that maiden today. The most important factor is still the horse itself and how fit and ready it is for the contest it is about to run.

The most consistent horse racing systems have to have the basics and a handicapper must understand the basics. I have been around horse racing for 50 years including as an owner. Without the basics the rest is not going to do any good. If you want to learn how a horse owner and insider handicaps just go to http://williewins.homestead.com/truecb.html and get the truth.

Bill Peterson is a former horse race owner and professional handicapper. He comes from a horse race handicapping family and as he puts it, “Horse Racing is in my blood.” To see all Bill’s horse racing material go to http://williewins.homestead.com/handicappingstore.html - Bill’s handicapping store.

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By Bill Peterson

There is an old saying that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. That is certainly true at the horse races where a little knowledge can cause you to make some costly betting mistakes. Probably knowing that favorites win about a third of the races has cost many people dearly and made some false favorites.

The problem is that the public’s choice isn’t always the same. The chalk, as it is sometimes called, does win about a third of the races and completes the exacta roughly half the time, but that means it does so in all the races. That statistic doesn’t show how many win in races with short fields or how many win at 5-2 odds as opposed to 3-5 odds. If you break it down, the stats reveal that the favorite is not as likely to win in a field of 10 horses as it is in a 6 horse race.

Furthermore, the chalk isn’t as likely to win at 5-2 as it is at 3-5. Yet many people scan the toteboard and see a favorite in a race and go and bet it or use it in exotic betting and expect it to win about one race out of three. That is a recipe for financial disaster. Playing the public choice is a losing proposition over the long haul though you may experience brief times of being ahead.

If you are betting based solely on the odds without any further handicapping, consider the following;

Here are some things to avoid when playing favorites…

1. Don’t play favorites in races with fields of more than 7 horses. As field size increases, your favorite’s chances decrease exponentially

2. Don’t Bottom wheel favorites in exactas. They win roughly a third of their races and finish in the exacta about 50% of the time. That means they actually place only about once out of 6 races.

3. Don’t bet the chalk across the board. While the win bet is a losing proposition place and show are even worse because of the hidden cost of breakage (discussed in other articles I’ve written).

4. Don’t use progressive betting to try to make up for your losses when chalks fail. Some people think that there is a law of averages that if a favorite fails a certain number of times it is bound to win because of the “law of averages.” There is no law of averages and even if there was, who would enforce it?

If you must play the toteboard, then look for value in the pools by doing a little math such as the method in True Handicapping for finding live horses or even the old standby of Z betting, made popular by Dr. Ziemba many years ago.

The most consistent horse racing systems have to have the basics and a handicapper must understand the basics. I have been around horse racing for 50 years including as an owner. Without the basics the rest is not going to do any good. If you want to learn how a horse owner and insider handicaps just go to http://williewins.homestead.com/truecb.html and get the truth.

Bill Peterson is a former horse race owner and professional handicapper. He comes from a horse race handicapping family and as he puts it, “Horse Racing is in my blood.” To see all Bill’s horse racing material go to http://williewins.homestead.com/handicappingstore.html, Bill’s handicapping store.

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By Bill Peterson

Now that we have seen poly tracks installed at many race tracks in the United States and Canada, the betting public seems to have gotten as big a break as the horses who run on them. The poly tracks seem to offer a more cushioned surface for the animals and that is good news. It reduces the strain on their fragile legs and reduces injuries.

Reducing injuries is good news for everyone involved in the industry, not just the horses. While many of us were raised on dirt races run on natural surfaces, and tradition notwithstanding, I think most of us would like to see more tracks install a synthetic surface.

Handicapping horse races on the man made surfaces also seems to eliminate the problem of tracks, though a wet poly track really doesn’t seem to play exactly like a dry one. Now here is a question for you handicappers who spend hours handicapping races. How many times have you spent a lot of time deciphering a race that was to be run on the grass, only to have it switched to the dirt track because of rain?

Many people really love to watch the animals run on grass, it seems so natural and less stressful than pounding along on a hard dirt surface, but when the grass gets too wet and slippery, the races are shifted to the dirt track which may be muddy, unless it’s a synthetic surface, of course.

If they can make a synthetic dirt surface and race on it in all kinds of weather, is there an equivalent for turf races? Though it may not be the real thing, if it was safer for the horses and jockeys and kept the races on the same track for us handicappers, it would be a good thing.

As horse racing continues to evolve and change with the times, it seems that it is only a matter of time before synthetic turf replaces real grass.

The most consistent horse racing systems have to have the basics and a handicapper must understand the basics. I have been around horse racing for 50 years including as an owner. Without the basics the rest is not going to do any good. If you want to learn how a horse owner and insider handicaps just go to http://williewins.homestead.com/truecb.html and get the truth.

Bill Peterson is a former horse race owner and professional handicapper. He comes from a horse race handicapping family and as he puts it, “Horse Racing is in my blood.” To see all Bill’s horse racing material go to http://williewins.homestead.com/handicappingstore.html, Bill’s handicapping store.

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If you’re as tired of the status quo as I am in the political scene, Paris Hilton may just be the best choice for President.  I’ll admit that I was kind of hoping that Hillary would get the nomination, but she didn’t so it looks like intelligent women are not going to be on the menu. Not that Paris, in her own way, isn’t smart.  She looks pretty darned hot in that bikini when she does the video rebuttal to the comments by McCain’s latest stooge. (Where do these people get off comparing Paris Hilton to anyone as an example of someone we would expect to not have a clue about an important issue?)  What is this, bash Obama and Paris and get two for one?

The key to the upcoming presidential election seems to be change, not unlike every other presdential election in the history of this country.  Same old rhetoric about changing or not changing the direction this country is going in, blah, blah, blah, I’m just so sick of that crap.  Are you?  What do they ever change?  Not much.

Following American politics is getting to be like watching a train wreck in slow motion.  You know what’s going to happen, but you, the voter, really are powerless to change anything.  Sooner or later you realize, it isn’t your country, you just live here. We get two choices and neither one is very appealing in this old horseplayers opinion, and I’ve been handicapping elections and horse races longer than I care to mention.  Hell, I still can’t believe Dewey didn’t make it (no wise guys and girls, he was not one of Donald Duck’s nephews!)

Paris Hilton may not be a rocket scientist, but do we really need a super smart person in office this time around?  OOps sounds like I’m leaning towards McCain, doesn’t it?  Well I’m not.  I am voting for Paris and I urge all you to write in a ballot for Paris Hilton the next President of the United States, and I might add, the sexiest, too.

Now Paris suggested that she might pick Briana for a running mate (whoever she is, sorry I don’t follow these things as closely as I should) but I think that would be a mistake.  I think that Hillary Rodham Clinton is the obvious choice for Vice president of the United States.  First of all, if they appear together in public, Hil will make Paris look even better.  Secondly, associating with an intelligent, ambitious, civic-minded woman wouldn’t hurt Paris Hilton’s somewhat tarnished public image.  Finally, for those moments when Paris’s, shall we say, “blondeness,” causes a slight problem, Hillary could step in and take control.

Before they get elected, presidential hopefuls always tell us how they are going to fix the country and of all the great things they will do.  After they get elected they tell us why the president can’t fix everything in the country and how it is really up to us.  In other words, not much will change.  Ater he is elected, Barack Obama will tell us why we have to allow offshore drilling so Exxon can rape and pillage a little more and squeeze a few billion more out of the environment.  He’ll also explain why we can’t just “pull out,” of Iraq.  We’re already hearing this from McSame so basically we would be getting the same thing.  So what it really comes down to is this, the biggest issue in the presidential race, as I see it, is who do you want to look at for the next four years?  Well, duh, Paris wins hands down.  Hell, she’s going to be in the news all the time anyway for being rich and blonde so we may as well elect her and give her one more reason to be a media star.

As I see it, Paris Hilton and Hillary Clinton would be the dream team.  The perfect combination of experience (I mean Hillary’s), looks, brains (you know), and charm (both).  I’m sure either of them could charm most of the world’s leaders.  Yes, as a team I can’t think of any other two women who could beat Paris and Hillary, can you?