Profile Of A Horseplayer – Marshall Gramm

On a Thursday in June, 1991, a boy and his brother made the pilgrimage from Washington D.C. to Pimlico Race Course to see one horse run: Quail Ridge Swap, a perennial claimer in the Mid-Atlantic circuit who had finished 10th in his last race just 12 days before, and a horse the two boys had been fervently following via the newspaper. By the time the dust settled on the 7th race in Baltimore, Quail Ridge Swap was a winner for the 19th time, and a young Marshall Gramm had cashed his first bet. 

A painting of Quail Ridge Swap, done by Michael Geraghty, an artist whose work has been featured on the Saratoga program and sold around the country, and who was at one point the hot walker for Quail Ridge Swap, now hangs on Dr. Gramm’s wall, a link between a bright-eyed youth and his current day success. 

Like many in the ’80s and ’90s, Gramm had scant access to television with cable slowly becoming commonplace in households across the country, so he turned to the newspaper to keep himself entertained. That paper featured a column on horse racing by one Andrew Beyer. The charts that were included, covering the runners at flat and harness tracks across the region, drew in the numerical-minded Gramm into the racing world to follow horses like Quail Ridge Swap. From that first bet at Pimlico, a horseplayer was born. 

Gramm has been a force in the tournament scene, qualifying for the NHC for the last dozen years, earning a best finish of 9th place. He has also scored big in the 2020 Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge, beating out 429 other horseplayers and earning a sum of nearly $500,000 in winnings. Gramm has posted two other top 10 finishes of 5th and 10th in the BCBC as well. He’s fired on all cylinders in 2026, winning the $500 Santa Anita Challenge against 118 other entries and claiming another trip back to the NHC in Vegas, as well as finishing second in the 2026 Belmont Stakes Challenge which offered another NHC seat that he can kick his feet up on.

“I love the tournament space. I really enjoy the live bankroll tournaments where it comes down to making a couple decisions. You have to be really flexible based upon where you are in the tournament. I find I definitely play more live bankroll tournaments. The NHC is probably one of the only mythical tournaments I play.”

When asked about his big win in the BCBC, Gramm noted multiple things that made the victory satisfactory. “First of all, it’s a lot of money. Second of all, it’s a vindication that I haven’t wasted all these years on handicapping, right? It’s nice that we, as handicappers, have a way to get recognized.”

His success as a horseplayer hasn’t stopped him from participating in the sport in other ways, beginning a new venture on an August day in 2008. At Parx Race Track, with a claim for $5000 to acquire a mare by Gulch with the name of Aunt Dot Dot, Gramm became an owner as well as a horseplayer, sparking a number of partnerships and syndicates with multiple stakes winners and placers. That claimed mare, Aunt Dot Dot, went on to foal multiple stakes and Grade 3 winner Dot Matrix. Gramm’s biggest accomplishment as an owner is Ten Strike Racing, in conjunction with fellow horseplayer and owner Clay Sanders. The two horseplayers connected in Tennessee, where horse racing has long been dormant, and now manage a syndicate with multiple partners and stakes winners across the Northeast and Midwest. The name of the syndicate comes from the horse Ten Strike, the first winner of the Tennessee Derby in 1884 before racing in the state imploded due to gambling restrictions.

“The Tennessee Derby was run at Montgomery Park in Memphis, Tennessee. It’s at the Liberty Bowl (where the Liberty Bowl currently stands), which is a mile and a half from where I live,” Gramm mentioned, as a part of what influenced the name. 

Gramm has also found ways to implement racing into his everyday life away from the track. At Rhodes College, where he works as a professor of Economics, Gramm has started a course teaching students about betting markets in the context of horse racing. 

“The class is called the Economics of Racetrack Wagering Markets. This is my fourth time teaching it, I have 39 students and it’s a lot of fun. We talk about model building, we talk about pace, we have a handicapping contest, we make speed figures, and relate it to a lot of things in economics and finance and decision making.”

Dr. Gramm has a lot on his plate, but he’s never lost touch with the spark that makes him a horseplayer first. The passion that kickstarted his horseplaying career is still burning as brightly as that June day at Pimlico, and it’s carrying him to a trip back to Vegas in February. And to top it off, the once starry-eyed kid obsessed with the newspaper charts is now passing on his passion to the next generation.