Show 46: Horseplayer and Author Barry Meadow

***Please note this was done with AI and likely contains errors and inaccuracies. ***

For 35 years, the thoroughbred retirement foundation has been dedicated to saving thoroughbred race horses, no longer able to compete on the racetrack from possible neglect, abuse and slaughter, the oldest and largest charity in the U S devoted to race horses. The TRF makes a promise of lifelong sanctuary to those horses, unable to pursue a second athletic career unique within the aftercare industry, the horses of the TRF find their second chance in the role of teachers through the TRF second chances program, which provides vocational training in seven correctional facilities across the U S the program is saving horses and saving lives.

Learn more at www dot TRF Inc org. And please use the special in the money podcast link to donate TRF Inc org slash.

Your listening to the, in the money players podcast.

Hello. Hello and welcome to the end. The money players podcast. This is show number 46 dropping on Memorial day 2019. And for your Memorial day listening pleasure. We have a very special treat. I’m Peter Thomas foreign, a towel. I am right now in the Brooklyn bunker recording this. By the time it reaches the, in the money airwaves, I will be traveling in Italy for the week, but I will be checking in for the late week show.

And for some of the other stuff we have going on, but we’re doing a little bit of a time capsule thing here. If there’s any references that don’t fully make sense, that’s probably why. And I’m really happy to have on the show. Somebody whose work I’ve admired for a very long time and somebody who I’ve found very inspiring in terms of both his written work and the way he looks at the world and the creativity he showed in his newsletter.

Many years ago, I’m talking about Barry meadow. He’s got a new book out. Uh, it is called the skeptical handicapper. He’s also of course the author of the classic money secrets at the racetrack. That’s what my voice wanted to say there for a second. Barry, how are you today? Hi, I’m doing good. Great. How are you?

Oh, I’m excellent. It’s so, so great to be able to sit down here and talk with you. It’s like one of those things, I think catcher in the rye, might’ve put it forward. The idea that you read a book, how great would it be to be able to call up the author and talk to them about the book, especially when it’s a book that you love.

I’m getting to live that right now, talking to you about the skeptical handicapper. Well, it’s a, it’s certainly nice to talk. Not only you, but also to the people who are listening to the podcast. And hopefully I’ll have a couple of things to say that might help, uh, help them in the game. Sure. That you will.

And I have to say that the Venn diagram of potential book readers and folks who listen to this show, it should be very, very strong if you like the kind of things that JK and I talk about, you know, a lot of times we’re dealing in narratives and our own experiences with those narratives. Sometimes anecdotal evidence that supports sometimes anecdotal evidence that refutes, but what you’ve done with this book with another man, I admire tremendously.

Ken Massa of HTR is test these things much the same way. Many years ago, bill James tested a lot of the old school wisdom of baseball and how that’s grown into sabermetrics and all that. I kind of feel like it’s a little bit of a similar approach you took to horse racing here. Where did you get the idea to do this very well?

I’ve got a library full of handicapping books going back many, many decades. And the problem with most of them is they they’re based on the author’s experience. I use this angle, that one, or I heard a guy that seminar say this, or my friend does this. I wanted facts and data. They say a thousand anecdotes equals zero evidence.

So I wanted to have evidence. So to be able to get evidence. That means I had to do a very, very large computer project and who better to do that with and Ken Masser from HDR. So we worked out together. We discussed the types of, uh, types of surveys that we could do and what could be done by computers because not everything can be done.

Uh, and then we came up with the parameters and then, uh, off we were, we checked every race from 2014, 30, 2017 nationwide, which was 168,000 races. And we discovered a couple of things on the way. Well, we’re going to talk about some of those. We’re not going to give away the store. People are obviously going to be encouraged to buy the book here, but I will ask it this way.

What do you think is the thing that surprised you the most that you learned when looking at the data compared to what your horseplayer mind would’ve thought might’ve been the case? Well, I’d say the importance of workouts, uh, which of course I did look at workouts and I always had. To work out report that I bought every time I played.

Um, but the workouts are pretty important because they show you what the horse has been doing in the last few days, rather than maybe the last race for two months ago. So that was one factor. But the overarching thing was the relentless excellence of the public. No matter what factors we looked at, it seems that, uh, the public was onto them.

I’ll just give you one example. Um, you take horses and it raised anywhere between less than 10 days ago. And we’re coming back quickly. So some players say, that’s great, they’re in great shape. Others say, Hey, they’re being rushed and they won’t learn well. So, uh, if the horse had one last time, uh, there were 1300 races like that.

They returned 98 cents on the dollar. Very, very good results. If they finished fourth or worst, last time they only, uh, returned 0.59. So the public was able to zero in on these horses quite nicely. And is one more example for a long shot better. Let’s see. Where’s one his last race at 10 to one in Ohio or finish second, his last race attempt to one or higher.

What will you do with his next race? Well, it was strictly a function of if he was better than that. If he won. Uh, and he was favored, uh, that horse lost 15 cents on the dollar. If he went off at eight to one or more, he lost 42 cents on the dollar. And the numbers are very, very similar with the worst ran second at 10 to one I hired last time.

So the public really is able to figure things out quite well. We have, uh, we have a difficult task because we’re playing against a pretty short people. No doubt about it and getting sharper all the time as a professional horseplayer yourself, you’ve seen the way that markets have changed, honestly, in large part because of computer batters using more.

Objective data, then a lot of the subjective stuff we bring to the party. So it’s an, obviously that is priced in also to these, to the public numbers that you’re citing, but it is amazing in all these studies that have been done, how often the public gets it. Right. One study. I remember reading from years ago, I believe it was a fabric, hand was the, was the author.

And it showed that in terms of your ROI, you were better off in, in a theoretical world where you had to either bet all favorites or bet, all long shots that the efficiencies or inefficiencies were such that you lost less betting at the lower end of the OD spectrum than you did at the higher end of the odd spectrum.

Is that something you looked at in the book and did you find that dynamic to still be in play, right? That remains true. Uh, however, that doesn’t mean you should start playing favorites because when you play favorites, there’s not much you can do to improve the ROI. When you’re playing a long shots, you have a very good chance to improve the R and the ROI, because let’s say you’re playing 10 to one shots and, uh, you hit one out of 12.

Uh, let’s say that you hit one out of nine instead. So you hit, let’s say 93, 10 to one shots, uh, versus. In mine 10 to one shots, that’s a big difference. And that puts you into the profit column. So you have more, more chance to make money with higher priced horses because there’s more flexibility there.

And when you’re talking about horses that win at a very high percentage and returned 84, 85 cents of a dollar, it’s very hard to get that number too much past that. So there’s a combination. Obviously you need to play some favorites because you want to hit things like big floors and pick fives when you’re going to need that, that outstanding working horse.

On the other hand, if you spend all your time betting those favorites, it’s very hard to. Overcome the hard to unlock the kind of prices that you’re looking for. I wanted to follow up on the point you made before about workouts. I don’t know. It’s up to you. If you want to give out the sort of gem piece of info that really unlocked a lot of the queries and turn them a lot more profitable.

I’m fine. If you want to make people read the book for that one, I’d be absolutely fine with that. T’s I was super impressed by that, but my theory on it, I wanted to run by you and it’s that even the workouts are very much in the public consciousness in a lot of places. People are very concerned and logically.

So as I always was much less concerned with what a computer could see when looking at a workout tab and much more concerned with what a professional clocker would see and be more looking for the way that that number was earned. It kind of shocked me that there was as much signal as there was in looking at the raw data to come out of those workouts.

And I wondered if it wasn’t just cause nobody not nobody, but so many fewer people are looking at workouts in that way of just, what does this objective data tell us so many, like me are more interested in the subjective interpretation of, okay. Yeah. That horse went 58 with a really light rider, but this other horse really worked better, even though it ran a second slower, but he had the, uh, giant exercise rider up and wasn’t asked as much.

How much did it surprise you that there was so much signal in just the raw data of workouts? Well, we were able to find things such as, uh, you take all the two year old first time starters whose final workout was a five for a long bullet. We found 3000 of those sources. And if you’ve been every single one with no handicapping whatsoever, you’ve made a 6% profit.

It doesn’t mean you’re necessarily going to make a profit into the future doing it, but it does show you that certainly looking at those workouts are very, very important. Uh, and we looked at, uh, workouts. Patterns for how, how many furlongs the horse work? That’s important? Was the horse regularly working out that’s important as well?

Uh, the times of the workout count, which trainers working the horse out. And of course, when I had to cap, as you do, I always bought workout reports. So I had a subjective observer who knows what he’s looking at. Say this horse, even on his time was better. Didn’t look that good. And this other horses time, wasn’t that good?

I looked excellent. So I always factored that in when I was handicapping, but it’s amazing, uh, that simply using the silver workout parameters, we ended up come up with, uh, uh, things that easily beat the track tape, just using the workouts and not too many other factors. If you mix that in with a high level trainer, uh, and uh, other factors you’re onto something.

When you talk about the computer players in the book, we don’t talk too much about the specific strategies we as HorsePlayers can use to maybe try to go where they’re weak in doing all this research of data. Did any ideas of places to maybe attack data oriented players come to you? And if there’s nothing, if there’s no meat on that bone, I’ve just ask it a different way.

How are you dealing with competing with these computer players in 2019? Well, I can see, luckily I’m retired now, so I don’t have to fit against them. But certainly the last few years that I played, uh, which ended in 2011, the computer players were having some of their best of years. And so was I, so even though I was playing against him, uh, I was still able to find plenty of gyms to play.

I was just talking about a month ago and Las Vegas, the one of the guys who runs one of those teams, and I asked him, do you think a lone Wolf player, even today can make money against the computer teams? And he says, absolutely because we can’t drill as deeply into a particular circuit, has an individual player can.

And what kind of locked into what parameters? So our idea is to try to bet as many tracks as possible and as many racists, but can we be beaten by the lone Wolf whom those nuances of his own track? Absolutely. And, and, uh, that’s always the way I felt and that I’m glad to see that, uh, uh, this guy who runs a giant team said exactly the same thing.

There’s certainly plenty of room for a player to win, even though a lot of the obvious factors are not that helpful. For example, uh, you find a horse with a high speed figure. Well, that’s not really going to help you. Uh, it’s more important to know how here of those figures, uh, the obvious factors, the jockey percentage or class drive earnings per star, that’s the last race.

Those are all things that have all been baked into the odds. And so there’s no real ads in that particular situation, but there are plenty of areas that you can. It is one that I always use was I watched the replays extremely carefully. I can just look at charts. Uh, luckily for me, I, I knew what I was looking at.

So when I watched the replay, I looked at the certainly looking for trouble, which is always overrated and is basically useless. I was looking for other things like, uh, what kind of position does this horse like to be? And did he get it in this race? How did the pace to him? Was he inside or outside? Was there a bias involved?

Uh, was there a jockey’s mistake, which might’ve led to some inefficiency in his performance? So that to me was a big ed watch replays carefully. And if you do that, uh, uh, I think that, uh, you can still, you know, you can still succeed. There are other factors as well that you can look at. Obviously if somebody is at the track, looking at the static and the warmups and those, those horses individually, that’s going to be an advantage that the computer guys can’t do as well.

And if you’re very, very good at figuring when the problem with the pace of the race, who’s going to be where who’s going to be, which positions that just doing that, every single race made me a lot of buddy over the years, because every once in a while, I find a horse that for four or five races did not get his happy situation.

He drew their own poster. He was only against certain courses who was running style, a herd him, and then he would join to race where, Oh, this is exactly what he wants. And he’s got all these crappy looking races in front of him. And then that’s where he can score. And that’s where you can make some real money in this game, doing what the public is not doing and not going through the obvious.

That’s a truism, I’d say so many things to unpack from that. I’m going to start with a really simple one. What past performances were you regularly using? How were you tracking those trip notes that I assume you were making from all the video watching you were doing? That’s right. Well, what I did is I use those little player.

I use the daily racing forum and as I watched the replays, I wrote my notes on the form. And then after I finished watching the replays, I transferred it to my own computer database. So I had a list of all the horses. And notes every time they race. Now, of course I didn’t insure him. I wasn’t writing out a four hour explanation for each horse.

Right. But I could very quickly see if the horse was white. How was he, how wide was he? Did he look game? Uh, was he in any sort of distress? Was he in a spot in the light? And I had shown the hands to be able to do that. So each day when I looked at the, uh, at the entry is coming up, I did the, I did my hand.

He got the night before the racist, and then I just tweaked it when the final changes came in. Um, when I did my handicapping, I always had my notes in front of me, so I can punch up the name of the horse and I could see. My comments are on all his races right there. And, uh, I think that’s very, very important.

You cannot just make the notes, but to be able to use them because some people make notes and they forget that was your bias. That day GF, the guy is like my thing. So you have to be organized to regional and this as well. So basically I was, I was, uh, an accountant that leads me to a question I had further down my list, but how would you describe from your pro playing days?

What was your business model as it were. Well, there were certain factors I looked at, which I think the public didn’t look at, particularly for example, I always look to work. I get the best rebates because rebates are a very important part of making money for just about all of the big players these days.

And, uh, just that difference of a few percent makes it makes a big difference in your bottom line, if you make a lot of money. So I was constantly figuring out, was it a bookmaker within an offshore casino? Was it a sports book? Was it a, uh, uh, a rebate shop? Um, and there were plenty of plenty of different ones that I played at.

Um, so that was pointed out this part of it, uh, trying to figure it out how I can get the best rebates, trying to figure out where I might have some of the advantage. I wasn’t playing every track in the world. That was frustrating just on the tracks that I knew, which was Southern California and Northern California.

So rather than get scattered and try to handicap every race in the wall. Uh, gee loosen her with the mistakes in New York. Who’s going to win the Derby. I stayed with my own local horses. So I concentrated on that. Uh, particularly then I kept records of every bit I made every day was after the races. A Kenneth thing didn’t take that long, but certainly did take some time.

So I knew how I did on wind bets. How I did on exact is how I did on fit threes. So I could easily see if I was making any particular kind of mistake or betting too much on certain things, stuff like that. So it was kind of evaluating what my results were and then I would make some, uh, some changes in what I was doing based on the results.

I also played on the betting exchanges. When you could play on the exchanges. Now you can only play in New Jersey and take out as much higher than when I played against. So, uh, to some extent I was playing on a little different fields than a lot of the other players, because I was getting rebates. I was playing of changes.

And um, sometimes negotiating deals. Uh, so I included all that, which any businessman would do just pay retail price, you figure, where can I get the best deal? That’s a great answer. And something that folks can learn from one positive development in the year, since you stopped playing regularly. A lot of the people listening are going to know this already, but now with the ability with certain computer programs, to just put your notes right in the PPS once and have them and have them appear the next time and record keeping has never been easier.

If you can find an ADW that you’re happy with, that you can make all your wages or nearly all your wagers, that record keeping you talk about, instead of having to spend 20 minutes a day, you can just put the query and look at your own stuff. So even though we talk a lot of times about the ways that the game has gotten harder, Since Barry was playing regularly for the players listening today, there are some ways in which technology and the evolution of the game has made life a little bit easier in certain respects for serious HorsePlayers.

I have another question about the business model Barry, and it has to do with where you more oriented towards looking for big scores or grinding out a profit. I was more of a grinder. Uh, there was a famous worst guy named Ernie Dolman for many, many, many years. And, uh, he, uh, told me, he says, Barry, you know, I’m a single center, but other people hit the home run.

And that’s kind of the way I felt I wanted to win. Of course, when we’re playing on the exchanges, you can play most of the races. You have some opinion on one way or the other, you might hate the third choice or as a methodology. I say it’s over that. Whereas if you’ve been in just in the parimutuel rules, you’re not going to make as many plays.

So, uh, uh, It was, it was very important for me to not just wait for the big score. What happens if that big score doesn’t come from months and months and months, I would rather be able to grind out some, uh, uh, some money in the meantime. And then when I had to carry over to play or a mandatory to play, then I would play those pick sixes and, and, uh, uh, you know, and, and pick fives.

Uh, but otherwise, uh, there were other bets that I could make that I was going to win more often. And of course winning often is psychologically important. Plus, uh, when you play low probability events with big tobacco, because you’re going to have long losing streaks of how good you are, and if you’re losing the streets are too big, you start seeing yourself, why am I even doing this?

And then your confidence goes down and it’s just like any other sports. So you’ve got to have some wins in there too. What pools were you the most active in? Would you say? I would say I played a lot of wind and exactly. Those were certainly two of the, two of the polls that played, uh, often daily doubles.

It depends on what track I was playing just daily doubles of I played at golden gate. So I couldn’t make any kind of big bets into them. Um, whereas I’m cooking at, uh, seven, eight or a Delmark. So, um, I was, I was looking always exactly prices of Nobel prizes when what’s the ratio place and show. Cause every once in a while there was some money that could be stolen out of the place in joyful.

And so I kept an eye on all the pools, particularly with a couple of minutes to post I’m. Luckily I can pretty much calculate stuff in my head quickly and she’d get out. Maybe a horse was 41 to win when he was five to one. If you played them proportionally grappling in the exact same as the big computer betters, it’s going to retain that harder to do that now than it was for most of these, I was playing, but I always kept track of all the pools.

So when I played from home, which I eventually did. I had several screens up on my mother and her share. Plus of course I had a CBG up on the, on the TV. So I was working a lot of different pools. You were doing that math in your head when you were figuring out how could I construct this? Exactly. To get forward to one on the three to one?

Or did you have computer tools to help you with that? No, I did all my head because I just used the choice. If it was the same exact it was playing, I was paying, uh, uh, $14 we’re at 61. So it’s give or take 14, 15% of the pool for that horse. And I had an exact number. So if it was a, exactly, it was paying eight 20.

I know it was three to one w an exact, it was paying $60. It was closer to 31, which is 3% of the pool. So I sent, they added those numbers up and figured out what the, what an individual horse can be. And once you do it a lot, and I did it thousands and thousands and thousands of times. It’s second nature to you.

How important were big days? This is still sort of on the business model topic. Did you up your bank roll for big days? Were you looking at the game any differently or was the Kentucky Derby day, just another Saturday of racing for you? Well, I know some players say, well, the Kentucky Derby is, uh, you know, the Holy grail.

Is he going to have a big day? That day was a huge pools. You can make big scores and your last, the whole year. Well, that’s great. A lot of times there’s a lot of horses and have a chance to win. It’s not that easy, handicapping it. And for me, I was not as excited about the big days as many other people.

Cause we, you know, people who know like in the Derby, who do you like, I have no idea when you pick your favorite color. Although I did try, I did that this year. I did get maximum security, so I’m not,

that’s pretty funny. So I teach you that, but it was pretty rare that I bet a horse that was not in my Southern and Northern California area. And let’s face it when you’re dealing with races where versus you’re racing a mile and a quarter, a mile and a half distance, just maybe they’ve never done before.

If you’re coming from a half a dozen different tracks where maybe the number was good, maybe it was not so good. Maybe the Sheriff’s was different. Uh, maybe some of them were shit better than others. Maybe some of them took to the, the track where the big race is being held. It’s difficult to handicap these things and I leave it to others to do that.

Let me stick with the horses. I know, uh, particularly as the trips, I want to make one comment though, since it isn’t an answer to Belmont, uh, Oh, uh, overwhelmed more. Well-known when he won the, uh, when the prisoners got, you know, the absolute all-time trip, if always has had a lap, he could say that race to call him through his lap.

Once it’s like that. Generally get over that next time. So I always was looking for listeners who got perfect scripts and if got to prove trips in a row, wow. Score time for me playing against them. So I was always looking to play against horses who got exactly what they wanted and play on horses, who maybe haven’t done exactly what they wanted recently.

I think that’s definitely something you gotta be paying attention to. If you’re going to be a winning horse player with maximum security, was that a pace play for you? Well, Madison’s acuity. I had, uh, every once in a while, I’ll play a carry over pick five or pick six, if it’s a mandatory day or if it’s a big carry over or I’m not doing anything that day.

Um, I still, I play a few times a year and I happen to play, uh, the, uh, pick five or when maximum security completed the last way, somebody putting a few small dollars, but it wasn’t just that he was impressive to me. I say, this is a wish Alexa, get to the front. So of course I look at the Derby, like everybody else, I went to one to deputy Jeremy many years ago.

So I bet a souvenir ticket, a wholly ball, which I think was 1995. I believe he’s still running. I’m not sure he did not do that. Well. That was just to have a souvenir. But, uh, anyway, so that’s your maximum security? Well, I’m looking at these looked for racing styles. Nobody wants the front rice, which is very rare.

And Kentucky Derby usually has a few kamikaze types that are going to go as far as they want this. Cause the owners maybe wanting to see the colors on TV or something. But this one, it looked like nobody wanted to leave at all. I said, well, he’s your friend right there. Plus he has the Francis come home to, if nobody bothers him, he’s going to be very, very tough.

So I said, okay, if he’s I’m in Korea, I want to be 92 or more. I play well, as it turns out, he went off at night too. I’ll play them. And I was happy for him. 24 minutes. How active are you in the various pools these days? I mean, are you, are you looking every day in Southern California? Is it once in a while?

How retired are you? I guess I’m actually retired. So now when I play there, when I play, uh, the horses, which, uh, I will do every once in a while, if there’s a big carry over somewhere, a big, mandatory payoff. So I’m handicapping, Arlington or Woodbine or Saratoga horses I never, ever, ever played in the 23 years.

I was playing full time. Uh, but I do it now as a fan. I just, you know, I’ve got my form, I’ll do my little paper and pencil phone. Maybe I’ll watch a couple of replays on questionable horses and then they pick up tickets. So now it’s more of a fun hobby. And of course I’m playing, you know, pretty small tickets for me, which is, might be, I might play on a pick five on, I play three, $400.

I’m not playing the kind of tickets I used to play when I was actually gambling. But I do that. I’d say that happens maybe once a month or so, but so I’m not actively looking, but it’s kind of a little hobby can vary if you don’t mind the question, Oh, you go ahead, go ahead. Previously. I was playing every day.

I never missed a day. So, uh, and you know, at that time, Delmar was running six days a week. So there was a lot of work. Seriously. I’m as much a replaced at midnight. I had to schedule that same schedule every day. And I liked my replays at the end of the day. That was my last thing because luckily I’m, I am alert at night.

And, uh, I said, well, you know, I’m up pretty late. It’d be nice to go to sleep. And I realized, Oh, this nobody else is doing this. So that made me feel good. 80 hours a week, I think is what Mike Maloney has estimated. And in a busy time they’ll spend, is that about, well, I only got divorced twice, so mostly I was successful with that.

Oh my goodness. That when you were doing, I got to I’m going right back to the business model stuff. Cause it’s, you’re talk about it in such an interesting way and the idea of retirement itself. I mean, how much to me, you’ve got to be loving it. If you’re putting in that amount of hours, like loving it in a way where it’s almost hard for me to believe you could back it off to playing once a month.

Was there some element of this was that this, this was your job. The way that, you know, uh, Wallace Stevens was a banker, but he really wanted to write poetry and the bank was just a job. Was this just a job or, or what. No, it was never just a job because I always loved horses. I used to watch, uh, harness races on TV back when I was in the fifth grade, even though nobody in my family even knew what a horse was or gambling for that matter.

Uh, it there’s something, something drew me. I like solving puzzles and every race was a different puzzle. So every day when I got the form, uh, you know, in the old days you had to go to the liquor store, okay. There yet. And eventually you get everything over the internet and just print it out. And he worked on it.

But I look forward to the new card because, uh, you never knew what was going to show up there. You never knew who was going to draw, what posts, what distance were going to be called, who might have a situation that he was going to light. So I think if you don’t love this, you shouldn’t be doing this at any kind of full-time thing.

If you’re just doing it for the money, it’s like any job you do for the money, it becomes a grind. I always looked, I never got tired of it. It’s amazing. That’s amazing. All right. Well then I have to ask what went into the decision to retire. How did you, how did you go from where you were with feeling it as a passion, even when it was your source of income to, to being able to go.

I mean, it’s not cold Turkey once a month, but man, it’s it’s close. Well, my wife, uh, who was going to retire, so as it turned out, she was a successful business woman. She’s a lot younger than I am. You know what I think, I, I think I’m done on time getting burned out. I said, well, he didn’t retire. I think prior to the day she retired was the last game that I played.

That’s amazing. And what has take, obviously this book factors into it, but what does a typical day look like now for a retired horseplayer. Well, uh, I love playing pickleball. That’s my new hobby. I played, I played tennis a lot, uh, which I used to play even when I was doing the horses. I’d start today, playing tennis, go home, take a shower, check the late stages, do my final tweaks for the car, have my lunch, get ready to play the whole afternoon and then do my accounting and my numbers and, uh, and the replays at night.

Um, so now that I don’t have that, of course I was Spanish. I spent time working on other stuff, plus I like to travel. So since I’ve been retired, I’ve tried, I kind of liked to travel the strange countries by myself. Usually it’s just weird, but I’ve been to North Korea. I’ve been to LAN Dubai. I’ve been to Mongolia.

I’ve been to Bhutan. I can go to weird places. Just by myself and just kind of see what happens. So that’s one of my hobbies. I enjoyed doing that. And, uh, I like to read and, uh, I, you know, like my sports and, uh, um, I’m not bored yet. Oh my God. I’m guarantee you. We could get another hour out of just your travel, but I’d be remiss to not ask for one travel story in a place like Iran or North Korea, because I’m going to guess you’ve got dozens.

You know, ran, I think the biggest surprise that most people here don’t know how super friendly the people were over there. Now we were, we were on it, uh, somewhat of a restriction where we could travel. I was in a little group. Sometimes I go without a group, but I went with the group this time and there was some restriction on where we could travel, but still that’s okay, we’ll leave you here.

The bus will pick you up in three hours and just wander around the town square or the park or whatever. And so I would talk to random people. Many of them spoke English. Plus we had some Portuguese speakers on the trip and the good will and the friendliness and the people I see as more than probably any place I’ve ever been to.

And I’m sure that even takes place today, even though the governments are always fighting each other. Why that is? I couldn’t tell you, but I can tell you, I mean, I know the background I’m going to bore, you read the whole historical background for us around that. Relationship, but the Uranian people, uh, are, you know, super, super friendly and super nice.

Plus of course the food is great and a lot of things to see, so I could have easily stayed there another month. I loved the place, any horse racing over there. Uh, you know, I don’t know. I didn’t see any, any horse racing. You see some, uh, I did see a lot of mosque, not much, not much in the way of horse racing.

I saw some souvenir shops and, uh, I did not see any and it racing, but I think it was racing in some other countries. I went to that. Vietnam. I went to a horse races. India went to horse races,  races. So if I, if I am in a place that’s got horse racing and I have the time to do it. I, I do like to go to the races just to see how they do it.

All right. You’ve mentioned Southern California racing, Del Mar specifically and tennis. So now I have to ask you about another one of my idols, one who I’ve had the chance to hang out a lot with back when he was around. I’m curious if you ever got to play tennis with the great racing writer, William Murray.

No, I never did. I didn’t even know this incident in tennis. This is see I’m picking up some news. I didn’t know that. Oh, I know he was a great writer. And if I could be about one third, the writer that he is, I’d be very satisfied with him. That’s kind of you to say. And I feel very, very similarly when it comes to when it comes to bill.

And I want to talk a little bit more about your background. You, you alluded to finding harness, racing and following it. And presumably that was your path in, but how did you ramp up as a player and, and become more serious about it? Well, I, you know, as I said, I got interested in harness racing back when I was a kid, we used to play for nickels.

Uh, how many winners you picked? And if, uh, if you pick more winners than the other kids, they had to pay you the difference. So if you had three winners, they had to. They had to pay you a nickel. Each kid had to pay you a nickel. So once there was one kid that kept winning and I still have this keep, keep winning.

I found out he was getting the selections of a local newspaper handicap, and the rest of us were just playing numbers. Hey, this is interesting. There’s some, uh, some knowledge, she has some information that gives you an advantage. So, uh, how did I get into it? Well, I was, I was, when I was teaching tennis, I was going to the racetrack every night probably was not a great idea.

I wasn’t, you know, winning much or losing much, but, uh, you know, I did enjoy going. And when I came to California, I originally came out here because I thought maybe I’d be a sick time writer until I discovered nobody thought I was very fun. So as a result, something else, and I had, no, I had no college degree or any particular skill that I could go to a corporation.

Uh, so I said, okay, well, my grandpa has a harness races out here, which was weird because I didn’t even know any of the drivers or horses or anything about West coast harness racing. But it was just, you know, it was a delusional idea, but it turned out, it wasn’t that bad. I started making money at the honest races and I was going to the track every night and eventually my kid was going to start school.

And I said, well, you know, if you start at school and I go out at night, I won’t be able to see him at all. So maybe I’ll switch to the third grids because they have those big pick sixes. I can bet more money. I can make a lot of money. It’ll be just great. I’ll just learn a few things. There should be no problem.

Well, it took me two years before I had any confidence that I could actually win. Uh, and that, of course at the beginning, The smart thing would have been for me to bet either nothing or tiny amounts of money, but you know, being, being, you know, uh, you know, the ego of the horse player. Oh yeah, I can, I can win here.

Shouldn’t be any problem. I just started losing and losing and losing. I said, well, I think I’ve been a long time to do this. So it took me a while, but eventually I caught on and, uh, that was new, new. I never started legally do anything else cause I liked doing it well. That’s terrific. What was your, this is a tough one.

What was your most memorable day as a professional horse player? That’s a hard one because I’ve had a couple of big pick sixes and I think, but that’s probably not my, uh, not my most memorable day even, or there was some pretty big scores involved in there. I think it was a day where my wife is going to work.

I said, you know what? I’m going to win $20,000 on with race today. There’s a horse I’ve been watching, watching, watching, and he is in a spot. It’s going to be a beautiful day when you come home from work today. And that’s exactly what happened. He was at, we went up at five to one and each with each, he, he got further and further and further ahead of the rest of the pack.

And I said, you know what? I can not, this is good. I like this. So there were days like that, where the night before, or that morning, I said, wow, this is going to be a giant score day. And when that, when that did happen, uh, that certainly was the light like babe Ruth calling his shot at sounds like, well, yeah, sometimes, you know, sometimes you look at a card and you say, wow, this card is mine.

I see a bunch of situations. Other times you look at it and go, Oh, this is going to be a call in my bed. And I couldn’t walk too many nicest today because it could be tempting. Luckily for me, When I handled that, I always wrote down the odds I needed to play a particular horse or a play particular.

Exactly. And I didn’t deviate from it when the racialist began. So even though I might’ve liked the voice, maybe I liked him at an eight to five and he ended up going off four or five while I just didn’t play him. Um, and sometimes I would switch through another worse than the race because no horse has a hundred percent chance to win a race unless it’s a walkover.

So everybody has some chance. So sometimes I pointed some, some value in there. Uh, but I, you know, there were certain, certain races that stick out. One time I played a horse that was 42 to one in a bad race. I wasn’t interested in the morning, but I was watching the odds go up and golden against this one was in that dad.

He’s not that bad as just kept going up and up and up. So I was forced to bet on that a, uh, and an off shore race books, I would kill my price and, um, uh, the wishes kept going forward and going forward and going forward, if we went away season, it wasn’t, it wasn’t even a close race. And I said, you know, this is a very, very satisfying thing.

Recent originally I was given the play I to put in $17,000 on, so called faker, that value oriented you, a PR approach you described, which is so different from the selection oriented approach that I think is intuitive to most horse players. Is that something that you taught yourself or did you learn it from somewhere?

Um, you know, I think I just figured out really quickly that it’s not so much how many winners you pick, but what crises are getting, because everything has a value. What are you talking about real estate or selling cars or anything else? There’s a certain place. It makes something. Uh, a good play cause something else that makes it a bad play.

And why should a horse at the beginning of different? So a horse, it is, uh, might be a good bet at five to two. Maybe he’s not there to get better at six to five. You’ll be a better, better at four to one. So what you do and you be spending more of your time trying to figure out what are the right numbers on these horses.

And once you have that, then you’re looking for a discrepancy between your opinion on the crowds. And if you have no discrepancy, well, you know, as it takeout can’t be that. So you’re looking for a race where you think the, where should be, let’s say three to one in the crowd next from five to one, as an example, did you do that math in your head as well?

Did you have a spreadsheet to help you? I assume you calculated a hundred percent odds line on every race you were thinking of betting. Well, what I did was I went down the odds out of a hundred, you know, for every, for every horse. And then, uh, at the, this, I started doing this with the harvest races. And then when the day was over, I had a little thing with the little stick figures was over some overlay.

Did he? Both at that question went off and below. Now the problem is overlays always go up. Don’t lean as often as you think. So that’s why you have to allow a little error factor, error factor. You can’t say, well, you know, I give the horse a 20% chance to win. Um, so I think I’ll take a five to one of them.

That’s, you know, you couldn’t even wait to close. You got to give yourself a little more drink for her, but I, I, it out very, very quickly. This is a game about value, not about picking winners because winners don’t really matter unless you win every race and nobody does. Winners matter only if it’s going to hit a pick three or pick six or something like that.

It doesn’t have to say, okay, well, the list is much value, but I need them to be able to make the ticket out. But a typical bread and butter day in day out race, uh, picking the winners, not that important because most races, several horses have some chance to win. So it wouldn’t be doing is you’re picking between courses or have some chance, or to have more chance of courses where I’ve lost and you’re hanging your number on it.

Just like every single sports better does as well. It, at the end of the day, you’re betting prices, not horses. That’s what I’m hearing. And I absolutely get it. You definitely seem inclined in your pick bats to not worry nearly as much about using a horse. That’s maybe a theoretical underlay, the counter-argument that I’ve heard usually in jest.

I obviously agree with everything you’re saying, but I just want to get your reaction to the idea that you can’t eat value. If you make another value, bet you’re going to win. If you’re playing negative value that you’re going to lose now, any particular race, of course, a horse who should be eight to one goes over four to one and they wins well.

So what, who cares? You’re looking at long-term bets and even players that don’t play that let’s say let’s see a guy plays once every two weeks over the course of a lifetime. He’s going to track hundreds of times. Now he’s spending hundreds of times. One day really makes much of a difference. So you’re always trying to make good bets.

Uh, there was a quote I have in the book from one of the heads of one of the rebates teams, winners, following advantages. And that’s what we always want to be looking at. What’s our advantage in this race, not just who I think is going to win this race, which is really in a relevant question. The next part of that is you need the bank role to allow the long run to happen and what your bank role is, should definitely be effecting the pools that you’re in and the strike rate that can be expected in those pools.

And that’s a mistake that I’ve made in the past, Oh, this year at Saratoga, I’m going to play the late pick four. Well, I didn’t have the money to withstand the losing streak. Then the, the three out of four of 12 days in a row. And it put me in a situation where I ended up losing more money than I wanted to with.

You have to look at your bank role relative to the pools you’re playing in. What kind of rules did you have as a pro in terms of managing your bank roll? Well, normally it was a pick six carry over at that time, you had pretty strong pick six categories. Now most of the tracks have these jackpots. That of course make no sense unless it’s a mandatory giveaway day.

Uh, but depending on how big the carry over was and what horses I had in, I would generally play anywhere between 500 to 2000 and I picked six pack. And, uh, uh, what if I had a losing streak? That was a big problem because I say, well, should I make this better or not? And sometimes I said, well, you know, I’m not going too well right now, maybe I’ll just pass.

And wouldn’t, you know, those were the days, uh, you know, I said, well, too bad. I bet that. So you want to make sure that you’re playing. With enough money to be able to withstand your losers shrinks. And of course, if you’re playing shorter price Tauruses, you’re going to have fewer losing streaks. If you’re playing longer price trifectas and things like that.

Yes, you might make a giant score, but you also have to be capitalized well, enough congestion out of the inevitable losing streak. And it is inevitable. It’s going to happen to everybody. You look at it mathematically. My, if I’m my prime bet is a 20th of my overall bank, or, I mean, I’m just making up numbers, but.

Did you ever look at what you had total in capital versus what you were willing to put in on a given race on a given day? Yes. I had a chart. I used, it was in money secrets at the racetrack, which tells me if a horse, if I make the wish, he, even when he goes off at three 82, I can make a certain bet. If he goes over the eight to five, I can make a slightly bigger bet.

If I’m had the horse four to one, even if it’s seven 71, there was a different number for that. So I try to, uh, uh, match the debt to how likely was the horse to win. And what kind of advantage was I getting on, on that particular bet? So, yes, but I never, I never bet 5% of my account would be way too long.

Yeah. I knew that was too high as I was saying it, but I wasn’t going to correct myself, but of course, yeah. Well you have some, you have some players, they didn’t, whatever is in their pocket. Right. I got a bunch of money. I just won the last race I have. I can make a real giant score now. Well, good luck to you on that.

The Kelly criteria, is that what you were describing basically, or a variation thereof. Right. I used a fraction, one fraction of Kelly, cause he’s using the entire Kelly criterion. Uh, it’s the order of six to five. And he went off at 12 to one, which of course that doesn’t happen. Well, he might go off at three to one that does happen every once in a while.

You’re going to move your neck, some very, very big bets. Uh, and if you lose those very big, that’s, it’s going to be very, very unpleasant. I think that, yeah, players need to have some conception. The chart I use used to chore how much I get done on the race so I could get a certain amount. I’m a long, fast, and a certain amount on the fingers.

Are you still selling copies of money, secrets at the racetrack? Is there any kind of, it’s still around and yet people know over to my website, we have at this time right now that they can go to my website, to our petition.com, easy to remember because T R stands for therapy racing and all the information is there.

So it’s actually $5 off the price. Right. Excellent. And I really recommend that listeners take advantage. Hey, tell, tell a Berry that we sent you. I wouldn’t mind, uh, wouldn’t mind that either. I want to go back on the five to one shot from your most memorable day. I’m going to test your memory here. What, what else do you remember about that horse specifically that puts you on to it to give you that kind of confidence, that to predict that you were going to have a $20,000 day and how did you wager in it to the best of your memory?

When was this making this third lifetime starting? His first store was on the turf in Southern California. And he didn’t really do that much. He finished from the back. He wasn’t horrible. He wasn’t good. His second race. Yeah. And outside post. And he stayed outside though. It was like four wider on the first term, four wide around the secretary.

And I’m watching this one as reach. He’s still reaching in the stretch. He ended up finishing seventh, but he was really triangle. Yeah. So it’s actually likes the sport, which to me is a very important part of gambling. You have to know which sport, which was, is like the sport and which ones are kind of reluctant participants.

I said, this horse, this is a good horse. This is not a bad horse. So he pulled it off twice, as long as he had two out of the money finishes, but just watching, I said source, if he gets a spike, he could be very and sure enough. He got a spot, uh, up North. And, uh, that was the, that was the end of that. And it happened.

So it’s fun when you see a horse and he hasn’t raised too often and the public has one opinion of him and you have a different opinion, but that’s where you can make some money. I really liked that idea that even at the lower levels of racing, the idea that there are horses who are pack animals. I mean, they’re all pack animals, but horses who are really exemplifies of the fact that these are pack animals versus horses who are trying to compete and try to win.

You mentioned reaching and how you saw that on the replay. I’d love you to describe that a little bit more and tell me any other things we can look for and trying to identify these trying horses at all different levels. Well, for me, if a horse likes to be in the sport, it’s going to keep on giving his best, no matter what other horses and historic shorten is striking.

And so, you know, what kind of enough is enough. I used to own harness horses. Which I bought from my earnings when I was a tennis instructor and I own the probably six or eight horses over the years. And they were all different. They all hit a little peculiarities. And I think knowing that helped me doing the tone, the thoroughbred handicap, like I had one that, uh, if you watch them warm up, you’d be sure that that was going to scratch him.

He looked as if he was headed directly to the cemetery where he was gonna bury himself. As soon as the race started, he put his head down. He tried as hard as he could, as soon as he hit the wire, he’s limped pitifully back to a stall. And that’s what he did every single time he raced because I had another horse that, uh, as soon as another horse, you liked the front.

And as soon as the other horse would range up alongside, he’d say. Man. I don’t like the sport that much. And he would just say enough is enough. So horses do have these rural areas. Secrecies and, uh, you know, with every training, all the good trainers, they have safety, which has to be trained a little bit differently because they’re all different.

And it’s the same thing. When you watch some horses are says, just look a little bit different. Sometimes they looked like they wanted, I remember that. I remember I was scratched to riches on the BeltLine years ago. Uh, I, I feel amazing. My  was wow. And that’s where it was. Wow. I’d make those comments like twice a year and then throw them on this horse.

So you just, you see something and we go. That’s a resource. Um, it’s, it’s one of the scrap that the more, you know, the more you watch racism while you know, you get that, I feel that way about looking at horses too, that people eloquent. People have talked to me about what they look for, but then at some point it evolves into almost like a sixth sense.

And I think that great race Watchers on replay can be like that as well. And your advice for somebody who wants to improve at it, I can take a guess what your advice is going to be, but I’ll ask specifically how can people improve when it comes to that? Well, I think you’ve gotta be brutally realistic when you watch a race on replay.

Cause most of the people let’s say that, that horse number five, horse number five, I finished this fourth and watch the replay free going out. How the dumb jockey didn’t get the horse to win would maybe this was wasn’t that good, or maybe he didn’t get what he liked. So you have to be very cognizant of what happens at each stage of the race.

For example, two horses are out to the leader, they dueling each other, or one of them is kind of floating next to the other horse. Big, big difference. Maybe a horse in fifth place is all by himself. He doesn’t have a horse near the money, their side. Other times he’s got two horses right next to them and they look I’m confiding for fifth.

So you’re trying to get a sense of given the pace of the race and giving them the way, how the race unfolded, what happened in that race and the more of these you watch, or you relate everything to the pace, to the bias, to where the horses. We’re expected to be. And when they actually were, the more you learn about each race and each horse at the same time, back when you were a pro, there weren’t really commercially available pace figures.

I couldn’t agree more with what you’re saying about how pace relates to trips. How were you assessing the pace back then? These days you’ve got time for them, us to help out, uh, breasts includes pace figures, but what were you using? They weren’t printed in the DRF back then. Well, I had a, uh, I used my own chart that I made up, which was what would the typical times be for every single distance at the tracks that I was going for every single class.

And then I would do a track variant. And so I would make do my own figures basically for every race. And when I did that, I looked at what the pace time was. Normally let’s say, let’s say a horse would go 22, 45. And one 10, if I looked up on the board and said 40, 4,601, while we know the front where was probably got helped in that race.

And the closers had no chance, if the race was 44 flat, we know it was a super fast paced. So I would make little notes, uh, you know, fast pal benefited or, you know, against pace or something like that. Yeah. So I didn’t use an exact pace figure where I did have final time figures. Yes. But I did, uh, I, in my notes, I put that whether the horse benefited by the pitch.

Or was racing against the pace. So my thing was, you know, AP or AB using us to buy us or against the pace or sometimes a minus after is that the, uh, because it means you benefited. So again, you have to know what the typical times are going to be for that class, at that track, compare it with how all the rest of the races did that day, because maybe there was a, uh, uh, the track was, uh, doesn’t a second fast for routes, and maybe it was two 50 seconds, faster.

Sprints were slow, so you have to be able to tackle it that. So that’s three more. I didn’t, I figured I had a very good handle on what happened in the course. Want to bring it back to the book here before we get out of here? Once again, the book, the skeptical handicapper available@trpublishing.com. What made you want to write the book?

I wrote the book about bedding 30 years ago. And I think you should, right? At least once every 30 years and the 30 year anniversary, I looked at all these racing books, which, uh, many books where’s the data. I like data. Let’s find out let’s, let’s analyze it. Just like I do with my newsletter. Let’s look at thousands of races and see what happens.

Is this angle any good or is this angle good? Uh, because you can’t just believe what people say. For example, people say first time starters you’re intimidated by the rail. Nope. We checked inside versus outside for every single first time, starting for four years made no difference at all. However, blinkers off versus blinkers on huge difference blinkers off.

Uh, every single we’re looking at every single was wide blinkers off, uh, versus blinkers on more than 50,000 races, blinkers off did 12% better than blinkers on. That’s a tremendous difference. Yeah. So. The way to find these things out is to do the research on them. And there were a lot of other tidbits and goodies that we were doing the research on this book.

Uh, it just won’t people believe is often not the case. So I wanted to say, well, what actually is the truth? How can I measure it? And then how can I present it in such a way that people can understand it and benefit from it? And that’s what I did way back in the day. Bill Kiran did a book with a similar premise using computer data to analyze these type of questions.

Was that a conscious model for you on this one? Or just sort of a coincidence. Well, he used several hundred races. Uh, and of course that was the first winning at the races, which of course I still have on my shelf was one of the first books that did that. There were some others fabric Han had a book and there are a few other books like that, but nobody did on the scale that we did it, which was 168,000 races.

And the problem is when we use hundreds of races, things are not as accurate as they are when you use much larger sample sizes. We have a lot of studies here that, uh, seem to go well for a year, but when you check them for four years, did not do so well. So I wanted to have big, big, big numbers. And that’s where, uh, Ken mass and I agreed.

And that’s what we did was your partnership. Like I assume it had to be very collaborative. I mean, nobody’s better at analyzing queries than a guy like that, obviously in your skill set as well. Was it a lot of conversations and a lot of back and forth. Uh, we actually, we emailed each other virtually every day for months.

I said, let’s check someone. So he says, well, I can check into a and B, but I can’t really check to see because, okay, maybe here’s another way around and we can test, we can test it that way. But we said, Oh, here’s what I can do. I could do that. So we worked together on this as far as how we were going to test the data because he was the testing expert and both of us had ideas on what to do and let’s get there.

He says, I really know you work from all the racing monthly they used to do. I know what you’re doing. I do the same thing. Let’s have some fun and we did great. That’s great. What advice would you have for a horse player in 2019? Thinking about going pro don’t play so many races and know what you’re looking at.

If you can do those two things, uh, you can get somewhere. If you know what you’re looking at, then you’ll be able to assess. Race horses, what they like, what they don’t like, what kind of pace they can take, what they can take. Uh, that’s very, very important. Um, normally looking at me and looking at the trainer stats, I’ll just look at it.

Plaintiff’s total percentage, but what about his specialties? What does he like to do? How does he usually train this first time starters? Uh, learn where it learns. He learned him all the time and don’t play. Unless you’ve got an advantage. When you have an advantage, that’s the time to play when you have no advantage, that’s just shit.

And, uh, and enjoy an alcoholic drinks. What’s about you for x-rays. That’s a pretty good summation though. I have a little bit of trouble sometimes with that last bit. I believe that one way you can know what you’re looking at and all these things is a lot to do with the company you, you surround yourself with at the track.

Now, do you go against that idea there? I feel like, you know, you mentioned the lone Wolf idea, the stories you’re telling a lot of them are, are you teaching yourself and learning yourself and grinding yourself? Did you have a community of players that helped you along the way in your journey? Well, I had some people, cause I didn’t know anything about server restaurant at all.

When I started and I met Dick Mitchell and Jim Quinn Kramer and people like that legend folks years ago. Yeah. And, uh, they had, they had their ideas. And of course, when I started going to the track, I would always start by asking people, Hey, what do you think of this race? Or how do you want to pick that horse?

I also bought the racing digest, uh, every day and she’ll learn how they serve. Also listen to the free national turf seminars at the end of the day, how they picked horses, why they picked horses, why they liked a and spin a video. Once I started going to the track on a regular basis, I always went by myself and I used to go hide.

And the reason I would hide is that like, when I went to Los Alamitos simulcasts, for example, I would be in the restaurant. I get a table over in the corner and nobody would even know I was there, which is exactly the way I liked it. Because as soon as there was other people. You have the certain other problems, such as a lack of focus on watching the pools, such as Timmy lights resource around.

I don’t know. I like this other question. See me, Winston, you don’t want to make somebody learn crazy. And now you’re mad at him. So you know those things. So people say let’s put in a ticket together. This is a great idea. Let’s have a ticket together. No, I think we should use the three, man. I don’t like to say let’s not use them.

And of course the free winds and spoils you pick six and Mo it was a friends get over that and know 30, 40 years. So I always stayed by myself. I didn’t bother anybody once I started doing this, uh, you know, seriously. And, uh, I, this way I could concentrate just to me, focusing concentration is extremely important because it’s very, very easy to get sidetracked.

There’s so many things going on. You know, somebody is watching a one on one look to, well, that’s great. What is that? Horse never wants up. Well, if you don’t know that you’re thrown off. Yeah. So, uh, it’s easy to get thrown off by other people’s comments. And where are you sitting and how far away window, where am I going to look to see where the pools are that we’ll look at on homie?

Now I got to walk over in the rest of, so there’s a lot of things that could be distracting and maybe there’s no place even to sit your papers out, which to me is an extremely important part of handicapping. Have your Pampers and cleanliness. You can look at stuff. So, uh, I, I prefer, always preferred to go to the track myself, uh, all over when I was in the harness race.

But I did hang around with a group of guys, one guy, in fact, who was an expert at not only a harness racing, but he could do quarter horses to get the dogs. I never met anybody else who could do all four of those things on a professional level, came up with some very original wasted handicap grin, but I’ve never asked him who he liked.

I just, uh, uh, you know, I just admire his excellence. I’ll tell you a quick story. Which was one day I went to harness races and there’s the six to five favorite. And then when they saw him working at the, uh, at the odd board and until it was Bob who I am talking about, I said, Bob, this is the worst six to five days of the year.

He said, no, this is the worst thing to my favorite in the history of racing. So of course when the rest of the windows bedding, all we can against this horrible horse, well, release begins. The worst, goes to the rail minds, his own business, the point that everybody else’s dueling crashing, uh, having, uh, you know, they’re not doing what they, what they should be doing there.

So now the horse gets into the stretch and this was, comes off the rail and he’s going in a steady, even slow pace all the way. And it gets to the lead one step before the wire. And he wins once the, after the way a different horses past him. So he’s gets ahead of one horse. The other was passing on the outside.

The one moment that he’s in front of the whole race. Is that the wire. So Bob looks at me and he goes, well, that’s one for the civilians. I was thinking that story was going in a fixed race direction. But the fact is William Murray used to call them the dummy God’s racist, the horse like that. You’re supposed to bet against.

They still do. They still do win. And often at short prices and they make people happy. So there’s that as well. I’ll ask one more fun one and I’ll let you get out of here. This is, uh, this is just me indulging myself. Who’s the best tennis player you’ve ever seen. Well, I mean, we’re, we are blessed to live in an area with probably three greatest players in history are all playing at the same time, which is, uh, uh, Djokovich and, and Federer and the doll.

They all are different in their skillset. They’re all fantastic to watch. And then the woman said he got Serena nobody’s ever been as good as Tarina of course, back in the old days, when I used to watch wild labor, they were using wooden rackets. The whole game was different, but a lot of games have moved forward.

The golfers are a lot better now than they used to be. A, the tennis players are a lot better. The baseball players are better. So there’s a, there’s a, a forward movement in sports, um, which I don’t think can be stopped, but I certainly, from my money, if I had to let one guy play tennis would be Roger Federer.

Well, I get that completely Barry. Well, we’ll tell people one more time. The book is the skeptical handicapper. Are you really encouraging people to buy it directly from you? Or are there other sellers out there we should promote as well? Well, if they buy direct with me, I’ll autograph it for them. So there’s a little advantage.

And, uh, uh, if they mentioned that they heard me on your podcast, I’ll give them a, I just kind of as well. You got to do that. Then that becomes a complete, no brainer. T R publishing.com. Barry. This was just an absolute joy. Thank you so much for your time today. And God speed with the book. That’s sloppy anytime.

And, uh, as I, as I write syntax to people make you win every photo. That’s familiar to the listeners of this show. That’s very familiar phrase. I love it. Maybe I stole that from you. It’s quite possible. You signed a book for me long ago. That’s going to do it for this edition of the end of money players podcast.

I want to thank Barry meadow for all of his time today. I’m going to keep you around for the closing salutation today. Barry, don’t hang up just yet. I’ll also want to thank Jonathan kinship for his ongoing contributions. Most of all, I want to thank all of you. The listeners for making these shows so much fun to do this show has been a production of in the money media in the money media’s business manager is drew Kotani.

I’m Peter Thomas foreign, a towel Barry hit it for the clothes. You win every photo

do you like big fields and turf racing? If you do, you should definitely be paying attention to what’s going on North of the border with our friends at Woodbine, we’re very proud to be partnering with Woodbine all summer long. We’re going to be doing deep dives into a number of their races, as well as highlighting some of the big events like the Woodbine mile day contest, book, your travel now, great time to be in the city of Toronto, the film festivals going on.

It’s a great opportunity for contest players and just a lot of fun up there. And we’re going to be having fun with them throughout the year. Special guests and deep analysis. Thank you so much for listening to the end, the money players podcast, and we hope you support our new partners Woodbine for more information, check out woodbine.com.