The HANA get in the pool race for tomorrow is race 3, a 5k Claimer for non-winners of 2 lifetime. I think Mark Cramer would call this a lesser of evils race, but there could be some overlap into the contentious race category as the field certainly seems evenly matched. Remember the idea is to flood the exacta pool in this race so put your thinking caps on.
And speaking of my favorite authors. J. J. Tuttle continues to trash my review on Amazon while I continue to report positively on a handicapping angle he made a special effort to point out to me. Namely play the longest shot in the short field a short field defined as seven or fewer.
Now, forgive my tardiness in reporting this bomb, but as I said, I was distracted and under the weather last week and not really keeping up with the racing world. However, racing went on without me, and on April 9th at Gulfstream Park the 2nd race saw a 67.9 to 1 shot wire the field.
Having now updated my spreadsheet the tally is as follows. For the Gulfstream 2009 season to date there have been 176 races with 7 or fewer runners. 10 of those races were won by the longest shot in the field. 10/176 = a 5.68% hit rate and more importantly, a $2 investment on each wager totaling $352.00 would've yielded $537.80 or $0.53 for every $1 wagered. With, I think, 8 racing days left in the season it seems safe to declare this a winning angle for Gulfstream Park 2009.
I have begun tracking Woodbine, since I like watching the little chiclets run around and will follow my home track of Calder when it starts up to see if this continues to be a profitable angle. So far, after 13 qualifying races at Woodbine, there have been no winners, but it's still early.
"May the horse be with you."
Monday, April 13, 2009
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1 comment:
I found your blog while searching for info on Mr. Tuttle on the net... you know, maybe hoping to find out what mental institution he escaped from. :-) At the end of May I posted a fairly hefty comment supporting your review. Mr. Tuttle never addressed the statistical evidence I presented and instead I got this:
"Joseph G. Mitzen....YOU'RE A IDIOT!!!!! ALL 300+ OF MY POSTINGS CAN BE FOUND....But, you're too damn stupid to figure-out "how"....LOL!"
I gave him right back... "And you're a self-published author who doesn't know that it's "you're a[n] idiot" and that the quotes around the word "how" are both superfluous and baffling. Oh, and you complete the holy trinity of Internet kookery by the requisite use of all caps and multiple exclamation points." :-)
I've been making it something of a hobby to chase him across Amazon, and I've repeatedly challenged him to enter the free Del Mar Online Handicapping Challenge starting July 22 with me and see which of us does better, freely admitting that last year I finished in the bottom quarter. He calls me an idiot, but completely ignores my challenge, which is telling about the faith he has in his own abilities. Speaking of which, no matter how sincere he seems, remember that he is using "sock puppets" (fake accounts) to post positive reviews of his own books and criticize the real reviewers who give him bad ones. When you do that, you either have to know you're a phony or be mentally ill. I've been conned twice earlier in life, and both times the trickster exhibited the same friendliness that Tuttle showed you when doubts began to be raised. Also know this: on Amazon you can select reviewers as "interesting people" or make them your friends. Tuttle has about a dozen of these: EVERY ONE OF WHICH is someone who's posted a negative review of one of his 19+ books (more than a book a month from him). In effect, he's monitoring or trying to monitor (I rejected his friend request, which would have ended up automatically notifying him when I posted new reviews) every negative reviewer so he can jump on them with his sock puppets. He's got a nice little machine going, and it's sucking money and time out of decent horseplayers' pockets.
Maybe I shouldn't let it get to me so much, but horseracing literature has come so far with genuine scholarly work from a host of greats like Cramer, Quirin, Quinn, etc. that it really saddens me to see a stream of what I call retro-snake oil books flooding Amazon, all from Mr. Tuttle and his many pseudonyms, that tarnish the reputation of handicapping and sullies the image of handicappers that so many talented authors have worked so hard to raise to the level of respected scholarship.
I am greatful that I found your blog as it looks awesome and I'd been looking for some handicapping (as opposed to horse racing) blogs or podcasts for a while now but not finding anything still maintained. Count me as a confirmed reader from now on. Oh, and I'm in the process of converting a significant database of races from 2005 and would be happy to give you some statistics for a cross-section of tracks from that year regarding the short-field longshots as soon as I'm done.
-Joseph G. Mitzen
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