To win at the races you need to eliminate the losers. This book gives the serious handicapper the tools to choose the horses that are really in contention for todays race. With the help of this book and some reasonable handicapping skills, one can see a difference at the betting windows. The only criticsm is that there is not any great insight on money management, which was not the purpose of this book but would have been a nice bonus.

A great book that fully explains class differentials and what horses to look for to win certain classes...Must read for any player

This was truly an eye opener for me, a casual Thoroughbred bettor. James Quinn has positively showed me the light! This book is an up to date, complete analysis of modern formulas to understand how eligible horses qualify for certain races and how to spot the probable winner. 100 stars!!!!

The is a book for those interested in applying statistical anaylsis to wagering on jai alai games.

The information is clear, and not easily located elsewhere.

In essence, the author quickly outlines the history of the sport, then explains the liklihood of various bets being successful. Not for hunch bettors

This is a great book. It covers and explains all wagers and has charts for each type with all the percentages. It's a must for all.

i am using this type of books for wagering on how to win the thiland jai-ali lottery for every 15 days in a month. I have learned that I need your points of view in selecting the winning numbers.

Despite the subtitle ("A True Tale of Love and the Vig") I was plagued throughout my reading of this semi-confession of a former Ivy-leaguer's plummet into the world of bookmaking by a certain dubiousness. Alson's story is written in a kind of flippantly open manner that undermines the believability of his insider's story. Don't get me wrong, it's very entertaining and all, but his coyness about just how "connected" the small-time operation he was a part of was came across as rather disingenuous to me. While his confusion and despair about figuring out what he should be doing with his overeducated self hit the right notes, the subplot of the long distance sort of relationship was often more annoying than interesting. Still, not a bad little peek into bookmaking.

I felt like I was growing up with Peter as he faced the consequences of his decisions. Looking forward to his next one.

I really liked this book! I thought it was a refreshing and entertaining look at how are lives don't always end up as we had planned. There are some unresolved issues, but perhaps that makes the book all the more realistic. A movie version of this book would do very well.

This is a great book primarily because, in addition to being one of the world's foremost handicappers, Beyer is also an excellent writer. He conveys the ups and downs, the exhilirating highs and crushing lows of the life of a horseplayer in the context of the narrative of his own life. Highly recommended!

The information in 'Picking Winners' is accurate. I bought it as a present for my younger brother. Tremendous buy.

I've read many fine books on handicapping and this one is probably the best of them all. A real easy read, its peppered with fascinating and often humerous anecdotes and rules of thumb.

Beyer first introduced his speed handicapping concept in this book, and he shows how to compute the now famous Beyer speed figures. Even though they're available in the Form, its still good to know how they were derived.

At the time Beyer wrote this book, he focused most heavily on speed handicapping, and he would more thoroughly embrace other factors such as pace or trip handicapping later in his career. But he does at least touch on all facets of handicapping in this book, and either a beginner or expert will find it a informative and amusing read.

Enjoy!

An overly romanticized biography of the "world's greatest hustler". The book is fun and often quite humorous, but ultimately lets Thompson off the hook. The author glorifies Thompson's fun-loving, harmless nature, but chooses to side-step the naked truth - that he was really a liar, cheat, and a swindler who got what he deserved when he died in destitution.

I loved the stories and I was captivated by the man. A must read for golf enthusiasts and bio fans alike.

Some of the things that Thompson did are unbelieveable. You can never put it down because you always want to see what he did next.

When a friend of mine recently earned his PhD (in systematic theology), a party feting his achievement called for oral excerpting from his colleagues' works whose knowledge, from many disciplines, was likewise piled higher and deeper. Geoffrey Clark's Betting on Lives: The Culture of Life Insurance in England, 1695-1775, particularly caught my ear, and the author was kind enough to provide me a copy of the Manchester University Press monograph. What an interesting study! Clark manages both to describe the factual development of life insurance societies and companies and - I believe more interestingly - to present the social and literary context that both described and led to this development. Clark writes very well, and his broad eye takes him beyond narrative fact by including several eighteenth-century illustrations - playing cards, advertisements for "Lottery Insurance" for both the "Elite" and "Laboring Classes" - as well as quotes from contemporary literature. Although primarily aimed at professional historians like himself, Clark's work both educated and entertained this general reader. Even were Geoffrey not a personal friend, I would recommend this insightful work.

Clark's book concerns the life insurance business in England, primarily in the 1700s. He's researched company records and presented very hard data about the business. Moreover, the links between life insurance, the financial industry, general business conditions, and social attitudes about insurance are well explored. The focus on England is not limiting, as England was the only country with meaningful life insurance in the 1700s. (Readers would likely also appreciate Zelizer's "Morals and Markets.") I am extremely grateful for the information in Clark's book.

Clark is a pleasure to read. It's a delight to find a book using words such as chiliasm, advowson, exiguous, and empyrean.

After reading and researching statistical techniques applied to horse racing this book is by far the most important and complete book I have read. The techniques are proven using complex math and statistical calculations and if repeated can earn a consistant and reasonable profit.

William Ziemba and Donald B. Hausch, eds., Efficiencies of Racetrack Betting Markets: Economic Theory, Econometrics, and Mathematical Economics (Academic Press, 1994)

I believe this is the only review I have ever written for a book I do not own. While I was working at a university in the late nineties, I was lucky enough to stumble upon a copy of this in their library after reading Ziemba and Hausch's landmark Beat the Track. For the year between my finding it and my switching jobs, the book was out of the library and in my hands every day. I renewed as often as I could, and when I couldn't, I would drop it off on my way to work and take it out again on my way home. They were inclined to be lenient, because I was the only person who had ever taken the book out of the library.

Let me get one thing straight from the outset: folks, this is not your momma's handicapping manual. For that matter, it's not your shady Uncle George's handicapping manual, either. It's a graduate-level econ textbook. And if you have no background in math (as I didn't at the time, and I still have only what I've gleaned thanks to Howard Sartin and Tom Brohamer), your first trip through this large and ponderous tome will be torturous. You might want to bone up on your equations, not to mention keeping a small handbook of "what Greek letters mean to economists" by your side at all times.

Eventually, however, you will dig your way down to the meaning of the first paper. And then the second. And then the third. And so on. And for the horseplayer with an academic bent (definition, gleaned from some nasty comments during a discussion on the book that irked some folks who didn't like what they were hearing: any bettor who read Rosecrance's The Degenerates of Lake Tahoe and was able to laugh when finding a description of someone a lot like him), figuring out what these people are on about is the rough equivalent of discovering the tombs of Tutankhamen, Rameses, and Nefertiti all at the same time, and finding incontrovertible proof that Anubis really DID carry their souls off to the realm of the dead in the process. It's true that any bright middle-school student who has a good grasp of fractions will be able to get Beat the Track, and praise the powers that be that Ziemba and Hausch are capable of translating this morass into something most people can understand, even if they only touched on a portion of one of Ziemba's papers (which is the first one presented here). If the middle-school student is really, REALLY bright, is what the classifieds today call a self-starter (read: willing to try and figure this stuff out on his own), and has access to a tutor and/or writings that can explain some of the more esoteric facts, and has six months or so free to decipher this stuff full-time, said bright middle-schooler can probably find the keys to the kingdom. And get a pretty solid understanding of econ jargon in the process (which could lead to blowing the curve in Freshman-level econ classes in a few years).

I've been considering going back to school and learning to be an accountant. Before I do so, I have every intention of acquiring a copy of this hefty tome, which will likely set me back a year's tuition or more, and using it so I, too, can blow the curve. Of course, if it helps me make enough money to pay for school in the process, that would be quite a bonus, but the real value here is in showing, once and for all, that depending on your point of view, either horse race investing is no more a gamble than playing the stock market, or that playing the stock market is just as much a gamble as putting your two bucks on the nose of Glue Factory Refugee in the seventh at Charles Town on Friday night. *****

Fate, Coincidence, and the Outcome of Horse Races is not so much about horse races as it is about the superstitions that plague the horse-racing fan. The author shows a rare type of humor, explaining with wry wit why the horse-racing fan should observe certain superstitions: never eat peanuts at a race track; do not keep losing mutuel tickets in your pocket; keep your eyes and ears peeled for the occurrence of coincidences, etc. Armando Benitez affirms that there is a power that arranges the occurrence of every incident on earth, and that sometimes that power is too lazy to scramble its results. Sometimes, also, when there are two or more similarly-named horses in a race, that power will tend to pick one of them to win the race . . . because it is unconsciously influenced by the repetitious occurrence of the names, the same as we are. The book is sprinkled throughout with anecdotes from the race track, quotes and examples from antiquity, and from authors ranging from Herodotus to Arthur Koestler. Whether you believe this stuff or not, or whether you are a racing fan or not, this is a book worth reading. Are there any other titles by this very funny and talented writer?

The intriguing title makes one want to open this book. Because, who has not been tantalized by the occurrence of a coincidence in his or her life? At the race track, especially, even the hardest nosed of race handicappers will occasionally throw their handicapping knowledge to the wind to follow a hunch or coincidence.

The practicality of the advice in this book aside, it is a little gem awaiting its readership. Full of anecdotes from the race track and from history, it is both fascinating and funny.

I am a HUGE Horse Racing fan and this book was terrific! Sometimes I feel that I am part horse when I read this book!

This one is ok, not one of the best, but not the worst either. It did have some decent tips and strategies for spotting an overlay and has been somewhat of a help to me in my handicapping.

I thought the book was pretty good. Some good straightforward advice that is good to take with you to the track. No systems or guarantees, just common sense. The only drawback is that the analysis is using older formats of the Racing Form that doesn't include Beyers, and other newer things. The insight from the Mig, PG Johnson etc. was helpful.

ilikethereviewu

This book is worth reading for the appendix and details on trip handicapping, but the material on track biases smacks of type 1 errors (finding differences that aren't really there).

The main theme of this book is trip handicapping and a horseplayer who mainly focuses on figures must read. This book will change your mind and ways of thinking. I am actually quite surprise that this book was written over 10 years ago.

With Andrew Beyers new approach to handicapping, I have grasped the full potential of my own creative handicapping skill. A full out knowledge investment. This book is gauranteed to lead an intelligent player to success.