It's an excellent supplemental information required if you engage in parimutuel wagering. Particularly, if you need pedigree information on horses going at distances they have not before. Or first time starters. A very useful tool that others don't have.

Gambling has always been around in our culture. People bet on horses, dogs, play the lottery, and sports. Gambling in its varied forms has been used to fund both government and religious institutions. At times it was illegal to gamble but today everyone partakes in the gaming industry and the most notable group are teenagers.

A Sure Thing? explores the sociological world of gambling in all of its facets. It gives a brief history of gambling, lays out the views of those for and against legalized gambling, shares the stories of young people addicted to gambling and opens up the question of whether sports gambling should be legalized. This is an excellent book in introducing to teenagers an area of life that has become so common place in our society.

Author, Jeff Savage, lays out the issues, shares the negative and positive impacts about gambling and leaves the reader much better informed about the gaming industry. He also brings up the paradox of gambling being legal for some things and yet for sports, it is illegal because it can undermine the "integrity" of the game.

If you never discusssed the moral, ethical and political issues regarding gambling with your teenager, this is the book to have. Savage is not preachy in his presentation but is not afraid to share the hard facts of gamblings destructiveness on teenagers, sports figures and adults. His bibliography provides further resources in exploring the issue in depth.

Chuck Badone, Winning Horseracing Handicapping 2/E (Lone Star Park at Grand Prairie, 1999)

Badone, the selections guru at the newly-opened Lone Star Park, wrote a book on handicapping long ago, during his days of giving seminars at Turf Paradise. When Lone Star opened, they reprinted the book with a number of revisions from Badone, as a kind of new-fan primer. Too bad they kept the gramatically painful title, but other than that, there's little that will steer you wrong here.

If you've already read the basic handicapping texts, you're not going to find terribly much here you haven't read before, though Badone does put a few things into new perspectives. This book isn't aimed at the well-read horseplayer, however, but at the new patron. Badone lays his material out quickly and easily, but without the pedantry that mars a number of books for beginning handicappers. He's extremely easy to read, and his section on class changes is the easiest-to-understand I've ever read (not to mention one of the most solid; it's not Jim Quinn's _Class of the Field_, but for the beginning player, it's great stuff). Highly recommended for casual and new fans of Thoroughbred racing...

Dave Feldman's colorful career as a handicapper, writer, owner, and trainer in Chicago comes to life in this fast reading book. The stories are interesting and provide insights as well for bettors. Dave's experience in thoroughbred racing gives him the authority to provide the horse player with some helpful tips on what to look for and to avoid at the track.

The book describes a method for rating horses that is very time consuming, with results that do not justify all the work. I did a dry run, handicapping several race cards, and had I bet real money, I would have been very upset with the results. Although I am not an expert, I hold my own when I study the past performances in the track program or The Daily Racing Form. By following the book's method, I did significantly worse than I would have on my own. Not recommended.

Unless your a novice this book will give you little. It is one of the few books on handicapping harness races that is readilly available but this is a weak work. Ms. Kulleck consistently contradicts herself and she seems to only skim the surface on most topics. Also it seems most of her research with her husband were done years ago and have probably become irrelevant over time.

Considering myself a beginner, I find Ms. Ada Kulleck's book one of the best book for beginners. I like Chapter 2 especially because there are some great tips on eliminating horses that don't have the potential to win. By eliminating the potential losers, the few horses that stand out gives you the opportunity to narrow your focus to find the potential winner or to play them collectively on exotic wagers. I combined what I learned from Ms. Kulleck's book and also established my own system. One handicapping system will not work all the time. This is a good [$$$] investment.

the book was intresting with a major emphasis on football betting. the baseball betting section was weak. a good book for an introduction to football betting

no body can tell me that it is hard to win on sports betting. This book is the guide, to become rich.Winnn!

Please keep in mind this "book" is not really one per se. It is a rag-tag grouping of previously written columns by McCune and neither the book nor the columns were apparently edited as there are numerous spelling and wording errors throughout. Similar content is repeated throughout the book many times. Also the author feels the need to introduce each section with a REALLY bad poem and often goes quite off-topic in trying to establish a point related to sports betting.

This might be a decent book for somebody who is just starting out in the world of sports betting. You learn what juice is, how a local bookie might shade a hometown line etc. However all the information was written at least 10 years or more ago. As sport-betting moves into a new era, the usefulness of this dated information is questionable but it was frustrating to sit through reading.

In short, there is very little worthwhile about this book for a more advanced player with a semi-decent understanding of mathmatical probability.

I took a gamble buying this book on positive feedback from others - I lost.

Lots of ryhmes, many words in CAPITALS, even a picture of the author circa 1949 but unfortunately very little useful information on how to systematically implement winning sports betting methods.

... I have only been a sports bettor for the past 3 months and this book has changed everything for me. I used to just look at some statistics and I thought I knew what I was doing, but my winning percentage was still hovering around .500. Now that I've read this book and learned how to bet like the pros do, my winning percentage is .765! I've also learned how to manage my money and when to bet big. This is the sports betting bible, and only those that don't know about it are probably just guessing when they bet.

I will never bet on a "hunch" ever again. This book has really opened my eyes to what is possible when betting on sports.

There are good books on horse race betting, this just isn't one of them. You do need to have deep pockets to follow this guy's advice, and a large bankroll at home.

After you strip away that which is intuitively obvious...there's not much here. There are some betting strategies if you're the type to bet $300 on a Pick 3 or $2,500 on a Pick 6. Otherwise, I'd give this book a miss.

For a serious starter in horse racing, this book tells you how you should manage your wagering money and how to bet effectively and efficiently. However, this book will be too simple for a horseplayer who has been serious in horse racing for quite a long time.

This book is pretty basic. The first 23 of the 32 pages are devoted to very basic material such as reading the program, the tote board, types of bets, and how to place them.

If you are going to the track for the first time with a group, and you want to bone up on the sport real-quick, this is the perfect book for you.

If you are a serious handicapper looking for an innovative theory or deep discussion on overlays and handicapping, this is not that book.

Prof. Jones book is a great basis book to use for handicapping. It will help you develop you system, and gives honest, sound advice. (there is another review of a different book under this book I also reviewed, sorry for the mixup)

This book gives pretty good insight and suggestions on handicapping, and the techniques work well with the higher grades.

Richard A. Cromie, Mr. Trifecta (ParlorGrand, 2000)

Handicapping books can be divided into two basic types: those that rely on solid information and those that rely on more nebulous information. 99.9% of the latter (I know if I say 'all,' someone will publish one that actually works) are complete and utter bunk. The majority of the 'nebulous information' books rely on one source of information: 'smart money.'

The concept of 'smart money' is that a horse's owner, trainer, and jockey have a better idea than most handicappers about how the horse will run. The obvious logical fallacy should be apparent: the so-called 'smart money' may know everything there is to know about their horse in the race, but are likely to know just as much as the next guy about every other horse in the race.

Mr. Trifecta is just this kind of insider-money book, taking an old system (looking for horses who have more money bet on them in the daily double pool than the win pool and assuming that's 'smart money') and applying it with a new angle (Cromie uses the pick three pool instead of the daily double pool). But it's nothing we haven't seen before, and while it's not the quickest road to the poorhouse, you're far better off with books from the former camp by authors like Tom Ainslie, Dick Mitchell, Jim Quinn, William Quirin, Mark Cramer, and the like. **, because it's short, to the point, and contains some good tall tales about track life.

This book is extremely easy to read. It only takes me probably 2 hours (4 subway trips of half an hour each) to finish this book as the idea presented in this book is very simple. In short, proportion of win odds to pick three odds + smart money in win odds + horse's condition on the paddock = selection. However, does this actually work?

I cannot give you a definite answer as there is no pick three odds like this in Hong Kong. However, I can imagine the author has made three major assumptions in his system as follows:-

1. Smart money tends to go to pick three pool instead of win pool.

2. There is an existence of smart money on win pool that causes the movement between prelimiary odds and morning line odds.

3. Smart money is actually smarter.

I cast doubt on the first 2 assumptions especially majority of the bets come into the pool at the last 5-7 minutes before a race (hence, early odds are not too accurate as smart money has not come in yet). This happens in Hong Kong.

As a serious horse racing "participant", I will recommend you a miss on this book.

Reviewer middletown, de United States either believes he is e e cummings or can't spell. Furthermore, what use is a system that runs through the numbers then says to look at the horses and possibly add the chalk? The use of a realistic system like that is to cash at the window more often. If I could pick winners just by looking at them I wouldn't have bought his book or used his system either, but since I did I've been able to leverage the facts he points out. Not only do I save by not needing the forms and not spending hours studying the sheets, I save by cashing more winners than I ever did before. If you buy this book for the price of a trifecta ticket consider that your first winner of many to come