This book, the third in the Scott "Investing at the Track" trilogy, is the flimsiest yet. One, it abandons much of the safe, statistically-backed theory of the first two books in favor of newer ideas that are only supported by a few hundred race samples, and are curiously not shown to be more effective based on the ORIGINAL race samples (which might be more convincing). Two, it tempts the reader to venture into much riskier plays than ever before (where admittedly, more profits can be made, but at greater risk and greater uncertainty). And three, it is rife with "judgment calls" in all facets of the computation of performance class ratings, running lines, etc. And, once you start asking the handicapper to lump almost ALL past performances into the formula, without regard to the PPs' track conditions or even surface in most cases...it's hard to make such a leap of faith.

The beauty of the original Scott system was its simplicity. This new method is a morass of "add this, subtract that, divide that but only when there's a full moon..." It also adds to the bookkeeping necessary to make it work while you're actually at the track. All the calculations and comparisons can't easily be done in the Racing Form, rather a notebook and calculator are necessary for close scrutiny of all the numbers for each rated beast.

It's very hard to get a grip on the calculations, let alone the new selection criteria.

Still, there is a bright side: in some preliminary testing against some recent races that were also handicapped using the old method, the new method seemed to do better. It took a day's racing with the old method that featured a disaster at one track and a reasonable profit at another, and turned in windfalls at both, using the new method.

This book has got the imprimatur of the "Daily Racing Form" on its cover, but I knew I'd made a mistake when I turned to the equine anatomy diagram on page 9 and discovered a horse body-part labeled, "leg or gaskin."

Oh, oh. I just purchased a book about Thoroughbred racing whose author can't distinguish a horse's leg from its gaskin. Is it all downhill from page 9? Well, not quite...

If you skip the first three chapters, the 'helpful hints' and the 'fun facts,' there are some interesting stretches in this book, usually when the author is interviewing a real expert in the Thoroughbred business. My favorite vignette came from trainer, Jenine Sahadi, who pours half-a-cup of red wine into her horse's feed to make it taste better, and to relax the horse. She buys her vino by the gallon at Price Club, so her Thoroughbreds are not likely to end their careers as maitre d's in some fancy French restaurant (although in France, they may end up as the plat du jour.)

A couple of other favorite interviews in "Win, Place and Show" were with jockey, Jerry Bailey (read about the race where the starting gate was left on the track) and track announcer, Tom Durkin whose job is a lot harder than it sounds. If you don't believe me try to catch a race on ESPN when the sound feed from the track announcer fails, and the T.V. commentators have to call the race.

As might be expected, the "Daily Racing Form" is mentioned roughly a zillion times throughout this book, and even has a whole chapter devoted to it ("Daily Racing Form: The Horseplayer's Bible"). As also might be expected, the most detailed information in this book concerns the handicapping of races and different forms of wagering.

For some reason, there's also a chapter on "How to Throw a Great Kentucky Derby Party" that could have been subtitled "Assuming you have lots of time and money and very little taste"--a forty-foot cloth-of-gold pyramid? C'mon!

The "Glossary of Racing Terms" at book's end is courtesy of NTRA Communications, and I think they need to do a little buffing up on some of them, e.g. 'black.' "Black: a horse color that is black, including the muzzle, flanks, mane, tail, and legs unless white markings are present."

I finished "Win, Place and Show" almost as confused as when I began.

It boggles the mind how a book publisher can put out a book with so many typos and mistakes. Since the author's name looks German maybe the problem was in the translation process. After struggling with this book for a week I went back and purchased Jennifer A. Kelley's Great Book of Domino Games... what a difference. My advice is don't waste your time or money on Muller's book. Buy Kelley's book (her book is a pleasure to read).

I am not sure if there was a translation error, bad print run, etc... but watch out for typos and other errors in this book. Learning a new game becomes even more challenging when the diagrams do not match up and the text is wrong.

My specific goal with this book was to find information about the famous Texas domino game of "42," so I was primarily interested in that section of the book. Its attempt to teach that game is inconsistent with the known guidelines and strategies played in Texas 42, so be careful if that is your interest in this book. If so, a comprehensive new book solely on the domino game of "42" is available from amazon.com - "Winning 42: Strategy & Lore of the National Game of Texas."

This is a small, 54 page spiral bound book that is so basic its not worth bothering with. Many better books out there.

Nothing much new here. I could beat this guy asleep. If he wants to play me,....johnnyhughes.com

This book is flat out terrible. If you need a book to tell you starting hand rankings that would be obvious to even a novice, go ahead and buy it. If you are looking for sound advice skip this one. The grammar was so poor I decided to see what editor would possibly allow the mistakes, surprise the author published it himself. ...

This may be the worst poker book ever written. The stylistic problems are legion. If that was the only problem, I could overlook it. The fact is that there is simply no useful, understandable information to be found here. You're better off with Sklanksy, Malmuth, Jones or Krieger.

Apparently well-intentioned but inept presentation, this is
a step backward in poker publishing. The English syntax alone
is disqualifying. Disappointing, because the world needs a
great book about low-limit high-low split.

Very thin. Don't buy this book. There are too many other good video poker books out there to waste a cent on this book. I would suggest something from John Grochowski.

I agree with the other eviewr... this i nothing more than an ad for the more "advanced books" the author sells. Save your money. This is garbage.

This entire book is simply to basic to be of much value--unless you need someone to tell you where the coins go into the machine. The content struck me as an intro (and advertisement) for the more "advanced" books advertised on the last page--namely the playing strategies you probably thought you were getting this round.

There's better information on the web.

I bought this (not from Amazon) as a reference, and only find the listing of poker hands in value of any use. Badly written, grossly out of date and a poor facsimile. One wonders how it remains on the market with so many better editions around. Anything but the "complete" Hoyle's

If you were expecting to get the hoyles book of card games rules, you will be very disappointed with this. It is very out of date, many games are not listed at all, and the rules are insufficient or incorrect even for a simple game like Hearts.

This book is published with very poor quality type, it is very difficult to read.

This book doesn't tell you anything. If you've spent any time in a casino you already know the machines are random so forget any system, and to look odds on the machine and be sure to play the all the pay lines. I thought this book would give me more but was dissapointed.

As a long-time casino-goer and slot machine user, I looked forward to reading this book. I was very disappointed, and am sorry to say that I found it a waste of time. It is a generalized, long-winded essay on slot machines that tells you everything you never wanted to know about them - except how to WIN on one.

This is an amateur publication that is put together like a high-school term paper - using brass tacks! Most of the information in here is available free on the Internet. Page after page of fractional running times that are now outdated.

This must be the first 110 page book I've read in under 5 minutes, and no I'm not a speed reader. The typesetter for this book had a very easy time: type 2 pages, then cut, and paste 38 times! Everything in this book could be written in 4 pages! (And that includes the title page!) Can we say "table needed"? After the "cut-and-paste", the remaining pages brag about web-search-engine position for the author's website and give tips like "Look for a jolly dealer". Duh?

As for the supposed "winning system", there is absolutely no mathematical reasoning or logic for the number choices given. There is no even distribution for the sequences. The numbers have every appearence of being randomly generated numbers, created from a very poor random-number generator. For roulette players in Europe and other places where single-zero wheels are used, forget this book entirely as the system applies only to double-zero wheels. And, for players here in America stuck with a double-zero wheel, you'd probably do just as well to randomly pick your own groups of numbers to use in betting progressions -- I doubt you'd do any worse.