Though not the ideal bok for the novice horseplayer, this book give insight and information most people interested in the thoroughbred racing game have no idea exists. Written by a reporter, the prose is quick and is filled with quotations by trainers, owners, jockeys and track officials in a real time, fast-paced dialog that is powerful but sometimes difficult to keep up with.

There is no glossary or index of terms and many of the terms used are over the heads of those just learning about horse racing. This book is focused toward a betting audience or readers who currently follow racing and want to learn the intricacies of this most captivating sport.

Funny and hard hitting, this is good read and for the most part well done. Again, not for those just making a foray into this unseen world of lovely mounts and high stakes, but a good book to get acquainted with what happens before and after the starting gate opens.

Mike Helm is a writer who happens to be a handicapper and racing fan. In this book he explores all aspects of thoroughbred racing by visiting and speaking at length with all the people that have a role horse racing.

This would include jockeys and their agents, trainers, owners, grooms, hotwalkers, exercise riders, vets including the track vet, stewards, the racing secretary, handicappers, gamblers, and parimutuel clerks.

If I'm making it sound dry, it isn't. The passion for horses and the game is right on the surface all the way through.

He also answers many questions I have asked myself: on what bases does a racing secretary assign weight? Why do they write a well-balanced card one day, and a full card of cheap claimers with an allowance thrown in as the feature on others? Do jockeys pay any attention to what the owner and trainer tell him before a race? Why do horses often run off form when bumped up in class? What do trainers really think? Why do stewards rarely take down a horse based on a jockey or trainer objection? Does anyone make money gambling on horses over the long haul?

This is the kind of book you will enjoy reading, and can refer back to. I wish it had an index though.

If you are a serious horseplayer and have read many books about horse racing and betting, this book will just be a summary of what you learnt in the past. You will be disappointed if you want to find new ideas on horse racing from this book.

Sadly this book reveals nothing new.....same old stagnant handicapping methods as previously outlined in most of the authors previous books.....to collect a paycheck they have again hyped each other and their own outdated methods.

Same stuff as outline previously only packaged different . Brohammer is the only one making sense in todays handicapping game

A quick overview of each authors specialty,good reading and allows you the chance to learn all different angles of handicapping.

This book starts with the basics of gambling on Thoroughbreds and goes to mostly money management issues and strictly mechanical systems based upon final betting odds. Very outdated.

This book written by expeirienced handicapper Robert Rowe is good starting material for the begginer. It explains all the basics the wagers the odds and so on. But when I happened upon this book a year or so ago I already had been handicapping sussesfully for 4 or so years. So I'll assign 2 ratings for the begginer this is 5 stars for the intermediate level 3 stars. And if your advanced don't bother.

I'm familiar with Bob Rowe's work from American Turf, Racing Star Weekly and other publications. He's a good writer and knows racing as evinced by his latest and best book How To Win At THOROUGHBRED Racing. The current tome, How to Win At Horse Racing, contains much useful information but seems to me as if an editor was over zealous, and should have left Rowe's original words as submitted. Nonetheless, this doesn't distract from the essence of the information provided. Rowe has been writing about racing since I was 17. I'm 67 now. He obviously knows which end kicks and which end bites.

Have you noticed that many horse racing books contain more pages of charts from the Daily Racing Form than pages of the author's comments? This is another horse racing book that fits this description. This book is selection-oriented and gives little or no insight as to how to construct exotic bet tickets. The level of analysis here is basically, "Bet exotics because they pay a lot of money when you hit one." I have read many better horse racing books. This book is strictly for horse racing maidens.

Bill Heller put lots of helpful information in this book. He even let the best pick six handicaper Steven Crist put in his useful tips. That is why this is a five star book

Far too simplistic. A good overview for a first-time horse player. It had a few good points not much on text though. Content was rather weak. Seen far better publications than this from the DRF.

A concise study of relevant information to any horse
player. An easy read which simply and clearly covers
the ways to use result charts for finding future
winners.

Very disappointed. This book actually teaches me nothing on turf handicapping. Perhaps this is because the main stream of horse racing in the United States is dirt racing.

Turf Overlays are hard to find. This book helps bettors win much more money. Instead of leaving the track with eleven dollers. But Turf Overlays can help you leave with one hundred dollers

...Someone has finally taken the next logical step beyond thecanonical work of Andrew Beyer, 1975's _Picking Winners_, and given usthe next step in looking at speed handicapping. Which is good, because of all the types of handicapping out there, Beyer's is the one that the public seized on, and it's since become so popular that Beyer's figures are published in the Daily Racing Form, and are so deadly accurate in most cases that those races which can be unlocked through their application have become unprofitable. Carroll gives us another way of looking at speed, a new take on velocity that turns the work of Broahmer and Sartin on its head, and in doing so takes the many complex calculations of _Modern Pace Handicapping_ and instead substitutes the kind of one-number handicapping ease that the crowd loves. Does it work? I don't know, I have a whole lot of fact-checking to do before i go endorsing Carroll's methods and theories. But as a book, it's a pretty good one. Carroll doesn't go over the same old racing history as most books, but instead gives us background information that we haven't seen before-- the various schools of handicapping, how the money flows, and most notably conformation, something many handicapping books steer far clear of. Most of it has nothing to do with handicapping speed, but any knowledge a player can get is knowledge he can put to use, if he knows how. A worthwhile addition to the shelf of the horseplayer, and if it works, it becomes the sixth book in the canon.

William Murray, The Right Horse (Doubleday, 1997)

availability: amazon

Murray's The Wrong Horse was one of the truly amusing
books in equine literature, a collection of anecdotes
that gives ample evidence that Murphy's Law is a live,
well, and an intimate of every person at a racetrack,
from the grooms to the president to the long-suffering
punters. The Right Horse unfortunately abandons the
jocularity for the most part and takes the tone of an
instruction manual; an odd choice for a book whose
subtitle claims, in part, that the book wants you to
have a great time at the track.

Not to say it's a bad book by any stretch of the
imagination; it's more a question of repetition. If
you've read more than two handicapping primers, it's
likely you've seen a good deal of what's here in the
past. Murray writes well, even when he's not taking
potshots at Mr. Murphy and his law's application to
racing, and the book is certainly readable. I'd just
have liked to see more that hadn't previously been
said. ** 1/2

I found nothing in this book that would help me, a newcomer to betting on horses, make an intelligent decision at the track. I'd prefer to give it less than a star. I will continue to search for a good book that will give me the information I need.

A fun read with little or no information about the gaming aspects of this exciting sport. Railbirds and lifetime fans will learn quite a bit about the sport and the athletes (both equine and human), while being shortchanged on the wagering aspects of the game. Look elsewhere if your interest lies in the wagering aspects of horseracing.

This is a great guide for all the new fans , as well a back to basics refresher manual for the oldtimers. It is quite comprehensive starting from first step up to including methods or systems for selection of winning horses. Just one system in the book may pay for it, with the first bet.

If you never have been to Vegas and want to know a bit about sports betting, this is not a bad book. However, there are some superior books out there.