William L. Scott, Total Victory at the Track (Amicus, 1988)

The late Scott concludes his handicapping trilogy with Total Victory at the Track, a book that both builds on his two earlier works (Investing at the Racetrack and How Will Your Horse Run Today?) and introduces another concept that ties them together. While Scott's work isn't bad, and the foundations upon which it lays are solid enough, there are some blunders in here that a novice wouldn't make. Whether to blame Scott or his editors is an arguable point, but the effect is the same; a novice coming into this book is going to pick up some bad information indirectly. My advice: buy this book if you're experienced enough at horseplaying to know how to read the Daily Racing Form's past performances and result charts, and be on the lookout for the errors. They are everywhere.

That said, the methods outlined here are certainly solid ones, as the workout in the back of the book shows (I'm doing my own testing on it, since these things seem to change on an almost daily basis in the horse biz), and while Scott isn't promising rose gardens, nor enough money to buy the land and plant the roses, it would seem that what he offers is at least enough to turn losers into break-even types or winners, if they're willing to do a little work to get there. It just seems that the path might be a little easier to follow without the glaring Daily Racing Form-related errors that pepper the text. ** 1/2

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.

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.

A terrible and very disappointing book,not even sutible for a beginner. What is is are some very basic parts of 2 other books Harness racing gold by Igor Kusyshyn And from Stanleys Law by Al Stanley(and it certainly isnt the best of)Each of the 2 books ive mentioned,although almost a quarter of a century old are still usefull in todays market,as are any of Al Stanleys other writings.You are far better off getting a hold of those other books and just pretend this book was never written

This book is just to bland and out of order to be of any use to the modern horseplayer

I'm sorry I every bought this one. This will be the last time I purchase a book that hasn't been reviewed.

Frankly, any book with as many typographical errors as this hapless little volume contains would result in some editor's head being lopped off. This book evidently had no quality control exercised over it. But that isn't the main problem. The book is an information lightweight. The author's fundamental message is something to the effect that workouts can be informative as to a maiden's condition. I found the few-and-far-between nuggets of information rather generic and hardly earth-shattering. A newcomer to the sport, only about three years' worth of handicapping experience, I kept the book as a curiosity, but I could hardly recommend it to anyone except as perhaps a good laugh. Well, there are one or two interesting tidbits in it and after all it is a contribution to the meagre handicapping effluvia. Yet Mr. Reo has done better (i.e., Finding Hot Horses). If you find it on sale somewhere, it's worth a couple bucks. Otherwise, spend the money on a beer. The post-guzzle belch will satisfy you a lot more than this book will, alas.