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.

I feel that it had a lack of detail on programming punters however if there would be a updated book concerning the detailed programming aspect that book would be number one in my opinion.

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 am a thoroughbred racing fan and the owner of many handicapping books. Although many of these books contain valuable material, others have been just a waste of money. When I first started to read this book, I thought it fell into the latter category, but the more I read, the more interesting it became. Although not all the ideas in this book are easily attainable, there are still many that can be added to a persons handicapping arsenal. The discussions about the morning line, jockey and trainer are the best I've seen. I think this book is worth the money.

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.

I agree with the earlier comment. "The Complete Book of Golf Games" by Johnston is a lot better.

This book is pretty lame, especially compared to "The Complete Book of Golf Games" by Johnston.

I found this book to be a very enjoyable and entertaining. It enhanced the pleasure of playing and wagering during my rounds with my regular foursome. The book is well written and filled with trivia and humor. The pocket size makes it convenient to take along in my golf bag and is appreciated by my golf companions while we wait for out tee time or for players ahead to move along.

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.

This book provides the basic guidlines a golfer would use to gamble during the playing of one round of golf. The explaination of the gambling games and how they are played is most instructive. This instruction teaches the beginning golf gambler how to place bets and score specific games in a manner to allow the beginer to protect himslef from cheating or being decieved by a experienced charlatan. This book lacks coverage and discription of how golf gambling would be applied to a charity event sponsored by a golf course and jointly played by all golf club members.

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.