HALF THE RACE IS OUT OF YOUR CONTROL
(Part 7)

10---WEATHER

One of the main reasons that I relocated to sunny Southern California 12 years ago was
weather.

With moisture falling from the heavens every 2 to 4 days on the East coast, I was simply tired of playing a different racetrack every single day of my wagering life---especially after 30 years.

Eastern tracks are always in a state of either getting wet or drying out. This is clearly evidenced by making one’s own daily track variants for one’s favorite track(s) on the East coast. Wide swings are the norm, not the exception.

On the other side of the coin, if you keep daily track variants for Southern California, those wide swings seen regularly on the East coast only occur approximately 4 to 6 weeks of the year during our “rainy” season from the end of December to mid February.
The other 11 or so months of the year, Southern California racetracks offer very little variation in track speed.

Breeding afficionados allege to actually enjoy these ever-changing surfaces while claiming windfall profits from same year-in and year-out. I question their veracity because if breeding was all that was needed to beat our game on a consistent basis, wouldn’t IBM have cornered the breeding information market decades ago before Bill Gates was ever heard of?

I’m sure you get the drift.

And before I get a ton of email, I’m not saying that breeding isn’t important in handicapping. It is. In fact, it is extremely important. But it is far from the only handicapping factor needed to win.

Sure, I’ve had many big winning days on “off tracks” as I’m sure you’ve had too. I’m far from an idiot when it comes to breeding, but I’d be lying to you if I stated that I could wager only on “off tracks” and still show annual profits. I can’t and seriously doubt that anyone else could.

Taking the weather factor a step further, suppose you live in Nebraska and wager on New York and New Jersey tracks. Let’s further suppose that it is summertime. I have a question for you.

How would you know if the East coast track that you are playing today had a brief shower overnight that will positively affect track speed this afternoon? I’m not talking a torrential downpour that renders the track sloppy or muddy, but rather a quick light rain for 15 to 30 minutes that slowed the track down enough to kill the front speed in the final 1/16th of a race.

Fact is that you probably wouldn’t know unless one of the “talking heads” on TVG or some other source was good enough to offer this crucial betting information. Without this enlightenment, it might take half the card until you realized that the track wasn’t “playing” the same way that it was the day before.

Moving this rain scenario one more mini-step further, I can recall countless times during my many enjoyable but very hot and humid summers at Monmouth Park when cloudless sun-filled days would suddenly turn dark offering hurricane-like downpours for 15 minutes even though unpredicted by accu-weather.

Monmouth’s “fast” dirt track would be bone dry and rock hard for the running of the 5th race on the day’s card, yet be listed as “sloppy” for the 6th race. I’m sure this still occurs every summer at Monmouth as well as other tracks across America.

Suppose you made your wagers for Monmouth before you left home for your real job, assuming an all-day “dry” track. But also suppose that one of those quick-shower summer afternoons completely changed the fast and dry running surface. Surely that would render any races run on a wet track out of your control if you handicapped those same races for a dry track and had already placed your bets.

Conversely, suppose accu-weather actually forecasted rain for any given afternoon and you handicapped and advance wagered for an “off” track, yet a drop of rain never fell from the heavens. Needless to mention, this surely would affect race outcomes and render some if not all of the races totally out of your control.

And to close on this topic of weather, consider the jockeys.

Back east many moons ago a jockey named Mike Lukas was, at best, just an average 8 to 10% journeyman rider on any fast and dry track. Yet put moisture into the surface and he turned into one of the best riders I’ve seen in my entire 40+ years of wagering.

Whenever rain was predicted, the first thing I did when I opened my Racing Form the night before was to look for Mike’s mounts. Inevitably, Lukas managed to boot one or more home offering “boxcar” mutuels.

If I was ever torn between a Lukas or another rider’s horse, I went to Mike’s mount. He was absolutely fearless on off tracks, but for some unknown reason couldn’t transfer this wet track ability to dry surfaces.

This extremely profitable angle served me well for umpteen years!

Conversely, many top riders on every racetrack in America only go thru the motions whenever riding over wet tracks due to the increased possibility of spills and severe injury.

Can’t say that I blame them, but that doesn’t mean that I have to bet them.

(Continued in Part 8 of HALF THE RACE IS OUT OF YOUR CONTROL)

© Joe Takach 2004