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In the 1975 book Picking Winners, Andrew
Beyer brought his speed figures to the
public eye and seventeen years later they
became public record as The Daily Racing
Form began to publish them. Critics, however,
complain that as much good as they have
done for horse betting they have made some
handicappers lazy and unable to adapt to
the reality in front of their eyes.
This is especially true in the current
era - the synthetic racetrack. We all saw
how things played out at Keeneland this
year as the horses moved to a new surface,
where times were so slow on the polytrack
that results became impossible to project
and evaluate.
The polytrack at Del Mar has played fair
some days this week, while on others rally-wide
types have dominated from the outside – necessitating
almost hourly updates to all the changes.
The “Beyer figure” has become
racing’s common denominator, but
since everybody uses it to profit at this
game one has to look beyond the Beyer to
get an edge and make money. Today’s
astute player would be wise to try to evaluate
the synthetic track with a new eye.
The top Beyer figure will win nearly 30%
of the time but will produce a negative
outcome between 5 - 8% in the long run.
Players need to forget the one-stop shopping
mentality that so many bettors have today.
If confronted with 2 horses with apparent
equal ability, but one has a slightly higher
Beyer, the public backs the top number
almost universally.
It took me awhile to catch on as a linemaker
for the Daily Racing Form. Since I’ve
never been comfortable with the logic that
a horse with a 73 Beyer will beat a horse
with a 64 every time, it took some hard
lessons to convince me of the figure’s
impact.
Linemakers are demanded to lay the top-figure
horse short. This doesn’t matter
if the horse has had just one race and
is facing a stakes winner. It also doesn’t
matter if the Beyer figure was earned on
a speed-conducive or biased track. Finally,
it usually doesn’t matter if the
horse is changing surface or distance.
In essence, this means successful bettors
must attempt to buck the trend in betting
on thoroughbreds, even if they figure the
Beyer will give them an edge.
Look at it as the ‘reverse angle’ theory.
One of the biggest factors in the game
is being able to recognize a false favorite,
an overplayed betting choice that hails
from one of the top barns or perhaps the
leading rider has switched his services
to that mount. When a player takes a stand
against a favorite, good things usually
happen. First of all, players won’t
be taking the worst of it by backing the
chalk and if they can toss the chalk out
of the trifecta completely, a whole new
world starts to open up.
If a player can take even a limited stand
against a favorite, the percentages fall
in their favor in the long run. Try to
think the same way with a top last-race
Beyer figure proposition, which is often
easier said than done. After years of publicly
picking horses and working with strict
deadline situations 48-hours in advance
of race time, invariably I’d come
up with the same scenario and the same
horse I originally picked.
If players can look beyond the obvious
and look for an edge, opportunities quickly
become apparent. Trainer patterns come
into play. Trip handicapping, the ability
of the bettor to recognize a difficult
journey for a particular horse, has long
been a staple of the successful player.
How a horse projects to respond on his
first polytrack run is a question that
will follow bettors to the windows from
now on and bettors need to adapt and create
a way to deal with that dilemma.
Good luck to all as we all go into this
new arena.
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Posted on 8/21/2007 7:42:22 PM
Horse Betting Online - Buying The Beyers
By Brian Mulligan
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