Common Sense Handicapping

Let me tell you about a fella named Giordano Bruno, a man who lived several hundred years ago, had a mind of his own, and found out the hard way that there are certain people in this world who do not take kindly to somebody telling them they might be wrong.

In Europe It is traditional to use last name first, first name last, so in reality in North American standards he was Bruno Giordano

Sound familiar? Well, hang around horse racing long enough, and you’ll recognize the species.

Bruno Giordano was born Bruno Filippo in 1548 in Nola, near Naples, Italy. He eventually changed his name to Bruno Giordano, and from there he proceeded to make himself a real problem for the established order.

And by problem, I mean the kind of fella who could walk into a room full of powerful people, explain why their entire understanding of the universe might be wrong, and somehow leave without making a single friend.

Bruno was a philosopher, poet, cosmological theorist, and a whole bunch of other things that would probably get him labeled a know-it-all on social media today.

He was a Renaissance man, which is a fancy way of saying he had a lot of interests and wasn't particularly interested in keeping his mouth shut about them.

His ideas about the universe were revolutionary. He embraced the possibility that the stars were distant suns with their own planets, that those planets might support life, and that the universe was infinite, with no single center.

Now, this was a time when the Catholic Church had some rather firmly established opinions about how the universe worked. And here comes Bruno, suggesting that maybe the universe is a whole lot bigger and more complicated than the authorities wanted everybody to believe.

You can imagine how well that went over.

Bruno traveled throughout Europe, spent time in France, England, and Germany, and served in royal and academic circles. He was known for his intellect, his memory, and his ability to challenge conventional thinking.

He also studied the art of memory, a collection of techniques designed to help people organize and recall enormous amounts of information.

And that, my friends, is where this story gets interesting for horseplayers.

But first, let's finish with the part where things went about as badly as they possibly could.

In 1592, Bruno was arrested in Venice. He was eventually transferred to Rome, where he faced the Roman Inquisition. His trial dragged on for years, and on January 20, 1600, Pope Clement VIII ordered that he be handed over for punishment.

On February 17, 1600, Bruno was burned at the stake in Rome.

He refused to recant the central beliefs that had brought him before the Inquisition.

The familiar story is that he was offered opportunities to abandon his convictions and save himself, but refused. The precise details of his final words and the popular retellings of his last moments are less certain than the historical fact that he was executed for heresy.

But the larger point remains.

Bruno would not surrender his convictions simply because powerful people demanded it.

And here's something that makes this personal for me.

Bruno was born less than five miles from where I was born. I know San Domenico Maggiore in Naples, where he studied. That building still stands in the historic center of the city.

I've walked around places connected to a man who challenged the accepted wisdom of his time, and I've often thought about how little human nature changes.

We might not be burning people at the stake over disagreements about the universe as of recently, but we sure do have an impressive collection of other ways to punish people for thinking differently.

Especially in horse racing.

Now, before anybody gets the wrong idea, I'm not comparing a bad handicapping opinion to the Spanish Inquisition. Nobody should be calling the authorities because you like a 12-1 shot that finishes last.

Although, judging by some of the messages I've received over the years, you'd think I had personally insulted somebody's grandmother by questioning their favorite trainer.

Here's where Bruno's story intersects with my own little corner of the world.

He studied the art of memory. I have spent years studying horses, watching races, reviewing past performances, and paying attention to details that other people either overlook or dismiss.

I've been accused of having the memory of an elephant.

Well, that's probably a better compliment in this business than being told you have a great personality.

Because handicapping requires you to remember things.

Not just who won the last race. Not just who rode the horse. Not just what the morning line says or which trainer is winning at 30 percent.

You need to remember how a horse ran, what happened during the race, how the pace developed, what the track was doing, where the horse was positioned, whether the effort was better than it looked, and whether today's circumstances resemble something you've seen before.

You need to recognize patterns.

And you need to be able to recall those patterns when they matter.

I've used my own attention to detail and accumulated experience to develop opinions about horses. My conviction comes from those experiences, the information I've gathered, and the conclusions I've drawn from them.

But here's the important distinction: conviction based on evidence is useful. Conviction based on your ego is a damn expensive hobby.

And horse racing is full of people who can't tell the difference.

Some handicappers are emotionally attached to jockeys. Others have a personal grudge against a trainer. Some refuse to bet a particular owner because they don't like him. Others have decided that a certain jockey is their personal nemesis.

I once heard a handicapper refer to Julian Leparoux as his "kryptonite."

His kryptonite?

Apparently, Superman had an easier time dealing with his weaknesses than this fella did with one jockey.

Another person tells you, "I never have any luck at that track."

I had a very successful trainer tell me once he has had no success with Tapits.

Well, congratulations. You've managed to turn a racetrack into a personal conspiracy against your bank account.

That's not handicapping. That's a therapy session with a betting voucher or a pedigree.

It's like being French and hearing somebody yell, "The Germans are coming!" and immediately throwing your hands up in surrender instinctively.

You haven't even looked at the past performances, and you're already out of the race.

That's what happens when you let personal history override present evidence.

You stop evaluating the horse in front of you and start arguing with ghosts from situations you had six months ago. I bought a Curlin a long time ago, didn't work out, he's not on my list.....

Yes, he is, is on that list of horses you treat like a woman scorn.

And the horse doesn't give a damn.

He doesn't know you hate his jockey or his sire. He doesn't know you got burned by his trainer at Saratoga. He doesn't know you swore you'd never bet another horse owned by that particular outfit.

He's a horse.

He's going to run the race he's capable of running under the circumstances he's given. Your job is to figure out whether those circumstances offer you an advantage at the windows.

That's it.

You don't have to like the horse's connections. You don't have to invite the trainer to dinner. You don't have to agree with the owner's politics, personality, business practices, or choice of headwear.

You have to handicap the horse.

I know owners who give horses to particular trainers largely because they've cashed tickets with them in the past. If I operated that way, I'd have horses with just about everybody holding a trainer's license on the backstretch.

You win a bet with one trainer, and suddenly he's a genius. You lose with another, and he's incompetent.

That's a hell of a way to make a business decision.

These are often intelligent people, sure, I can buy that. They can run businesses, manage investments, and make complicated decisions in their professional lives. But bring them into a racetrack, and suddenly their brains are being operated by a committee of old grudges, superstitions, and one particularly traumatic exacta from 2019.

Common sense isn't nearly as common in handicapping as you might think.

I sat in the press box in California for years, and I heard it every day. People rooting against owners. People rooting against trainers. Media members rooting against people they didn't care for. Handicappers rooting against other handicappers.

And time after time, that prejudice came back and bit them right in the arse.

They weren't trying to identify the most likely winner at a fair price. They were trying to prove somebody else wrong.

Those are two entirely different pursuits.

One can make you money. The other can make you popular with a handful of people who already agree with you.

And popularity, as far as I know, doesn't cash at the teller.

Here's the funny part: some of the most satisfying bets you'll ever cash are on horses connected to people you don't particularly care for.

You don't have to become a fan. You don't have to change your opinion of the person. You just have to acknowledge that the horse is a legitimate contender and that the price makes sense.

You can dislike the trainer and still recognize a good spot.

You can question the jockey's judgment and still see that he's on the best horse.

You can think the owner is an insufferable pain in the neck and still take his horse when the circumstances warrant it.

In fact, if you can do that consistently, you might actually have an advantage over the fella who spends his entire afternoon trying to make sure the people he dislikes lose money.

Imagine that. Making money instead of making enemies.

What a radical concept.

And this brings us back to Giordano Bruno.

Bruno challenged the accepted wisdom of his time. His fate reminds us that an established belief doesn't become true simply because a powerful institution insists upon it.

But there's another lesson here, and it's one handicappers ought to take seriously.

You have to be willing to challenge your own beliefs, too.

It's easy to question everybody else's judgment. It's much harder to admit that the jockey you love has made a mistake, the trainer you trust has entered a horse in the wrong spot, or the horse you've been touting for three weeks simply isn't good enough.

You blame, the rail, the circumstances, the valet, anything other than yourselves.

Critical thinking isn't about stubbornly defending whatever you believed yesterday. It's about examining the evidence today, even when that evidence makes you uncomfortable.

That's the difference between having convictions and being a prisoner of them.

Bruno stood by his beliefs when the consequences were extraordinary. A horseplayer, thankfully, doesn't need to demonstrate that kind of courage. We just need enough humility to change our minds when the facts call for it.

If your handicapping method says a horse is a contender, but your personal feelings say you don't want to bet him, ask yourself a question.

Are you trying to win the race, or are you trying to win an argument with yourself?

Because the tote board doesn't care about your personal relationships.

Neither does the finish line.

And the mutuel clerk certainly isn't going to give you a refund because you refused to bet the winner on principle.

So take the emotion out of the equation. Study the horse. Remember what you've learned. Look at the evidence. Question your assumptions. Make your decision based on the race in front of you, not the resentment you've carried into the building.

You might discover that the horse you've been fighting all afternoon is the very horse who can put money in your pocket.

And if that happens, you don't have to apologize to anybody.

Just cash the ticket.

Giordano Bruno paid the ultimate price for refusing to surrender his convictions. We horseplayers have it a little easier. We can reconsider our opinions, change our minds, and still walk out of the racetrack with our dignity intact, most of the time.

Well, provided we haven't lost the rent money.

The point is, you don't have to be burned at the stake for thinking differently.

But if you insist on letting your prejudices do your handicapping, the windows will find a way to set you on fire anyway.

And unlike Bruno, you won't even get a history book written about you.

You'll just be another guy at the bar explaining how you would have won if that damn jockey hadn't been riding.

Common sense isn't so common in handicapping. Maybe the biggest edge you can find is learning to think for yourself—and having the courage to bet against your own prejudices.