Today
- Bruno@Racingwithbruno
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
The Market Knows—Or Does It?
There is a lot to look forward to on today’s Travers Stakes card.
The Travers itself is secondary in my plays, but the undercard is very good. We are going to see everything today: great performances from horses showing their re-breaking, man-made-given abilities, and poor performances that will leave you scratching your head.
Saratoga this season has been unlike any other.
You have to be clued in.
Dialed in.
You have to get the gist.
If you think you can simply open up your past performances, take a look, and—voilà—you’re dialed in, you are going to get hung up.
I have had to handicap this meet like never before. It is far too complicated to explain in a blog post, but those who have followed us know that we have managed to make some sense out of the chaos.
There is one thing, however, that continues to stick in my mind:
The manipulation of the tote board through workout reports.
The crux of the matter is simple.
Flood the market with a product.
Send it to hundreds of people.
Those hundreds send it to hundreds and thousands of other players.
Pretty soon, everybody has the same information, and those players are being funneled toward the same opinions.
And when everybody has the same information, it becomes common knowledge.
Common knowledge becomes mainstream information.
And there are your underlays.
That is what you are going against.
If you are following one of those publications religiously, you are being led like sheep—and that's baaaad!
You don't have inside information.
You are being led to slaughter.
It is incredibly difficult to make handicappers understand that distinction.
Let's say you receive one report from three or four different people. You aren't even paying for it.
Fine.
Now multiply that by 1,000.
And you know what handicappers do.
They see the first flash on the tote board.
The horse is 8-1 on the morning line and suddenly he's 4-1.
Then 3-1.
Then 2-1.
“Somebody knows something.”
Really?
Seriously?
That's some great power of recognition.
Of course somebody knows something.
Everybody got the same information!
People don't think.
They react.
And in gambling, there is no difference.
Some Horses We Believe Will Be Overbet
Here are some horses we believe are candidates to become underlays today:
Race 2 — #2 Dr Kaipur
Race 3 — #2 Lightning Strike
Race 5 — #2 Charles J
Race 6 — #3 Foxiest
Race 8 — #8 Paige Turner
Race 10 — #6 Senior Officer
Race 12 — #10 R Distaster
Race 13 — #3 Napoleon Solo
Race 13 — #4 The Puma
Race 13 — #7 Sea Strike
There is one common denominator among all of these horses:
None of them are our top selections in our product.
That doesn't mean none of them can win.
That's not the point.
The point is price.
It will be fun to follow these horses today and recap tomorrow how many won—and, more importantly, what prices they went off at.
Because the tote board doesn't tell you why the money is there.
It only tells you that the money is there.
And that money can come from a few different entities.
One of the biggest?
Clocker tips.
They spread like wildfire.
And in this case, they are getting a big helping hand.
I learned that lesson myself one night.
I made the mistake of telling a crowd that my horse Banksy's was training well. There was $3,000 bet on him early, and he opened at 1/2.
A classic example came with a filly we entered at Hoosier Park in 2011.
One of the partners bet $1,000 on her before he left for work that morning. The Hoosier Park handle wasn't exactly enormous, so she opened at 1/9.
She went off at a short price and ran second.
Everybody and their mother saw the money.
“Somebody knows something.”
Then, of course, people complain about the price being too short.
And I get the inevitable question:
“How much did you bet?”
I hadn't even decided how I was going to play the race!
And that is the point.
Wagering on horses is not just about wagering.
It is about being calculated.
It is about understanding the process.
It is about recognizing what the market is telling you—and, just as importantly, recognizing what the market has already been told.
Especially nowadays.
People don't think anymore.
They react.
And that creates an opportunity.
The handicapper who simply follows the flash, the report, the workout angle, or the sudden tote-board move is often walking into a price that has already been destroyed.
You don't have to know something everybody else doesn't know.
Sometimes you just have to understand what everybody else knows and what that knowledge has done to the price.
That's the game.
That's where the wagering tool comes in.
Handicapping gets you to the horse.
Understanding the market gets you to the wager.
And those are two entirely different things.
So enjoy the Travers card.
Watch the races.
Watch the tote.
Watch where the money goes.
But don't confuse money with information.
And whatever you do, don't assume that because everybody is betting the same horse, everybody suddenly became a genius.
Sometimes everybody just got the same email.