Dear Mr. Irwin,

I plead guilty of contributing to the "beating the favorite" drone. I have no interest in getting into anything that requires a participant to wear a pith helmet, so please take the following remarks in the friendly way they are intended. Also, since you have identified yourself here, I should point out to you that we know people in common. My cousin knows you well and speaks very highly of you. Thus, I am not interested in creating any animosity. Your points are interesting ones, and I would like to address them.

I respectfully suggest it is not right to hint that people who enjoy talking about handicapping and betting (or looking for ways to go against popular opinion in horseracing) somehow do not recognize or appreciate the sport. I think whether a person enjoys betting favorites or enjoys betting against favorites (or doesn't even enjoy betting at all) has no bearing on such a person's recognition of the sport. If everybody must share the same view in order to appreciate or recognize the sport, that strikes me as a pretty boring sport (closer to watching a performance rather than a contest). Although there is a lot about Classhandicapper I do not respect or agree with, I agree that he shares with most, if not all, on this board a love of the sport.

Getting to the real reason this sport exists, as you mention, is a very interesting question. I think the historical roots are probably pretty well explored and not open to question. However, the reason the current version of the sport is sustained is a very important question that the horseracing establishment needs to think about and address if they want to continue into the future. Since I love the sport, I sincerely hope it is sustained and hope that the racing community works jointly towards that end. I do not think that handicapping dialogs on bulletin boards such as this one do damage to the sustainability of horseracing, and, in fact, I would suggest they help the sport.

I personally thought the dialog on the board regarding the Atto Mile was refreshing (especially in light of other things that also appear on this board from time to time). I even thought the Clown offered a valuable insight. I do include Classhandicapper's contribution in this particular instance, but, normally, it is impossible to engage Classhandicapper in any sort of dialog because either he has no ears or chooses not to use them.

In this case, CH concisely explained the mainstream reasons to bet on Leroidesanimaux (BRZ) which provided a very good counterpoint for discussion. In addition to pointing out (as the ROTW had already done quite well) that there existed another side to the story from what appeared in the superficial analysis, I was trying to point out that it is exactly these sorts of differences of opinion (perfectly illustrated by CH) that give rise to distorted odds which provide opportunity.

I suspect this is a good example of why Ragozin entitled his book "The Odds Must be Crazy." I have not read the book in a long time, but I do recall a tale of him (or else his father) making a healthy score on Dark Star against Native Dancer in the KY Derby using the same logic at issue here. Now I would not accuse Ragozin or his father of not appreciating or giving good recognition to the sport because he profited from Native Dancer's loss or may have been rooting against Native Dancer. (I recognize that the Derby in question was a roughly run race and that is a shame - especially given Native Dancer's ultimate boxscore, but that does not mean that the people who bet on, or rooted for, Dark Star were bad people or did not love the sport or did not make an intelligent bet).

Since Le Roi was bet down to 65 cents, clearly the crowd favored the superficial story over other competing explanations. For some of us, this created a pleasing opportunity described above. Even though I lost (in fact, I was soundly trounced), I enjoyed betting on the race. People who bet on analyses such as LeRoi presented in the Atto must win on such analyses many times for it to be worth their while. For me, I can afford to lose 80% of the time on the analysis I used and still come out well as long as I am hitting 1 in 5. I view this as a textbook example betting correctly but still losing. Anybody who thinks that is not possible does not have a good understanding of horseracing. For the people who were backing Leroidesanimaux (BRZ), they should be happy that people like me existed as the $3.30 would have been less without us.

An important aspect to all of this is the odds being offered by the crowd. Despite what I said in my earlier post in response to Classhandicapper, I do think there are times where a 'boxscore' analysis may be very valuable. For example, a lot of times the speed figures may indicate that a race is very even yet the crowd favors a particular horse. I have seen many times in such a situation where the crowd overlooks a horse with good figures and a good boxscore (usually this occurs when that boxscore has been run up at a place foreign or obscure), and, in these cases, the boxscore can become a valid basis for selecting a horse.

What I do not think makes sense is to say a 3-5 shot is hard to go against because he is "11-8-1-0." The times I think it is hard to bet against a 3-5 shot are when he is clearly the fastest horse in the race by a comfortable margin. I expect 3-5 shots to have something on their form that makes the crowd want to make them 3-5 -- a strong boxscore can often produce such an inefficiency in my opinion. Let us say the odds were 5-1 for leRoi and 3-5 on KoH, in such a situation, I would not have had any problem switching my bets around on the same analysis of the race. I would not, however, say I was betting on LeRoi because his boxscore was so good. I would be betting on him because he is the same speed as Koh and, even if there were trip, pattern, and weight concerns, the 5-1 makes up for it.

Finally, I think the Atto was an excellent ROTW because it showed that even when on the pages of the DRF and in popular opinion a horse may seem overwhelming, there can be intelligent reasons to go against the flow. Just because the results came out the other way does not invalidate this. I am sorry you found the discussion boring or displeasing somehow, but to me it was healthy dialog that people can learn from. Maybe others disagree with me, and I should be going long on pith helmets. In any event, in my view, none of this requires any animosity, and it can all be discussed maturely and amicably.

Respectfully Submitted,

SoCalMan2