I think Freehouse raises some good points; I also think they sell many more RAGS than T-Graphs in California; I hang with some very serious players, and I'm the only one who uses T-Graphs -- they all use Rags. As quoted by TGJB, I'm also not unhappy about that for obvious reasons; overall, do the sheets hurt the game?

I don't know how you can say more information is ever a bad thing -- would we rather not have them? I pretty much understand how to make numbers, and, interestingly, I'll see instances where both Rags and T-Graphs will miss something, whether sometimes people are lazy or just not doing their work, who really knows, but overall, making one's own numbers is very time consuming; and you have to keep meticulous records, which I'm just not that great at doing, and I think if you are a player who goes for exotics, like Pick-6's and Pick-4's, the sheets are really necessary and most often a very valuable tool.

I could personally never understand how someone could spend thousands betting and think $25.00 was too much to spend, but I also know plenty of guys like that.

As far as Beyer's numbers go, I think they are totally useless, and I can't see basing any kind of handicapping system or perspective on them -- they are absolutely meaningless to me.

The bottom line for me is that the game is totally different than when I started (when I was a kid, like 30 years ago). There is so much more information avaiable to players -- sure the horse that once was 10-1 now opens at 9-5 but you know we are all only human and we make lots of mistakes and most gamblers are very sloppy, so there will always be value plays.

Just yesterday at Belmont, in that 2 year old stakes race, there were basically 3 horses with very similar numbers and Lukas' 2 year old opens at 2-5. Why did they decide on that horse as opposed to the other two? Well, anyway, I'm not being terribly specific but that 2-5 shot was not using Lasix while the other two contenders were. Now I'm thinking, how many 2 year old stakes winners don't race on Lasix? No too many I'm sure, especially in New York or Cal. where the air quality is terrible -- so there's just an example of just using some common sense and playing the value -- of course, you don't always win, but there are so many variables to this game, I don't think we'll ever run out of these infinite possibilities.

I think the best way to insure value would be to have fewer race cards with fuller fields and better purses, and then there'd always be value. There are certain places where the game is healthy and you always find value there -- when you play Del Mar for example, do you really feel like there's no value because everyone knows everything?

Back in my dad's day, he'd talk to exercise riders and find out who was working well -- now I subscribe to a workout report. Everything still comes down to a subjective human opinion, and as I've indicated, there are just so many variables there!