A Statistical Approach to Betting the Horse Races

Rating:
Summary: Great Insight for Playing the Ponies
Review: Mr. Ross's effort is a great read for both the recreational and "professional" pari-mutual gambler. He has compiled a plethora of data from 8817 races at 23 different tracks from across the US into multiple statistical categories illustrating the likelihood of where a horse will finish based upon the horse's pre-race odds. Mr. Ross not only analyzes the simple win-place-show probabilities, but also goes in depth to look at the various exotic combinations as well. At 65 pages, (along with aprox. 100 pages of charts) the book is an easy read in a couple of hours and will prove to be an invaluable tool, along with the racecard's past performance data, for an exciting... and profitable, day at the track.

Rating:
Summary: A Few Gems & A Few Stones
Review: Readers of this review may also be considering Exacta Expose by Douglas Railey which is similar in scope. I strongly recommend Exacta Expose as a preferred choice.

A Statistical Approach to Betting the Horse Races contains data and analysis for approximately 4,000 races of data to a pre-existing (earlier edition) of about 4,000 races. The style of typeset and charting appears amateurish. The book contains a handful of excellent insights. However, there are also a few errors (such as win probabilities must be corrected to reflect take-out before they will equal one.). This book will appeal to player's following "impact value" type approaches for specific tracks. Every handicapper should own a book like this and I think this is a good book, however (based on my own datasets) I also think the datasets are too small to be conclusive, although the author discloses a tool for calculating standard deviation associated with these data sets.

Rating:
Summary: Zero stars if I could make it so
Review: This book, if you want to call it that - 39 written pages, double spaced and the first 8 or 10 are the introduction, table of contents, about the author, title page, etc. - Yes, they even counted a blank page at the beginning.

I would be astounded if this was more than 10 or 12 typewritten pages followed by a bunch of worthless graphs.

If you purchase this book, be sure you save the box so that you can send it back easily.