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Rating: 
Summary: Handicapping 101 a primer for beginning players
Review: Brad Free put out a nice piece with this little book. It is written concisely and does not overwhelm the reader with data and charts.While it is selective in the information included the overall result serves a purpose. It provides a basic set for recreational handicappers that can if studied thoroughly can result in more enjoyable trips to the race track. His discussion of Class, the most often poorly described or discussed area of the art of predicting outcome of races was one of the better that i have read. His emphasis on the inseparable link between horses overall speed and their true ability level was especially helpful. From his narative about personal experiences with handicapping, two things are made clear. His strength is in his writing and in communicating ideas to the reader. His weakness, I suspect, is in his personal handicapping. Don't know this to be true, but I suspect he gets undisciplined and goes overboard at the wrong times reducing his personal effectiveness. Or has so in the past and now is grown. Been there; done that. I think everyone who plays this game does that. Was refreshing to hear an admission of just how much pain there is in the process of learning to consistantly perform well at the track. Final comment. I suspect that should the recreational handicapper study this work well, more will come away with a little profit regularily and leave a somewhat smaller piece of the pie for the pros to eat.
Rating: 
Summary: Decent, but not great
Review: For beginners, and I am one of them, this book has its ups and down. The positives: a fairly coherent layout on the basics of handicapping focusing on form, class, speed, and pace. His chapters on betting theories and techniques are quite good. The anectdotes are entertaining. Unfortunately, the book is riddled with flaws that as a beginner, I found frustrating. First, the book has no index, which is extremely frustrating when trying to go back through the book to find previous points made by the author. Second, the book has inconsistencies that are not resolved. Third, the book does a fairly poor job on pace handicapping by simply assuming the reader is able to match fraction times with the appropiate calls during the race. I had to consult other sources in order to actually find out what matches with what for races at different distances, and what distance corresponds with each fraction and call on the past performances. Overall, a pretty good book for beginners, but I have to believe there is something better.
Rating:
Summary: Thanks Brad
Review: Free has done an excellent job of providing beginning and intermediate handicappers a solid foundation with which to look at the four fundamentals of horseplaying--condition, class, speed, and pace. Like Joe Cardello's "Beyer on Speed" he doesn't give many dogmatic absolutes or "system" angles but just common sense paramaters to beginning horseplayers and subtle reminders to the rest of us. I stress the word MANY because he was exceptionally adamant about never playing underlays, which I think is shortsighted; underlays have their place, but not as a steady diet. Perhaps the best part was his candor in discussing his own foibles as a public handicapper. It is good to be reminded that even the pros have their droughts as well! Good work Brad.
Rating:
Summary: Just what I was looking for.
Review: Well as a newbie to horse racing, all the data at hand was quite overwhelming. I mean where does one start? While perusing the web I came across this book. I'm so glad that I did! This book has everything you need to get down to some intelligent betting. My first application of the knowledge I got from this book was quite successful (got the trifecta on my very fist try, and these weren't favorites! Also was in the money for all the other races I bet that day (4)... Beginners luck?). Now I have a good basic understanding and a bit of confidence when betting. The only reason this book got 4 stars is that it lacks a glossary.
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