Winning Horseracing Handicapping: Secrets of a Successful Horseracing Handicapper

Rating:
Summary: Excellent intro for novices
Review: Chuck Badone, Winning Horseracing Handicapping 2/E (Lone Star Park at Grand Prairie, 1999)

Badone, the selections guru at the newly-opened Lone Star Park, wrote a book on handicapping long ago, during his days of giving seminars at Turf Paradise. When Lone Star opened, they reprinted the book with a number of revisions from Badone, as a kind of new-fan primer. Too bad they kept the gramatically painful title, but other than that, there's little that will steer you wrong here.

If you've already read the basic handicapping texts, you're not going to find terribly much here you haven't read before, though Badone does put a few things into new perspectives. This book isn't aimed at the well-read horseplayer, however, but at the new patron. Badone lays his material out quickly and easily, but without the pedantry that mars a number of books for beginning handicappers. He's extremely easy to read, and his section on class changes is the easiest-to-understand I've ever read (not to mention one of the most solid; it's not Jim Quinn's _Class of the Field_, but for the beginning player, it's great stuff). Highly recommended for casual and new fans of Thoroughbred racing...