Total Victory at the Track: The Promise and the Performance

Rating:
Summary: total victory at the track:
Review: Please read the last paragraph in the review dated Jun 3, 2003.
Is the reviewer some kind of idiot??? What does he want from the book!!! Sorry, but the author give the reader a winning system. Yes it is more complicated then shown in his previous books!! But one get better results!!! More work, more winners!!! Get over it!! That's the way it is in life!!!!
Use only 5 appropriate recent races to determine the PCR and one should make an adjustment to the ability time (ABT) based on the difference in track speed, if the ABT is taken from a different track that the race will be run on today. Watch for a positional track bais just not an overall track bais as Scott teaches!!! Work hard and prosper or throw darts and starve!!!

Rating:
Summary: Total Confusion
Review: This book, the third in the Scott "Investing at the Track" trilogy, is the flimsiest yet. One, it abandons much of the safe, statistically-backed theory of the first two books in favor of newer ideas that are only supported by a few hundred race samples, and are curiously not shown to be more effective based on the ORIGINAL race samples (which might be more convincing). Two, it tempts the reader to venture into much riskier plays than ever before (where admittedly, more profits can be made, but at greater risk and greater uncertainty). And three, it is rife with "judgment calls" in all facets of the computation of performance class ratings, running lines, etc. And, once you start asking the handicapper to lump almost ALL past performances into the formula, without regard to the PPs' track conditions or even surface in most cases...it's hard to make such a leap of faith.

The beauty of the original Scott system was its simplicity. This new method is a morass of "add this, subtract that, divide that but only when there's a full moon..." It also adds to the bookkeeping necessary to make it work while you're actually at the track. All the calculations and comparisons can't easily be done in the Racing Form, rather a notebook and calculator are necessary for close scrutiny of all the numbers for each rated beast.

It's very hard to get a grip on the calculations, let alone the new selection criteria.

Still, there is a bright side: in some preliminary testing against some recent races that were also handicapped using the old method, the new method seemed to do better. It took a day's racing with the old method that featured a disaster at one track and a reasonable profit at another, and turned in windfalls at both, using the new method.