Handicapping Magic - Softcover

Pizzolla, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0967987024 ISBN 13: 9780967987026

Publisher: Intl Thoroughbred Superhighway Inc, 2000

Synopsis

Handicapping Magic presents a comprehensive approach to handicapping the thoroughbred horse race. It's not just another book by an expert showing how good he is. Instead, the techniques are explained step by step and there are dozens of real life examples. Complete instructions on calculating the Fulcrum Pace, Pace Balanced Speed Numbers, Projected Power Fractions, Form Cycle Windows, and much more are provided. The book also contains valuable advice on avoiding the Seven Illusions that can defeat the player, and how to answer the Seven Magic Questions in a Race. Most importantly, the real meaning of the overlay--a true value bet--is revealed and the book will show you how to find them and capitalize from them. The techniques revealed in this book are so simple and straightforward, so easy to use that it will truly seem like Handicapping Magic!

About this title

About the Author

Michael Pizzolla is an attorney by training and an avid professional-level handicapper. Michael has taught seminars on handicapping throughout the country, showing thousands of players a simpler way to handicap. Michael is recognized as one of the pioneers of computer handicapping and has with his colleague Eric Langjahr, created state-of-the-art computer software packages for handicappers.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Foreword By Charles Carroll, author of Handicapping Speed

With Handicapping Magic, Michael Pizzolla sets a new milestone in the working literature of horse racing. This book presents, in a logical, step-by-step fashion, how one of the great players in horse race betting thinks and works.

Importantly—for anyone interested in becoming a “great player” him- or herself—this book is consciously and carefully crafted to build from basic principles through complex ideas. Since these ideas encompass everything from shedding widely held misconceptions through actual betting strategies (the most ignored topic in “handicapping”), they in fact comprise a new paradigm for handicapping and betting. “Paradigm” sounds a lot like “pair-a-dime,” and there is an old saying that, “Two paradigms won’t buy you a cup of coffee.”

But this one will—and maybe a lot more, if you will accept one simple premise from the beginning. The premise is this: successful horse race bettors work for a living.

Pizzolla begins with the “Seven Limiting Illusions,” which many handicappers labor under, sometimes all their lives. I would add the eighth one, from the premise above, because I hear it, in some form, all the time—the illusion that this sport should somehow be easy. There is an image, even among some who should know better, that a successful horseplayer just spends a little time each day with “The Form,” or even less with a computer program, makes big bets, and lives a glamorous life. That illusion includes the notion that, “If I only had the money to make big bets, I could do the same.” There are two facts to the contrary. First, every successful player I have ever met works very hard and, second, if an unsuccessful player is losing with two-dollar bets, then two-thousand-dollar bets will only multiply the losses—by a thousand.

By writing this book so carefully as an instructional process, Michael Pizzolla has laid out a pleasant—but significant—task for you. This is a working text, with carefully selected examples that build on each new idea and reinforce them step-by-step. The task is made far easier by the fact that it is well written and fun to read, but many of the concepts are new or not widely known. To fully incorporate them, you will need to work through the examples until each becomes second nature. That is going to take some commitment, and you will probably have to decide in the first hour of reading whether to work through each example slowly the first time, or read through the book first for fun—then go back through again and learn it. Either way, I urge you to do the work, because there is an immediate profit—you are trading a few hours of study for Michael’s thousands, plus years of front-line experience.

Which raises a very important point: this is not your granddad’s theoretical “pace” treatise. I rather like theory building, and therefore have some real admiration for the explosion of ideas by the pace theorists of the ‘80s and ‘90s—which included Michael Pizzolla in the primary working group. But, Handicapping Magic steps beyond theory into the application, the true test, and reveals what has been learned in the trenches: the racebooks on the Las Vegas Strip.

The ideas presented in this book are not theories that might work; they are proven approaches that do work. I have seen them work in person, and some of them are extremely useful, whether you adopt the entire paradigm or not. For example, the most commonly asked question by aspiring pace and speed handicappers is, “How do you select a pace line?” With the introduction of “Form Cycle Windows,” there is now a very logical, procedural approach for handicappers to do just that with enlightened concepts, not rigid rules. Another major example of pace theory’s maturation is found in the discussion of the Projected Power Fraction, where theory would have it that horses gaining lengths in the final fraction of a race should receive what, on the surface, appears a rather ingenious mathematical credit, while Pizzolla’s experience has proven that this greatly over-rates the accomplishment, and he offers a simple solution. While many of the ideas in this book are far from simple, the! y are all worth the time to work through the examples and absorb them.

Handicapping Magic presents a new set of ideas and tactics, where horse-selection, value of odds, and betting strategy are so well integrated that they form a single, all-inclusive approach to horse racing.

Edition details

• Publisher: Intl Thoroughbred Superhighway Inc
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0967987024
• ISBN 13: 9780967987026
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 448