Analyzing Results Track by Track. Is it Me or is It You?

In Chris's Bet With the Best book, a common theme from the players was about checking your results. 

Are we good or better at a certain class, a type of wager; on sloppy days or fast ones; at harness or thoroughbred, or by track. Are we bad at MSW, or at Saratoga or Mountaineer over a large sample size?

Data and statistics are hard and they can fool us pretty easily. A losing streak at a track or wager for a month or two months, when one mostly wins, might not be what it seems. Variance is a bear. 

We generally have to dig deeper. Then, hopefully answer a question - is it you (the venue or class or sport) or me (my handicapping and wagering).

I spent the better part of two days doing just that. 

I currently have a massive divergence of betting results based solely on venue. And that venue is Mohawk Racetrack. 

My play through each and every pool at harness racing "all other" is smooth. Variance is muted, and has been for quite awhile. My most voluminous betting handle is at the Meadowlands, and tracking it by month, by wager, things have a completely normal distribution. 

Over the last three months at Mohawk, it's been nothing close to a normal distribution. The results are completely different than not only "all other" but also by historical results. 

When I dug deeper, I found that not only win ROI is abysmally low at the Campbellville oval, multi leg wagers are as well. Digging into those, yes, I have had several potential scores the last months that had Portnoy type bad luck, however stripping those out, or even converting a couple, still shows bad multi-leg results (it's always wise to look at the median and strip out the noise with multi-legs because the hits are infrequent). 

Regardless, I knew this was happening, and stopped investing in multi-leg wagers. My results have slightly improved at Mohawk, but on much less volume. 

How can one be handicapper of the year in '26 at the Meadowlands and a dart throwing monkey at Mohawk, after years of decent to good results at both tracks? 

On Saturday night a seasoned player sent me a text. He doesn't play Mohawk but did because of the stakes events and after watching it for a couple of days he typed, "they have tomorrow's newspaper at that place".  Indeed, this is a point of view echoed by many, i.e., the horses who are going to win at Mohawk are crushed, the ones who are left alone have little chance in a fixed race. 

I have had, through other conversations, people lament the mystery horse phenomenon in, say, leg three of an event (exhibit number 42 why newbies should not play much of their bankroll on multi legs); namely, a horse well bet, that smart handicappers would completely avoid. The Bax trotter in leg two of the late pick 5 a week or two ago (my fair odds around 15-1, bet to 4-5 and dropped 20 lengths), crushed many, many pick 5 tickets. 

The other theory I have looked at is field quality. At the Big M I have avoided betting TM 68/71 and MADC races. I had previously cut my multi-leg play considerably on those because my results are poor. 

At Mohawk, which is now racing 5 days a week, the horses are all racing (overracing) super frequently, and the classes are beginning to look like the Big M TM 68's. As well, to fill cards we've seen 8 conditioned claimers and pop-up series' which end up invariably in a drench battle. 

My results on races I have tabbed "cheap" the last four months at Mohawk (hold your nose please):  Win ROI -31%. 

After spending some time on this problem the last few days I think I can answer the question: is it me or you?

I think it's both. 

I am doing the right thing not playing sub-par classes as much as I did in 2022-2025, and I am also doing the right thing spending less on multi-leg wagers overall at Mohawk to avoid the "mystery/tomorrow's newspaper" horse.

If I do want to continue to play harness racing at the levels I have been at Mohawk (and despite good results, even the Big M), I will need to be better. 

Kentucky slots (or historical racing, or whatever we're calling it) have wreaked havoc on us as serious horseplayers.  Owners are not going to leave a zero handle, slot infused purse promised land for the big signals. I'm not going to suddenly be able to decipher a shipping 4 claimer in an 8 claiming condition at Mohawk or the Big M better. 

So, in this tough game I find it's a never ending struggle. But struggle we must. I hope how I analyzed my own play above perhaps helps you with yours. 

Have a nice Tuesday everyone. 

Like Him or Not, Portnoy has Something Others Do Not

 A lot of you have seen this Portnoy post about his beat in the Pick 6 at Del Mar yesterday:

I made it to last leg of pick 6 at Del Mar. I had

5 paid 130k
7 paid 400k
8 paid 800k (entire pool)
9 paid 400k
10 paid 400k
11 paid 200k https://t.co/fpH85rRhpC pic.twitter.com/cFWH9axq8x

— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) August 31, 2026

Everyone has an opinion on this guy and I get it, but after 1.7M views and 223 comments, the twittersphere is simply saying, "Damn, we understand".

I've been critical of racetrack marketing here on the blog.  But seeing time after time, some "influencer" being paid to do something at a track in a fancy hat or expensive suit with an end-goal to get "impressions" so some sort of mass-market might see it for a nanosecond, always rubbed me the wrong way. 

As Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz once said, "Mass advertising can build brands, but authenticity makes them last".

This is, to me, the lesson that's been lost on this sport. 

How many people who follow a celebrity online would sign up to a Pick 6 bet share with him or her at Xpressbet? Take your pick, Tom Cruise, Mr. Beast, the Griffin fellow; your favorite Youtuber, if you even have one?

How many followers would sign up and join-in on a ticket with Alix Earle (who 1stbet supposedly paid an appearance fee to) as she walks through a grandstand at Gulfstream while commenting on the colorful jockeys?

In contrast, how many would, after watching that video with the 'ever-polarizing' Portnoy, get in on some action?

Watching a guy with skin in the game almost lose his prized filly in a terrible spill at the Spa awhile back was something real. Now, we see what you, me, literally everyone who has played this game have gone through. 

It's us. It's this game. It's completely real. 

I don't know much about Portnoy, and honestly I don't care in the least what he does in his spare time. What I do know about him is that when it comes to firing at the windows, the guy is authentic. 

And authenticity matters. 

Have a nice Monday everyone. 

Data in the Horse Industry Has Always Been About Who Matters

Datagate in this sport has eaten up the headlines of late. There's a lot of chatter and a lot of reference so there's little use of me going through it here. Crunk's summary of late, showing the, ahem, misinformation, has been as usual pretty solid. 

No matter how we feel about it, in my view, this is the way it always has been. 

I opened up the interweb today, and came across "PFF Pro". This is a stats and API package for the NFL season and it includes: 

• Proprietary statistics and 50+ new data points their DB people came up with
• A new interface where metrics are built into the "PPs". IOW, you can build custom PP's with ease. 
• Player pages, not unlike historical horse PP's, incorporating whole sets of new data
• Game views to handicap games, i.e. why did a team win. 
• An API, so all this data can be placed directly into any program you want. 
• A new AI tool, where you can ask the database a question, and it spits out an answer. In our sport this would be like typing in, well, pretty much anything you could think of about a horse in its current situation, and you'd get information back. 

The price? $24.95 a month. 

Meanwhile back at the ranch, we saw plenty of screen shots of "custom PP's" over the last month for one or two (or five or ten, who knows) people, but no one else. 

I looked into some harness data recently, and found out harness is not part of the Equibase plan, where one can get free data for testing purposes. Leaving aside I would not know what to do to make a CSV file actionable is not the point; the point being, even if I did know how, I'd be out some serious money. 

Now, most of us who do business understand some of this. 

Subscription based services or SAAS work on scale. The cost to create something is sunk, then over a certain point, each additional customer's marginal cost approaches zero. Things get built for a large market. 

Horse racing in 2026, as we all know, is not growing and the market for these products (unlike PFF's offering today) is small. Sinking money into something like this is usually a pretty bad business decision. 

But I think it's more than that. In racing's case, much more than that. 

Sinking money into ROI negative or loss leaders in horse racing is common. Everytime we see a purse of $25k and handle of $10k on the race it's happening and it's been going on forever. 

HISA itself probably proves the point. It's above my pay grade to analyze their systems and net worth per dollar of funding, but this place has a huge budget and from what we read, the whole vet database could be accessed by changing a horse ID number in a URL. Is this a professional enterprise?

The point is, this industry sinks a lot of money into a lot of things without worrying about if $1 going in is $1.01 coming back. 

It's never a KPI for them, it appears, unless when it comes to growing a customer base. 

When I sit here and debate questions about why a CAW can get data I don't have; why a team with millions in bank can get pricing I can't; why someone can access a database of vet work like they live in Hong Kong where everyone can see it and we can't. And yes, why a company like Pro Football Focus can create something so user-friendly and useful for $24.95 a month for everyone, I believe the answer to the questions are easier than I think. 

It's not about money - the sport has plenty of it from slot machines, and hell, HISA gets a reported $75M a year alone. It's not about people who don't care about us - many people in this sport clearly care and want to grow retail handle and the fan base. 

In my view, it's been, from day one, about who they deem matters. 

Distributing slot money to purses matters. Keeping the slot cash rolling by focusing on the politicians matters. Giving 5% win takeout and millisecond execution to a conglomerate in Australia that bets $500M a year matters.

Me and you who might want to ask a question to a database to get better at the game, or those of us who don't bet $500 million a year who want lower prices of our own? 

We don't matter today because it happens to be today. 

No. We don't matter because we never have. 

Have a nice Thursday everyone.