[Thunder Gulch]

I've read 50 books over the last couple of years, not really looking for answers, but looking for different ways to ask questions. No book is going to open up a magic system for handicapping, but the point is that there are several ways to approach any given race. In my mind, if you can get one valuable concept from a book, no matter how subtle, then it is worth the time to read the book. I try to look for the most likely contenders, then think about what factors will drive the money at the windows and which factors will be overlooked.

If I was designing a program of written material to develop someone, Ainslie was the first place I'd start. That's a good place to start along with a couple of others for general concepts into "comprehensive handicapping."

Andy Beyer's books are a must as well as a good read. Read them in order starting with "Picking Winners." Even though it's well documented that those figs have no value in the betting pools, you really get a good understanding of how the speed figure revolution started and where it's value lies.

Steve Davidowitz's "Betting Thouroughbreds" is an excellent book to move on into key race, bias, and record keeping concepts. James Quinn's "Handicapper's Condition Book", and Tom Brohammer's "Modern Pace Handicapping" present some material that may be tough to understand at first, but explore class and pace like nothing else I've encountered. From there, Joe Cardello's "Speed to Spare" and Dave Litfin's "Expert Handicapping" provide excellent tools for looking for overlays in form cycles. The Cardello book is especially useful for weekend warriors with their use of Beyer patterns.

Now, after you have been through these, read the works of Mark Cramer starting with "Fast Track to Thoroughbred Profits." After getting through others, you think you know something, and Cramer spins it around and takes a contrarian approach to conventional handicapping wisdom. It really changes your entire mindset from selection based handicapping to wager value. "Kinky Handicapping" and "Thoroughbred Cycles" are both fantastic with the latter being an exceptional work on condition/form.

A couple of others I like. James Quinn's "Best of Thoroughbred Handicapping" is an excellent router to several methods. He takes the works of 20 handicappers and does an excellent job of paraphrasing the underlying concepts of each. Reading this is what sent me in the direction of several mentioned above. Barry Meadow has a good book on money management. From the DRF series, the aforrementioned book by Joe Cardello is good, as is the book by Dan Illman on maiden races. The others in that series are useless, IMO.

At the end of the day, you need to find what works for you in your own experiences, and that's something you can't get from a book.