(Note: For newcomers, Jon Worth's dad, the late Tom Worth, developed the widely acclaimed TIPS Handicapping Method. TIPS are angles and plays which can point you toward “live” horses, many at long shot prices. These angles help you zero in on well-meant horses, ones who are in good current form and ready to run his best effort today. As you will read toward the end of this essay, The TIPS Update divides the tipoffs into two categories: Trainer TIPS and Horse TIPS. Use a combination of these tipoffs to isolate strong selections. TIPS handicapping is one of best kept secrets among winning handicappers - join them!
Click here to view the TIPS Value Packs.
The subject for our previous essay was Long Shots, and it focused on the Big Four Plus One Method. That particular method most certainly can put you on track for isolating long shots, and cashing long shot tickets never gets old!
This month's essay's topic is how Horse TIPS can help you isolate Best Bets that can keep your earnings consistent and strong.
As handicappers, the start of a new year is an opportune time to review our recordkeeping, (unless one of your resolutions is to start keeping records!), analyze how can we improve with our handicapping. Whether you have had the best year ever or not so much, you want to examine your records. What worked? What didn’t? Not just in terms of angles and plays, but also what type of wagering strategies performed well for you. For example, if nearly all your horses ran in-the-money but you focused just on win bets, possibly your profits suffered. So overall, my advice is we need to review all aspects of our handicapping and wagering because win or lose, you want to improve!
In late December, I do the traditional, "let's take stock" to see where I can improve my handicapping. By doing so, I found that my recordkeeping and analyzing of such has already improved my handicapping bottom line and has also improved a new component to my selection service, namely a Best Bets Service that is not yet listed on our website.
My selections for our regular selection service have been performing well; for instance, 8 of the last 12 days have shown a profit. But while the profits for the Best Bet Service, (BBS), were there, I wanted to find a way to increase them. I did find a way and after a few days of implementing it, my results improved. After describing my plan of attack for increasing profits, you will see a few examples of Best Bet selections.
As a brief background, the Best Bets service, (BBS), actually started at the request of a client. In its first month, (early October through early November), the BBS showed a profit in all 3 slots, (win/place/show), and was highest in the place hole. The BBS selections continue to show a profit, particularly in the place and show holes. However, the profit in the win slot, while there, was not as high as I thought it should be. In December, the results for place and show continued to be very good and consistent, but again, the profits for the win hole were a disappointment as they were just simply very low.
Thus, on the one hand my recordkeeping proved that my Best Bets are conducive to place and/or show parlays while on the other, I just wasn’t sure why the win slot wasn’t performing quite up to expected percentages, given the place and show collection rates. Hmmm.
As December waned, and January 2015 loomed ever closer, I decided to reexamine my recent Best Bet selections. After reviewing the evidence, I could see a ‘glaring’ hole---I realized I wasn’t focusing in one area as much as should have, that clearly I had lost sight of, at least a little bit—namely, being more diligent in searching for horse tipoffs!
For someone who "grew up" with the TIPS method, this realization just floored me! (In my head I could hear my dad, Tom Worth, exclaiming, “Jonathan!” as only a dad can when he's learned of something wrong you've been doing! In retrospect, I just had too much going on. I was absorbed in what I love to do, namely researching and writing about handicapping in addition to my Selection Service, plus the holiday season was in full swing, (I'm the volunteer photographer at our church so I was quite involved with all the seasonal activities); we had an overnight road trip to bring our daughter home from college; my basketball league resumed on Sunday nights; I bowl each week in our church's bowling team; I sub for a doubles tennis team; and other such activities.
The point is, is that I temporarily lost sight of a successful handicapping strategy, and as you will soon read, getting back on track with Horse TIPS has made a huge improvement for both my professional and personal handicapping and continues to so as I update this on 1-24-2015. (Horse TIPS and Trainer TIPS are defined in the TIPS Update.)
We all get off track from time to time due to other commitments, and my main goal in this essay is to:
#1) help you stay on track
#2) show you how the importance of Horse TIPS
Horse TIPS, (aka as horse tipoffs),and as defined in The TIPS Update, are extremely significant. If you were to ask me what is the most important thing to do when handicapping, I would answer with a resounding, "look at Horse TIPS!!" They are a collection of angles defined in the TIPS Update and mostly developed by my father and some were generously contributed by other handicappers. Horse tipoffs are ones that many "TIPS handicappers" consider to be the most important angles of all. And as noted, when I took stock of the state of affairs so to speak, I realize I lost sight of the significant of Horse TIPS. With 2015 just days away, I realized that I needed to go back to basics.
In terms of the Best Bet Selection Service, (not yet listed on our website but give me a call if interested in this service), I took a 2-pronged approach:
1. I made a conscientious effort to search for Horse TIPS.
2. Since the majority of Best Bets come from among the top 3 ranked, (and occasionally the top 4), horses in a given field, I made sure to scour the past performances for those entries.
We’ve written articles on the importance of Horse TIPS before in the TIPS Report, (you'll find a listing of those issues at the end of this essay), but it has been some little time since they were the main focus of an article. Of course, we’ve noted horse tipoffs when appropriate in nearly every article we publish, but I don’t believe we’ve made looking for horse tipoffs the priority in quite awhile. My memory may be off a bit, but I believe the last time an entire article in the TIPS Report was focused mainly on finding horse tipoffs was in an article contributed by J.B., a Florida handicapper, perhaps 5 years ago.
In reality, or in handicapping reality, this really doesn’t make much sense, because, whether you are using the TIPS Methodology, or a spot play, or a contender screen, if you know what to look for, (namely horse tipoffs), the presence of horse tip-offs can improve the results of practically (nearly) any handicapping approach.
Over the many years since my father researched and developed the TIPS Methodology, he, and to a lesser extent I, would frequently receive questions such as:
“I had the field narrowed down to 2 entries, one with 10 tipoffs and one with 8 tipoffs. The one with 1 finished out (of the money), and the one with 8 tipoffs won and paid $14. I thought the more TIPS an entry had the better?”
When my dad would check the entries in question, very often he would find that the horse with greater number of tipoffs had only 1 Horse TIP showing while the horse with lesser tipoffs had more than 1 Horse TIP, and even though the other horse had a few more tipoffs, it was the 2 or more Horse TIPS that made all the difference. Horse TIPS are often that significant!
If you are a "TIPS handicapper" then you know this makes great sense. In our handicapping world TIPS fall into 1 of 2 categories:
- Trainer TIPS which can help you gauge the intent of the Trainer for today's race; and
- Horse TIPS which signal how strong, fit and ready the horse is for today's race. The trainer can outline a plan of action to get the horse ready, but if the horse can't do it, well that is obviousl not a good sign!
Think of two automobiles. One is the typical family car. It has just been outfitted with four new tires, the mechanic has checked out the car making sure it is safe, and has given it a tune-up as you prepare for a family road trip. You are going a good distance, say 1,500 miles round trip, and it is an efficient vehicle and thus economical. You will be passing by unfamiliar towns and cities and will not always be sure which exits to take and thus stay in the middle lane. You try to keep up with traffic as best you can. Loaded down with family members along with luggage, etc., your car is performing okay, but if you need to pass or need a sudden burst of speed, it may not be an immediate “kick in” when you accelerate. Newer cars and sports cars pass you with ease.
In this scenario the family car has the room you need, is comfortable and economical, but when climbing hills or need to quickly change lanes, it doesn’t respond as say a sports cars or one with a big V-8 engine.
Now let's think of a race horse rather than a car. The race horse is like the engine of a car. As you analyze the past performances and note that a trainer has made all the decisions similar to the family car owner. Like a car mechanic, the trainer has tuned his horse as much as posible by putting him through a training regimen including workouts, and he appears to have spotted the horse in the proper class level for today's race. Yet you don't see any hints of speed. If you are familiar with the Tom Worth Horse TIPS, chances are that such a horse has just one Horse TIP, if that. The car/race horse analogy isn't perfect but you get the picture. In short, Horse TIPS can be critical to your success. The presence of Horse TIPS will improve your results using almost any handicapping method, not just ours.
Now, let's get back to Best Bets. After realizing I had lost sight of Horse TIPS, for isolating Best Bets, I planned to use two screens:
1. Search for a few favorite trainers at each track; and
2. Handicap in depth the top 3-4 rated horses.
In addition, like many of you, in order to dramatically reduce my own handicapping time, I will frequently use effective spot plays. Thus, I planned to apply some of our spot plays when handicapping the top ranked horses.
Long time readers know that maiden races are my favorite type to handicap. We’ve written a few spot play methods that were designed for maiden races such as Show-a-Profit, The Fitness Factor and the Only One II. While each focuses on maiden races, they do so with different approaches and thus use different sets of handicapping factors. However, they all have two things in common:
1. each was developed to handicap maiden races; and
2. the presence of Horse TIPS will increase the effectiveness and consequently the results of each method.
I was counting on the second point, meaning horse tipoffs, to improve my selections for the Best Bet selection service. I reasoned that the presence of horse tipoffs would help me decide if one of the top 3 or 4 ranked horses was 'for real' and would likely be a true Best Bet.
With these statements in mind, let’s begin examining the Best Bets beginning with the next racing/selection service day, Wednesday, December 31st, 2014.
From: tipsreport@aol.com
RE: Best Bets
Date: 12-31-2014
Tampa Bay - 8th Race
#6 Grey By You - 7/2 morning line
Not quite a Best Bet, but very solid
Aqueduct - 8th Race
#1 Big Business - 5/2 morning line
Again, not quite a Best Bet, but extremely solid
Grey By You was claimed by one of the best around the claiming game, and showed 2 Horse TIPS. In my mind, his only question mark was that the trainer was jumping him up a claiming level.
I watched the race, and while Grey By You gave it an honest effort, he came up just short of the $, and finished 4th, flattening out a bit in the stretch drive.
As for Big Business, it's good news. He was entered in a non graded Stakes, the Alex M Robb $100k handicap. Big Business stuck to the business at hand and repelled all challengers. Here are the comments from the result chart:
[Big Business], was never far back, in 3rd for the 1st three calls. Business, “under encouragement at the five-sixteenths, issuing a challenge for command rallied to a narrow advantage a furlong from home, inched away briefly before confronted by Beauty In The Pulpit in the late stages, dug in gamely, (my emphasis), as that foe reached near even terms in the last jumps and held on to prevail at the wire.”
I believe the word “gamely” sticks out because it speaks to the grit this horse had. In fact, one of the Horse TIPS present, while it doesn’t specifically imply a horse has grit, it does seem to represent an inner fortitude the horse possesses that will make him to be very tough to defeat for the win, as long as he is in contention and will likely then ‘pick it up a notch’ to do his best to prevail, especially in the latter stages of the race.
Big Business returned: $7.10 $3.80 $2.90
Thus, on December 31st, there was an excellent profit in the win slot, a tiny loss in the place slot and small loss in show slot.
When I did a post-mortem and reviewed the 2 Best Bet selections, the horse who ran out at Tampa, (finishing 4th), Grey By You had 2 horse tipoffs and the horse who won at Aqueduct, Big Business, had 4 horse tipoffs.
Let’s move along to January 1, 2015.
From: tipsreport@aol.com
RE: Best Bets
Date: 01-01-2015 11:29 am
Good morning, and I wish you a healthy and happy, and prosperous 2015.
Today, I didn't find any Best Bets at the Eastern tracks, (Aqueduct, Laurel, Gulfstream). Here's the closest to it.
Golden Gate - 5th Race - Turf
Approximate post is 5:30 pm Eastern Time#4
Handpicked Bud - 5/2 morning line
Not quite a Best Bet, but very solid
Gulfstream - 6th Race
#10 Bishop's Pond - 5/1 morning line
More of a regular type of selection rather than Best Bet
The reason Handpicked Bud did not quite reach Best Bet status, being just a ‘tick’ below my Best Bet criteria, was that Bud was trying a new surface for the first time. However, there were many positive signals present. Signals suggested that he would take a liking to the turf, however it was not so much terrific breeding for the lawn, but rather the trainer who in this instance shows great success at sending horses out first time on the turf. When a trainer, meet in and meet out, shows a terrific ability to have a horse succeed for him first time trying the turf, you need to put a bit of trust in that trainer, especially when there were so many other positive signals present.
As a second point, Handpicked Bud was an excellent Big 4 Plus 1 spot play selection. Now, in addition to his 7½ Trainer TIPS, in order to be even close to being a Best Bet, I needed to see more than 2 Horse TIPS. At this point, I viewed him as ‘solid’ due to the above factors, but he was the closest on the day to having the foundation for a Best Bet. If he had more than 2 horse tipoffs, that would seal the deal for me to consider him as an extremely solid selection.
Indeed, Bud had 4 horse tipoffs. Seeing the competition he was facing, along with the fantastic trainer statistics, plus his being a Big 4 selection ‘sealed the deal’ meaning he was a very solid selection, and closest I found to a Best Bet on New Year’s Day. Again, I didn't give him the Best Bet label due to competing on the turf for the first time.
Handpicked Bud rallied from 1st to 3rd in the stretch of a 5 furlong race, and despite being bumped in deep stretch, he steadied and then prevailed to win the race.
Bud returned $5.20 $3.00 $3.00.
I did note that the other selection, Bishop's Pond from Gulfstream, was more of a regular type selection, but I included it with that caveat. There were two reasons I mentioned Bishop:
1. He was the best qualified Fitness Factor selection; and
2. Bishop did qualify as a “Single Sizzler,” a maiden angle my father developed many years ago. (And qualifying as such, requires a horse tipoff.)
Since Bishop only had 1 horse tipoff, for myself I included just 1 unit to win and 5 units to show. For the record, Bishop came on with a huge rally in the stretch, but fell short, finishing 3rd and paying $5.00 to show.
The following day, Friday, January 2nd, there were 3 Best Bets. Again, there was a decent profit, 25% ROI in the win hole, as 2 of the 3 won:
9th at Aqueduct, #3 March Too, won and returned:
$3.70 $2.70 $2.40
1st at Golden Gate, Highly Rated, won and paid:
$3.80 $2.20 $2.10.
Most of you know that I advocate if you have earned 65-70% of your daily goal, then you should pass on the rest of the day or reduce remaining wagers.
My third selection, in the 5th at Golden Gate, ran out, but even if you wagered on all 3 to win, you would still have shown a profit in the win slot.
Let’s fast forward to 1-3-2015 and review the Best Bet selections e-mail:
From: tipsreport@aol.com
RE: Best Bets
Date: 01-03-2015 10:54 am
Good morning,
Yesterday, another profitable day in the win hole, 25%. Here's a recap.
Aqueduct - 9th Race
Won and paid: $3.70 $2.70 $2.40
Golden Gate - 1st Race
Won and paid: $3.80 $2.20 $2.10
Golden Gate - 5th Race
Out
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here's today's selections. (1-03-2015)
Parx - 4th Race
Approximate post is 1:40 pm Eastern Time
#7 Dukati 2-1 morning line
Not quite a Best Bet, but very solid
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
These next 2 are not quite Best Bets, more of the very solid types.
Parx - 7th Race
Approximate post is 2:55 pm Eastern Time
# 7 Blue Cherokee 3-1 morning line
Golden Gate - 6th Race - Turf
# 2 Augustina de Aragon 3-1 morning line
All three of the above selections finished in-the-money.
Dukati ran an excellent race, but couldn’t quite get to the wire first. However, he did finish 2nd and paid:
$3.40 (place) $2.40 (show)
In addition to being the top consensus selection, Dukati also had 3 Horse TIPS.
In my initial evaluation of Blue Cherokee, I actually overlooked 1 horse tipoff and had him listed for 3 horse tipoffs. In the post-mortem review of the race, I subsequently found one additional horse tipoff that, using the logic suggested by Andy Pincince years ago, I count as 1.5 horse tipoffs, and thus, Cherokee actually qualified for 4.5 horse tipoffs. Three horse tipoffs are very good, and 4 or more is excellent, especially if the horse has an edge of at least one horse tipoff compared to its competition.
Blue Cherokee won and paid:
$6.40 $4.00 $3.20
The final selection on 01-03-2015 was Augustina de Aragon, competing in a turf contest from Golden Gate.
Augustina possessed an excellent horse tipoff total, (3), but I thought she was just a shade below a Best Bet because of one of her competitors in today's race, Handfull. Handfull was shipping north from bigger, classier southern California; had showed some success on the turf; and was running for arguably the most successful trainer in the Bay area, having “owned” Golden Gate and Bay Meadows for years and years now, namely trainer Jerry Hollendorfer and Hall of Fame jockey, Russell Baze.
Augustina had a higher # of horse tipoffs, but Baze and Hollendorfer make a formidable team, and Handfull had been competing against higher class horseflesh.
For myself, I kept this a show wager on Augustina, was tempted to include an exacta box, but in the end I stuck with a show wager only.
It was a fun race to watch, and Baze piloted Handfull expertly, leading from gate to wire at a shade under 2-1. Augustina de Aragon made things interesting, although according to the chart was, “outsprinted early, moved closer leaving the half, bid two wide to the stretch, loomed boldly in mid stretch then lost her punch but had enough of a cushion to save the place.”
While briefly disappointed I had not included an exacta box with the favorite, ($15.20), I was satisfied finding 3 Best Bets who all ran solid, determined races and showed an excellent profit, win/place/show.
On Sunday, January 5, 2015, there were two horses who qualified as Best Bets.
Rock N Cozy entered in the 7th at Aqueduct, was 2-1 in the morning line. Cozy was solid enough, and his trainer is one who I do my best to follow. (Cozy's trainer was also calling the shots of “Big Business” discussed above.) He was facing a couple of tough customers, but with 2 Horse TIPS, I thought he was still a Best Bet and planned to wager on him in the show hole.
Cozy broke outwardly from the gate, which didn’t help his chances. However, according to the chart, Rock N Cozy, “menacingly cruised up in the four path from the 5/16 pole, maintained the momentum after entering the stretch to loom briefly approaching the end of the furlong grounds, then flattened out.”
However, Cozy did manage to finish 3rd and returned $2.10 to show.
The other selection for the day was again at Golden Gate, another turf contest, the 4th race, Unique Suances, pegged at 5/2 in the morning line. Right off the bat, I was more enthusiastic about Suances for 2 reasons: the slightly higher morning line, but more importantly because of his possessing 4 Horse TIPS!!
Four Horse TIPS and higher odds persuaded me to include a win wager, (backed up with a leveraged [bigger] show wager). Here's what happened.
- Suances broke alertly and was in first place, (by 3.5 lengths!) at the first call.
- Suances maintained her lead at every call, although it dipped to just ½ a length at the second call.
- Rider Dennis Carr “righted” the ship, increasing the lead to 1 length at the stretch, and eventually won by the same 1 length.
Suances returned: $7.60 $3.40 $2.40
The show price was no doubt hurt not only by the presence of yet another Hollendorfer & Baze special, who finished 2nd at just over even $, but also by the small 6-horse field. I did not include any exacta, but for any who did the payoff was $13.60 for $2.
Since reinvigorating my Best Bet handicapping by paying particular attention to the following 2 factors, it has thus far improved my results.
1. Handicapping horses among the top 3 or 4 of the consensus, or Prime Power/ProfitLine for those using Bris; and
2. Insisting on the presence of Horse TIPS.
In 5 days there were 12 selections:
Win: 6 or 50%
Place: 8 or 66%
Show: 10 or 83%
Breaking down the $$:
Return to win: $30.10
Deduct wager @ $2: $24.00
Net profit for win: $ 6.10
ROI TO WIN 26%
Return to place: $26.30
Deduct wager @ $2 $24.00
Net Profit for place $ 2.30
ROI TO PLACE 10%
Return to show $28.40
Deduct wager@$2 $24.00
Net Profit to show $ 4.40
ROI TO SHOW 18%
With collection rates this high, 83% to show, this type of handicapping approach is ideal for parlays, especially in the show hole where you can leverage your wagers. A 2-horse parlay, provides you the opportunity to leverage your wagers which can really boost your profits.
If you do not yet own the TIPS Update, I believe you will greatly benefit it and strongly suggest for you to order it. Don't be thrown off by the publication date of 2008. The TIPS Update is timeless and extremely valuable.
It's a terrific booklet to which you will often want to refer. In terms of size it's about 8.5 x 11 inches and contains 48 pages. It's absolutely jammed with handicapping information. Not only are all the tipoffs listed and defined, including the Trainer TIPS and Horse TIPS, The TIPS Update reveals to you just what to look for so you can find horses that are fit and ready to run hard so you can gauge which entry is extremely likely to win or at least finish in-the-money.
However, there is much more in the way of handicapping information in this booklet! For example, TIPS handicappers know that correlational handicapping, (not as complex as it sounds!), is what makes TIPS handicapping so successful. Correlational handicapping simply means that when certain “groups”or “clusters” of tipoffs are found together, they can greatly enhance the significance of those TIPS. Simply put, when TIPS 'A', 'B' and 'C' are found together in an entry's past performances, it could mean a winning day for that horse, providing of course that he is the only one in the field showing a powerful combination of TIPS, because as we all know, handicapping is all relative. If each horse in a field shows a powerful workout, then you need to find another angle or area where just 1 or 2 horses in the field stand apart from the others. TIPS will help you to that end, whether a horse's competitive strength is with its trainer and/or its' own will to win.
We have a section identifying and listing some of the strongest groups and pairs of tipoffs so that you will know at a glance if a horse is strong and well meant. The more Horse TIPS an entry has compared to the rest of the field, the more likely that the horse is physically able to successfully carry out the trainer’s plan.
The TIPS Update also contains a section of TIPS contender screens to help you “jump start” your handicapping which can especially come in handy on those days you may still wish to handicap, but may be a bit pressed for time.
Finally, the TIPS Update also includes an index and a TIPS Checklist so that you can easily find a certain TIP.
Ordering Info & Combo Value Packs
To read a description of and to order The TIPS Update, please click here.
If ordering by mail, please make your check or money order payable to Tom Worth Publishing Co. and mail to:
Tom Worth Publishing Co.
PO Box 7054
Warwick, RI 02887-7054
(Note: if you would like Jon to forward via email the first month's selection from the Best Bets Selection Service, please email him at jonworth@worthhandicapping.com)
