Tyro looking for some advice

Creating your own speed figures using par times is cool but you'll pretty much end up with the same set of numbers as beyer figs or brisnet imo.
Cant give any advice on what tracks as i prefer the rubbish stuff at turf paradise, tampa etc while others like the high end NY tracks or the California tracks like Hollywood, Santa Anita etc.
Good luck with your punting.

BTW, Andy Serling, who does the TV analysis for NY racing is pretty sharp....in general terms, I usually agree with him, but I rarely back the same horses as him.

Yes, perhaps I am misguided. I'm simply going on what I've read and what seems to make sense.

The win pars Mitchell advocates collating show you where a horse should be at, say, the first and second call of a 6f race, for example. If the last ten races over that trip show that the winners were on average no more than 2 1/2 lengths off the pace at the first call and around 1 1/2 off the pace at the second call, other things being equal you wouldn't wish to back a closer.

I'm certainly no fig' fundamentalist, not after having read Mark Cramer. However, Mitchell's win pars seem a good way into understanding what is and isn't winning at any particular track.

( I refer to Mitchell's Master Handicapping Course Study Guide ).

Bluebook, Dick Mitchell's win pars are a good start, but they're only a small part of the story. What you'll find is that there are a huge number of things to take into account, and everyone has their own views on what's important. It'll probably help if you can develop a good working knowledge of all of the major areas of horse racing, and then start to concentrate more on the things that seem to make sense to you personally. There're many angles into a race, and you'll find yourself better at spotting some angles than others. If other horseracers tell you what works for them, you should listen to them closely, but don't assume the same techniques will work for you! (Even though the other horseracer will probably be certain that theirs is the only way in that works!)

Winston's authors list is a good one, although you should remember that these books are only a starting point - it'll be the hours and hours you put into poring over the formsheets that determine how much you really learn. If you like figures, you might want to look at Tom Brohamer's book 'Modern Pace Handicapping'. That tells you plenty about pace, and gives you a starting system to work from.

Pace is one of the important areas to know about. If nothing else, you almost certainly need to know whether today's race is going to be run at a fast pace, or a slow pace, or something inbetween. If it's one of the first two scenarios, you can probably eliminate a number of the horses straight off, and 'stand-out' horses often lose at short odds on account of the pace working against them.

You'll also want to spend plenty of time on class (in extremely simplistic terms, if a horse has recently run in a race at or above the class level of today's race, and it has run within two lengths of the winner, you can put it down as having sufficient class - with extra kudos if it has won at or above the level). And form is very important too. If a horse is being dropped in class, make sure there's a good reason for that. (It's often that the horse is losing form, in which case you might well want to avoid that particular animal.)

As Winston says, concentrate on one or two tracks a day, and then go through the form for each one. Try and see why the winner has won, and look at why the others lost.. Don't worry too much about placing bets initially. Just try and get a feel for what you should be looking for in a horse. (Indeed, even when you do start placing bets, I'd recommend trying at first to restrict yourself to one, two or three races where you really like a particular horse, rather than playing every single race - even most of the really good players would find it hard, if not impossible, to turn a good profit while playing everything.)

The important thing is to expect it to take you a long time to get to grips with horse racing, and to not be put off by anyone - I wouldn't post any selections up on the forum until you feel you're getting a good feel for racing, by the way, as some of the people on here can be a little tough... Most people run out of money or suffer catastrophic losses before they've had the time to get to grips with racing, so don't let that happen to you. My advice would be to work out an amount that you can afford to set aside for betting every month, deposit that amount, and then set that figure as the monthly deposit limit on Betfair so that you can't deposit any more for 30 days. That way you'll never be able to lose more than that in a month. As long as you can comfortably replenish that amount every four weeks, you should never find yourself losing more than you can handle.

Good luck!

And apologies if much of that seemed rather basic advice to you Bluebook!

Thanks again for all your replies.

I've been betting seriously in the UK for around ten years. The UK scene is pretty much fig' free so I'm certainly not about to go barmy over them when looking at US racing. Nevertheless I still think it's important to get a handle on how pace can influence the result of races Stateside.

I have Brohamer on order and am keen to get stuck in to it !