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Old 07-09-2012, 06:35 PM   #11
trotman
Grade 1
 
Join Date: Oct 2009
Posts: 259
Joseph,
For 40 years I worked alongside a very good handicapper by the name of Andy Smitts. Andy worked alongside of Ray Taulbot and I had the benifit of seeing the last work and notes of those two great handicappers. Where Ray could take a paceline from anywhere in the published lines from his early articles in ATM and his books this changed over time when the form started to list call times and such. I could never put into words what Michael Pizzolla wrote in his classic book Handicapping Magic with regards to the mindset of selecting pacelines but in my opinion it's a must read. It's not about him telling you which lines to pick, it's more about the reasoning about which are the best lines to pick. Then as Doc Sartin would say work a few lines fore and aft to see if the line is most representitive of the horse. I will say that every race and every horse is like a fresh snowflake, no two alike. If all my work matches closely to the track and distance profile, I could be on to something. I never step back should I miss because if in my gut that was the bet in the end it works out. The articles that Ray Taulbot wrote in his last 10 years was the culmination of his and Andy's work. Andy passed away on Mar. 13th 2010 and left me with everything he and Ray ever worked on that was never published.
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