[Ted Craven]

FEAR LOSING, KNOW NO PROFITS (Follow Up #73)

FEAR - False Evidence Appearing Real. Howard Sartin Ph.D., reads physics books, books on chaos math and even spiritual works and relates them all to success in horse race handicapping. Well I happened to be reading in a different field and this definition of fear looked like it came straight from an issue of the Follow Up. It did not. It came from a book entitled “Conversations With God, Book 3” authored by Neal Donald Walsch, I have heard the phrase before, before the time I started looking beyond the mainstream for success in short term pari-mutuel investing.

Just look at that definition. False Evidence Appearing Real. It brings to mind the readouts of all those short priced favorites two thirds of which end up running up the track with a lot of somebodies money going right with them. It brings to mind the sense of anxiety when the Confidence to support the Corollary evidence wanes in the face of ALL that money on the favorite. How can so many people be so wrong. False Evidence Appearing Real is how. They cannot break through their fear of NOT having the winner especially when it is so ‘obvious’ to the players who are ‘playing’ (not investing) all that money, they cannot break through their fear that what seems so obvious a certainty is a bust, they cannot see the race instead of the horse (as in I cannot see the forest for the trees).

How do we beat False Evidence Appearing Real? For starters how about with the three C’s? Consistency, Corollary and Confidence. Consistency in not jumping all around to find not the contenders but to find actual investment interests. Corollary in using the indicators paying off for you now, not the win pool designated favorite. Confidence in knowing that even if I lose this race I am still going to win at a 65%-75% clip and that by chasing this race I will jeopardize the validity of these, my personal, statistics. By not making investments below the odds that we have determined to be profitable for us. For most this is 5/2 or 3/1. By hiding those contenders that will not get us this minimum return.

Fear to profit? Fear to lose with a short priced horse coming off a winning race with a career best number? Fear to ignore “classic” handicapping maxims? The fear to leave behind these fears keeps us entangled in continual losses. The Methodology has given us the tools we can use to surmount the pull and drag of FEAR. Dr. Sartin has also shown that handicapping tomes are the least effective sources of handicapping success.

These tomes represent the classical, left brained, linear approach to handicapping. And through some twenty-four years of research, observation and implementation Dr. Sartin has shown that this is not the way for horse players to evolve into handicappers. Many of us want to know where the Doc gets his ideas, It appears to me he gets them from anywhere and anyone who has something to say about self improvement exclusive of a medical model paradigm. He is always providing not only the credit to other sources but encouraging all of us to read it for ourselves so we may receive the full value of these resources and possibly enhance our personal and spiritual lives as well as improve our handicapping success. Deepak Chopra and his Indian Ayurvedic approach to improved spiritual health and Candace Pert’s Molecules of Emotion are two examples we can use in order to go beyond the box. To go beyond the box of classic handicapping mentality, to go beyond the box of linear thinking, to move from horse players to handicappers.

Use the Methodology and ALL its resources, especially the non-traditional references to overcome FEAR and multiply the number of your trips to the winners window.

The ‘Capper here with a race day reminder....work the plan, be profitable. ‘Til next time.