The Horseplaying Aunt
January 25th, 2006by Jude T. Feld
Eva Wilson was a short stocky lady, who drove a huge Studebaker and always wore black. She frequented Santa Anita and Hollywood Park and eschewed Del Mar, as “that track Bing built in the sticks.” A cross between Aunt Bea and Pittsburgh Phil, she was a win bettor. “You can beat a race, but you can’t beat the races.”
Wilson was the name of one of her rich husbands and the name she finally settled on to the end, despite marrying a couple of fellows after him. “He was the best of a bad lot,” she once said, as if handicapping a $3,500 maiden claimer at old Tanforan.
To us, she was Aunt Eva – our horseplaying great aunt and she is directly responsible for three generations of Thoroughbred degenerates or “racing aficionados” as I like to refer to us.
She liked her cocktails at six, dinner at seven and the Daily Racing Form at eight. She believed in doing your homework before assaulting the mutuel windows, but she was not afraid to make a last-minute decision if there was a change in track condition, a late scratch or a pre-race equipment or jock change.
In her eighties, in the ’80’s, she drove from Glendale to Santa Anita in a pouring down rain storm and waded across the parking lot in stocking feet just to get down on a filly in the second that she knew loved the gumbo.
Aunt Eva read the past performance lines from the bottom up – long before it was written about in books. She paid attention to track bias before Beyer and Davidowitz were born. She made copious notes on her Form. She loved the puzzle of handicapping but she had a huge arsenal of angles that often put her on a winner, many found in an old racing book bound in black velvet. Some families have recipe collections. The Feld’s have Aunt Eva’s angles.
The Dirty Shirt – This angle is what is known as a “consensus play.” There are usually several handicappers’ 1-2-3 selections in the Daily Racing Form and they make up what is known as the “Consensus.” Aunt Eva would circle the name of the horse who only one handicapper picked to finish in the money – the dirty shirt. Although this sounds like kind of a silly way to pick a horse, the experts hired by the Form are usually knowledgeable and solid handicappers. This angle ferrets out a horse that some wiseguy thinks has a chance, but nobody else likes. If the dirty shirt wins, it will probably be at a price.
It really comes in handy when you haven’t a clue about a race and you want to make a token wager for scream value. It can also get you out in the last when conventional handicapping has you selecting the chalk and you would need to hit the cash machine hard to wager enough to go to McDonalds for supper. (If you are getting killed at the windows, there is always a chance that the putz with the dirty shirt selection might have a better feel for the races that day than you do.)
High Index – In-the-Money – In the old days, before computers and prior to about 1990, racing charts were each assigned a number rather than a date. These numbers were printed alongside the horse’s name in the entries and charts, so you could look back on their races in a chartbook. Newspapers published full charts of the local races every day…imagine that! So you if you took the time to clip out the charts and paste them in a book, you could really do a nice job of handicapping before the Form came out?usually around 12 hours prior to post, depending on how far away you lived from the Greyhound bus depot.
The idea was to play the horse who finished in the money most recently. This is what’s known as a “condition angle.” It puts you on a horse with decent form who is obviously fit and ready. It picks lots of winners every week and has for the last 100 years.
Circle Horses – Family legend has it that Aunt Eva paid a pretty penny for this special formula to riches, supplied by some genius of the turf. You add the horse’s assigned weight to the morning line and circle the lowest four numbers. One of these four horses wins an average of seven races on a nine race card. (Really?they do!) It’s up to you to figure out which one of the four gets the chrome. On Breeders’ Cup day, where every race is weight-for-age, this system will most likely put you on the four morning line choices, but check it out anyway – especially in the turf races, where age and sex are in the mix.
Many times I have seen “circle horses” win all ten races on a ten race card. This happens especially during the summer, when form is settled and tracks are fast. It is especially effective when the morning line maker is a good handicapper – Jeff Tufts at Santa Anita and Mike Battaglia at Churchill Downs being prime examples.
It is also a great short-cut when you want to play, but haven’t had the time to do your handicapping homework. (What would Aunt Eva say?) It will cut your work by 30 to 75% depending on the size of the field.
The Aunt Eva System – Dubbed by my father in honor of our heroine, who played this angle religiously. It is basically a trainer angle. When a trainer or owner has two horses in a race and scratches one, the other one is the bet. The theory is, the connections should know who has the best chance to win.
I would like to interject something about handicapping the field to see if the horse fits on class and condition, etc. but I will refrain from making an ass out of myself. This angle works. I don’t know why, nor do I care. I just want to cash tickets. Every time I thought I was smarter than Aunt Eva or the trainer who entered two and scratched one, I got bit in the posterior big time. After 38 years of handicapping horses, I don’t argue anymore. I just bet it. They don’t always win, but they win more than their fair share and often at ridiculous prices.
They say that old horseplayers die broke, but Aunt Eva left this earth with a hefty bankroll in her Glendale Federal savings account – a tribute to her handicapping prowess and money management skills. Her other legacy is the three generations of horsemen and horseplayers she helped to create. If it wasn’t for her, we might be watching NASCAR. That would be really sad.
