Value Handicapping: The Art of Making Your Own Line and Identifying Overlays

by Mark Cramer

Most handicappers underachieve becausethey play too many races and are obsessed withpicking winners as opposed to identifying andbacking only those horses that are underbet inproportion to their chances of winning. In thispioneering book Cramer shows handicappers howto create their own personal odds lines and thenuse them to identify which, if any, horses areoverlayed and worth betting in any given race.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0933944225
• ISBN13: 9780933944220
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: City Miner Books
• Length: 168 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.8" x 0.5" x 7.5"

Customer Reviews

Essential book for every horseplayer

Identifying contenders is easy. Identifying winners in many races isn't particularly difficult either. But making a profit is difficult, very difficult. You must learn to handicap and you must learn to identify value. There are many good books on the former ("Recreational Handicapping" by Jim Quinn is a personal favorite, although long out of print and rather dated in the speed and pace sections) but only a few on the latter. And in my opinion, "Value Handicapping" is the best. It's actually the second edition of Cramer's book "Odds on Your Side" with a new title and publisher. (I have both.) It's obvious that Mark spent the intervening years thinking about to improve to "Odds" and "Value Handicapping" is the result. In short, it's about how to make a personal odds line, which will help you identify contenders whose payoffs are greater than what you think they should be. Those are the horses you bet and if your handicapping skills are strong enough, you'll be a profitable player. It's an easy book to read, the examples are well selected and as always, Mark is entertaining. It's simply the best book on a crucial area of playing the horses and making a profit.

Pointing the way without showing the way

As the author of a similar book on "value handicapping" (search for "Price And Probability" if you want to find it), I'm always interested in seeing what the competition is doing. Mark Cramer has many interesting and novel approaches to handicapping, so it's no surprise he'd venture into "value" territory. Like many "value" handicappers of today, Cramer uses a simplified approach in that he assigns an odds line to "the contenders" in a race, usually the top three or four horses that are obvious to everyone (though not as much in his case as he likes many longshots). The problem with this approach is that one must assign probability to every horse to figure out if it is a contender or not, and there is no such thing as a zero-probability horse. Many marginal contenders can be very profitable in the finishing spots of an exacta, trifecta, or superfecta, even if they aren't impressive win bets. Some can be value even at their low probability due to boxcar odds. What I have yet to see, likely because profitable horseplayers don't like to kill a golden goose, is for an author to outline the fixed relationships between expected final time, margin of victory, and the resulting odds, because there is a definite fixed relationship: one length on the track equals X amount of time at Y distance, which translates into Z probability of defeating its rivals. Boomakers already do this in other sports when they convert a pointspread (say minus 7 points) into a moneyline (say -310). The same thing can be done at the track; there really is no mystery to it other than knowing which final time to project. One can even take a program morning line if they know this equation and reverse-engineer a set of projected final times for each horse. That no one has truly perfected value handicapping is refreshing, because in 20-30 years, the pros of that day will likely look back on our confusion and say we had it so easy to be playing against a crowd that barely understood something so basic. Cramer's book is a good first step towards that understanding, but it is only a first step. ]

A GREAT VALUE FOR THE HORSE PLAYER

Mark Cramer's VALUE HANDICAPPING is a good value for horse racing handicappers. It is perhaps the only in-depth book on how to set an odds line. With an odds line, the horse player can make decisions about which horse to bet on based on value. Mr. Cramer explains it better than I can in this small space but value essentially is when a horse goes off at odds greater than the horse's true chances of winning. In other words, if a handicapper thinks a horse would win a given race 33 out of 100 times then he feels the true odds for that runner is 2-1 or 1 out of 3 times the horse will win. If before the race the toteboard says that same horse will pay at 7-2, then you have value. The horse may lose but, if your handicapping is good, he will win enough times to show a profit. VALUE HANDICAPPING is not only about making an odds line. It is also a primer on handicapping because handicapping in an integral part of setting an odds line. The approach is a two-step process where first contenders are placed in a hierarchical order (done through handicapping) and then odds are assigned to each contender. Mr. Cramer, in a lucid writing style, takes the reader through various handicapping scenarios from "the low-priced overlay" to "contentious races" to "action stakes" to "the legitimate favorite race" and others, using actual races as examples and explaining how he handicapped each one. VALUE HANDICAPPING is a must-have book for every horse player's library for making an odds line and for keen handicapping insights.

Another good one from Cramer.

Mark Cramer, Value Handicapping (City Miner Books, 1994) The most frustrating thing about Mark Cramer's handicapping books is always that Cramer's handicapping process is so right-brained that, while he's explaining what you do with an odds line in an accessible manner, you've no idea how he actually comes up with it. Value Handicapping gives far more insight into this than the rest of his books, and in all honesty it's a whole lot simpler than any of us have likely thought (he makes one horse 3-1 simply because its connections are hitting 25% in that particular kind of race, for example). Cramer takes races here and breaks them down into various recognizable race types, giving us variations on how to make an odds line for each (though some are of the usual "what is he doing?" variety readers of The Odds on Your Side, etc., will easily recognize), for the most part updating information found in some of his earlier books, adding some new things here and there. Basically, if you're already a Cramer fan, you probably want this. If you're not familiar with his work yet, you may want to start with Kinky Handicapping or The Odds on Your Side first to get some idea of that man's rather quirky writing style. *** ½

Lays new ground for handicappers

This is one of those few books on handicapping that won't bury you in calculations. Mark Cramer ignores the traditional method of categorizing races by class, and instead offers a revolutionary set of handicapping categories. He explores each and shows how to apply the race category toward setting a personal odds line, which either points to value bets or tells you to skip the race. I was particulary impressed with his "Lesser of Evils" race and his approach of looking for the fewest negatives instead of trying to find positives.