Barry Meadows New Book
If you consider yourself a thoroughbred handicapper and a reader, there is a new title available that would be a valuable addition to your bookshelf.
- Barry Meadows New Book Series
- Barry Meadows New Book Releases
- Barry Meadows Books
- Barry Meadows New Book Review
Author and long-time professional horseplayer, Barry Meadow, has written, in my opinion, the best and most comprehensive book on thoroughbred handicapping in recent memory — maybe ever — with his new release, The Skeptical Handicapper: Using Data and Brains to Win at the Racetrack.
Barry Meadow is the author of Money Secrets At The Racetrack. For seven years, he published the newsletter Meadow's Racing Monthly. In 2014, he won the first-ever Ron Rippey Award for handicapping. In his excellent new book, Barry Meadow offers a stark assessment of the challenges facing horse bettors in the age of algorithms, and solid data on what approaches still. Barry Meadow has the answers. In his new 445-page hardcover book, The Skeptical Handicapper: Using Data and Brains to Win at the Racetrack, he’ll show you what he’s uncovered from analyzing the results of every race run in the U.S. And Canada between. Barry Meadow has been on a dual track—gambling, and writing about gambling—for more than 50 years. His first book, Success At The Harness Races, was published in 1967, when he was still too young to legally bet on the races at his favorite tracks, Yonkers and Roosevelt, although that didn’t stop him. For five years in the 1980s, he gambled full-time on the harness races in California.
As Meadow says, “It is crucial to differentiate between truth and opinions.” This book is Meadow’s way of seeking truth through the analysis of real statistics from real race results.
If there was ever a “right man for the job” to write this book, it is Barry Meadow. He has been a respected handicapper for decades and is the author of multiple books on money management at the track, such as Money Secrets at the Racetrack;Secrets of the Pick 6, Players Guide to Nevada Racebooks; and, Blackjack Autumn. You also might know him through his near decade of work on award-winning newsletter, Meadow’s Racing Monthly, or his 14-year column in American Turf Monthly magazine.
The Skeptical Handicapper is 430 pages of pure statistics and information that any horseplayer and handicapper would find valuable. Meadow guides the reader through meaningful statistics gathered from four full years of actual race results—168,000 races in all—and arrives at fact-based conclusions, not hasty opinions, that help horseplayers win.
The book is broken down into five sections: Class, or finding the level at which a horse can compete with success; Condition, otherwise known as form, including speed figures; Circumstances, such as track, surface, distance, pace, etc.; Connections, the jockeys and trainers; and, Mentality, otherwise known as the psychology of winning. It is this final area that Meadow says is drastically underwritten about in handicapping books—addressing the areas of goals, attitude, planning, stress management, and luck.
Meadow states that his book is not only dedicated to the facts, but also to the interpretation of the facts. It is in this arena that The Skeptical Handicapper is unrivaled. The book also does a tremendous job of examining the variables.
There is more than one way to go about playing the races, Meadow acknowledges. Handicapping is often oversimplified. Meadow does not oversimplify. Instead, he delves into the endless number of variables involves with every nugget of information he presents.
The main premise of Meadow’s advice is this: Winning at the races is not just about handicapping, it is about handicapping and betting correctly. You are not just asking yourself which horse is the most likely to win the race, you are really looking for the horse(s) that are going to be under-bet.
You need to be a contrarian to beat the races. You need to figure out when the public is wrong (the odds), and bet when you have the edge. You need to “allocate your time and money to races where your opinion differs from the crowd’s.”
It’s not all about beating favorites. A favorite can be a bargain at 6-5, if his real chances of winning are closer to 3-5.
Meadow advocates that “you’re going to succeed by predicting change – improvement for longshots, declines for favorites – not by going to the obvious.” Again, it’s about being a contrarian. Your challenges as a player are exploiting discrepancies in the odds, identifying over-bet and under-bet horses, and then using what you know and learn to bet successfully. If you are not doing those things correctly now, perhaps you will be doing them better after reading this book.
Meadow is not a fan of angles, stating that “Even though angles may be useful, more useful is knowing when an angle can help you. Racing is a complex game. Angles can help, [but] blindly following angles won’t make you money in the long run.”
Nevertheless, the information in the book leads you onto so many good angles through statistics.
For example, did you know first-time starters (and second starters) win much more often without blinkers than with them?
Did you know that you can hit the winner of 20-21% of all maiden races just by finding the horse who has run the fastest first quarter-mile so far in its career, with no other handicapping needed at all?
Barry Meadows New Book Series
Meadow is also fan of the QWSR designation – a quality work since last raced – and references it throughout many sections of the book.
You can invest in a system or new software program designed to pick winners, but you probably are not going to attain steady profits betting the races without good statistical data and the ability to analyze it correctly.
Ultimately, The Skeptical Handicapper will give you hours of entertainment, and leave you armed with strategies and mindset you can use to become a better handicapper and more successful bettor. This is a highly-recommended, must-read book for anyone who calls themselves a horse race handicapper.
Barry Meadows New Book Releases
To order, you can go to www.trpublishing.com for information, or email the author directly at barry@trpublishing.com, or call 805-712-5060. Copies direct from the publisher are autographed and cost $37.99 including shipping.
Barry Meadow has been on a dual track—gambling, and writing about gambling—for more than 50 years. His first book, Success At The Harness Races, was published in 1967, when he was still too young to legally bet on the races at his favorite tracks, Yonkers and Roosevelt, although that didn’t stop him.
For five years in the 1980s, he gambled full-time on the harness races in California. This led to his writing Professional Harness Betting, a 300-page manual which explains how to become a full-time professional player.
With far bigger pools available at the thoroughbreds, he decided to switch to the runners. And while making that transition, he wrote Money Secrets at the Racetrack, which has been lauded by virtually every expert as the definitive guide to money management at the track. He also launched Master Win Ratings, a service that rated every California horse and which he produced until his retirement in 2011.
For seven years, from November 1996 through October 2003, he published Meadow’s Racing Monthly, an award-winning handicapping and money-management newsletter. It featured articles on how to make the most money at the track, investigative exposes about the handicapping world, original statistical research, and systems tests from a large computer database. He also authored a number of handicapping booklets, including Secrets of the Pick 6 and Players Guide to Nevada Racebooks.
He also found time to write Blackjack Autumn, the humorous and exciting story of his two-month quest to play blackjack in every casino in Nevada.
Barry Meadows Books
More recently, he wrote a column from 2004 through 2017 for American Turf Monthly, and remains a frequent contributor to the Horseplayers Association of North America magazine.
Meadow was a speaker at every Handicapping Expo since 1990 and was a member of the NTRA Players Panel. He’s testified as a players’ advocate on several issues before the California Horse Racing Board, and was part of the negotiating team which helped bring the low-takeout Players Pick 5 to the state. He was featured in the 2007 documentary, Players:The Blue Collar Gambler. In 2014, he won the inaugural Ron Rippey Award for Handicapping Media for the best published article about handicapping.
His eclectic resume also includes serving in Vietnam, writing television sitcoms, playing professional tennis in India, and doing standup comedy in California.
Barry Meadows New Book Review
For more, check out Ray Paulick’s interview here: