23 – Billy Budd’s (Feb 14, 2026)

Introduction

This blog and some following blogs are sections from an informal diary of “visits to the race-track” at a particular time and place, by a person who has followed the races with varying levels of participation over a long period. These relate primarily to some visits to the track and/or off-track betting venues in the 2025 period and onward. They contain observations about the activity, both specific and general. Although these remarks are personal, they also reflect general cultural and historical trends, as they have impacted horse-racing, wagering and culture in general.

The setting is Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (population of about one million plus). However, I imagine that the observations would apply to many places in the world, as they are a reflection of how changing trends in technology, globalization and culture in general have affected this ancient and honourable activity of horse-racing.

For now, I will use what I call “polished point-form” for the narrative.

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23 – Billy Budd’s (Feb 14, 2026)
- Once again, I entered upon the trip to the horses (via off-track betting) with a feeling of uncertainty. My winning streak had been cut short last time out – so, which way would the goddess of the streaks turn now? As it turned out, it was to be a day of some interesting luck-related events.
- The place was fairly busy (the horse part, not the pub in general) for the lunch special.
- To begin with, here is a run-down of the races at Santa Anita, the bunch that I handicap seriously.
  - We got to Budd’s in good time, with plenty of time to handicap and bet the first race. It was a maiden race for 3 year old fillies, so the horses didn’t have much in the way of past perfomance history. Nonetheless, I threw a bit of money at the 9 horse, which came in second, being nipped at the wire. Loss number one.
  - The second race was for fillies and mares, 4 years old and up. The horse my system liked went off at ridiculous odds (1 to 5) so I took a flyer on a longshot that the system liked. I was right to skip the favorite, as it came in second and paid $2.10 to place on a $2.00 bet. Frankly, it always amazes me to see a horse bet down that low. The winner paid $8.60, but only $2.40 to place, so clearly the crowd had it pegged to come in second. My long-shot ended up way way down the track, so that was another loss.
  - For the third race, my system liked the 4 horse and it went off a half-decent odds, so I put some money on it. It led for most of the race, but then got beat out towards the wire, coming in second. Another loss, but a near-run thing.
  - The system also liked the 4 horse in the fourth race. The 3 and 4 horse dueled it out in the stretch, with it looking like the 3 would overtake. But my horse really dug in to take back the lead and hang on for the win. That was nice to watch, especially as it paid off at about 5 to 1. That put me solidly into the black for the day, thus far.
  - The fifth race was a funny one. It was on the turf and included a downhill grade, in the turf course. Given those factors, I decided to skip the race. One of Beyer’s books said that turf races are not easy to pick, using primarily speed-related measures. Plus, a race-course with a downhill grade was a total mystery to me. At any rate, 2 of the three horses that my system like came in first and second, both paying good money. If such a race happens again, perhaps I will give it a chance.
  - The sixth race was another maiden race for 3-year olds. Hardly any of these horses had any record to speak of, other than workouts and one-shot races, where they did very little. Given those factors, I decided to skip that race too. My system liked the only horse that had a substantial record (how could it not?), with a string of seconds and thirds. It ran true-to-form in this race as well, coming in second, though at at decent price.
  - For the seventh race, my system had a fairly clear preference for the 4 horse. It was going off a pretty good odds, so I gave it a shot. It came in third, so another loss.
  - The 8^th race was for 4 and 5 year old maidens. Basically, these are horses that hadn’t been earning their keep, so it was tough to pick between them. About half had never even finished in the money. Given that, I skipped this race too. That turned out to be a good choice, as the win and place horses had no relevant form, under my system.
  - Like the 8^th, the 9^th was another maiden race, for 4 and 5 year olds. Like that race, the horses had little history to go on. Therefore, I skipped this race as well. Again, that turned out to be a good decision, as the winner was unpickable, by my system.
  - So, I bet 5 races, skipped 4 and won 1. However that winner paid well enough to pay for all the losses and then some. So, no complaining from me.
I mentioned earlier that it was an interesting day for luck. Here are a few examples:
- About mid-afternoon, a fellow came into the horseracing area.
  - Someone asked how he did. "Did you win?"
  - "Yes."
  - "How much was it worth?"
  - "About $12000, a superfecta."
  - I turned to my brother Craig and said "Do you think that’s true?"
  - The guy next to me turned and said: "Oh yeah, it’s true. I know him. He’s a Chinese guy, just like me."
  - "Oh. Well, that’s awesome for him."
- After the Santa Anita races were done, I remembered that I had picked a random race in Australia the previous weekend, just before we left. I decided I really ought to put it through the machine, though I wasn’t expecting anything.
  - So, I put the ticket in the machine, and out popped a voucher for nearly 10 times what the ticket was worth! Well, let me tell you, that was unexpected.
  - Craig was rather blase about it, as he said it had happened to him on several occasions in the past.
  - Well, that’s ok for him, but to me it was nothing short of a minor miracle. I have never considered myself particulary lucky, having to work hard for anything I got in life. Others would probably smile at that and say, "no, no, you’ve been plenty lucky."
- I don’t know if the following story qualifies as lucky, but it is an interesting bit of statistics:
  - Some time in the later afternoon, one of the waitresses dropped a glass, but it did not shatter. I suppose that was lucky for her.
  - But looking at some of my earlier diary entries, during visit #2 a waitress had dropped a glass, and during visti #15 a waitress had dropped a glass. Now, same thing for visit #23.
  - This may be an interesting example of a Poisson distribution. That is a peculiar statistical distribution that happens with relatively rare events. It turns out that these rare events are actually quite predictable. It is sometimes referred to as "the law of small numbers", as opposed to "the law of large numbers", with which most people are familiar.
  - This has a horse angle. In the 19^th century, it was noticed by the Prussian military that officers were sometimes kicked in the head by their horses, with fatal results. Upon studying the data, a clever statistician noticed a pattern, which indicated that something other than random chance was at work.
  - So, I suppose the same principle applies to waitresses dropping glasses and trays. Perhaps if one followed it long enough, he could produce a nice graph, as the mathematician Ladislaus Bortkiewicz did, in the late 1800s.
The fact that February 14 is Valentine’s Day was also of some interest:
- There was an older married couple having a lunch date. Apparently, the man had very limited vision, if he had any eyesight at all. But the woman guided him along, as he used a walker, even taking him to the washroom, declaring "out of my way, he’s blind and I’m taking him to the bathroom." I guess that was kind of romantic.
- Then, there was the lady known as Jill (note: I am not using her actual name here).
  - This was a lone female better, a somewhat older lady, but well dressed and fairly classy, one might say.
  - She was generally rather quiet, other than having a bit of a spat with another table when we first got there, which the waitress soon smoothed over. I don’t know what caused it, though.
  - Eventually an older, rather rotund (and probably drunk) fellow started chatting her up. It was funny to listen to (you couldn’t not listen to it, as he was not exactly the silent type). It reminded me of scenes from decades ago, when some smooth operator would hit on a girl in a bar.
  - There was the playing dumb stuff: "Tell me how this horseracing business works, Jill. What horse should I bet on?". (later it turned out that he was aquainted with some of the local harness-racing people, as was she).
  - Then there were the effusive compliments: "Oh, you play golf? And you got a hole-in-one in golf? That’s amazing, Jill! You must be a great golfer!" (actually it is amazing and she might well be quite a good golfer).
  - Then there was the shared experience: "Oh wow, Jill the horse you picked won! We are winners!" ( I think that really happened)
  - He called some of his pals over and the entire group chatted her up. I expect that some of those guys were just playing along, as it seemed like the first guy might have been a boss of some sort and this was his crew on their day off.
  - But she was good. She seemed to be glad to talk to some people. And she knew when to bring in the "my boyfriend" stuff, to cool the fellow’s ardour.
  - Eventually, the group of males left for greener fields. She stayed behind and concentrated on the bucket-pullers, as did Craig and I.
For the harness-races at Woodbine/Mohawk, I was exploring a betting angle When a horse drops in odds by a large margin, it is almost a lock. That is old racetrack lore, but I had quantified the odds drops, at least in a small sample. So, I wanted to test that.
However, I discovered that they angle had a complication. It turned out that no matter how carefully one follows the odds, as the race nears, there can still be large odds-drops beyond what is shown on the screen. That said, the angle seems to still be pretty good, based on my rather limited sample.
As usual, Craig and I played some rolling Pick-3 bets. We were alive to a couple, in the final leg, but both went sour. That was especially annoying in one case, since we had a 22 to 1 horse in the second leg, which would have meant a nice payday. However, the favorite (which we had) ran a pathetic race in the final leg of the Pick-3. It didn’t catch up to the truck at the start, then ran way wide, then died completely.
So it goes at the harness-races.
About then, the Austalian horses came on the screen, which meant it was surely time to go. But given my lucky win at the Australian track, I will no longer call them "the devil-horses of Australia", but rather "the lucky red-eared Australian horses of esteem".

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And here are a couple of short books you might like.

A Dark Horse

In “A Dark Horse”, a gambler’s desire to hit a big win seems to lead him to make a Faustian bargain with a supernatural evil. Or is it all just a string of unnaturally good luck?

The story is just $0.99 U.S. (equivalent in other currencies) and about 8000 words. It is also available on Kindle Unlimited and is occasionally on free promotion.

U.S.: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M9BS3Y5

U.K.: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01M9BS3Y5

Germany: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B01M9BS3Y5

France: https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B01M9BS3Y5

Italy: https://www.amazon.it/dp/B01M9BS3Y5

Netherlands: https://www.amazon.nl/dp/B01M9BS3Y5

Spain: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B01M9BS3Y5

Japan: https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B01M9BS3Y5

India: https://www.amazon.in/dp/B01M9BS3Y5

Mexico: https://www.amazon.com.mx/dp/B01M9BS3Y5

Brazil: https://www.amazon.com.br/dp/B01M9BS3Y5

Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01MDMY2BR

Australia: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B01M9BS3Y5

Here’s an interesting review from Goodreads

(BTW, the writer has never met the reviewer and was not even aware of the review until very recently – You can look up the review on Goodreads, if you like)

A Dark Horse

Every gambler is bound to run out of luck eventually, right?

By far my favourite type of horror is psychological horror. I was quite pleased with how Mr. Olausen frightened his audience without spilling a single drop of blood or so much as hinting at anything gory. He knew exactly what hints to drop for us that made us deliciously dread the next scene simply by throwing out hints about who or what the dark horse might actually represent. This is the kind of stuff I love getting scared by, especially as Halloween approaches.

It would have been helpful to have more character development in this short story. While I certainly wouldn’t expect to see as much time spent on this as I would for a full-length novel, I did have trouble connecting to the main characters due to how little I knew about them and how much their personalities seemed to remain the same no matter what happened to them. If not for this issue, I would have felt comfortable choosing a much higher rating as the plot itself was well done.

I must admit to not knowing much about gambling at all, so I appreciated the brief explanations the narrator shared about how placing bets works and why some people have so much trouble walking away from a bet. While I will leave it up to experts on these topics to say how accurate everything was, I did enjoy learning more about the main character’s addiction and what he hoped to gain from betting on just one more game or race. It gave me a stronger sense of empathy for folks in his position.

A Dark Horse – A Gothic Tale was a deliciously chilling story for the Halloween season and beyond.

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And here is an account of a summer job on the railroad, during my undergraduate years.

One Summer Working on the Railroad

What follows is anaccount of a few weeks one long-ago summer, when I was 19 and was working for the Canadian National Railway (CNR) on a railroad construction gang, in the wilds of north-central British Columbia, Canada.

The journal is in the form of a letter, that was never sent. Decades later, I think it has an interesting historical resonance. At times I come off like a callow youth – I plead guilty as charged. I swore a lot more in those days than I do now, but in places the writing is surprisingly good, at least in my humble opinion. And the story has a compelling narrative arc.

There were a lot of interesting and dramatic events that occurred – a number of industrial accidents being the most serious. There were also some colorful characters on the crew, which resulted in some dramatic and at times amusing conflicts and altercations. I perhaps flatter myself by including myself in that number. Or perhaps I condemn myself – I’m not sure.

So, if you want to be reminded of one of those summer jobs that was kind of life-changing, read on. My story may just kick-start some memories of your own.

The memoir/journal is about 9,000 words, a length that can usually be read in an hour or so. It is priced at 99 cents U.S. (equivalent in other currencies) and is free on Kindle Unlimited. Periodically, it will be offered as a free promotion.

U.S.: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CN661P8Z

UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CN661P8Z

Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0CN661P8Z

Australia: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0CN661P8Z

India: https://www.amazon.in/dp/B0CN661P8Z

Germany: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0CN661P8Z

France: https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B0CN661P8Z

Spain: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B0CN661P8Z

Italy: https://www.amazon.it/dp/B0CN661P8Z

Netherlands: https://www.amazon.nl/dp/B0CN661P8Z

Japan: https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B0CN661P8Z

Brazil: https://www.amazon.com.br/dp/B0CN661P8Z