Race Track Diary, Entry Number Fifteen
Billy Budd’s (Nov 22, 2025)
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.
15 – Billy Budd’s (Nov 22, 2025)
After a longish layoff, it was back to Billy Budd’s. As noted in a previous entry, this place is quite conveniently located, being near my house and a (mostly) freeway drive for my brother.
A few things got in the way of the usual weekly horseracing venture, primarily of the late autumn colds and minor flu variety. The observance of Remembrance Day also crowded the racetrack out of the schedule for the week containing November 11. So, by the time this occasion came around, we were ready to bet on some horses.
It was a Friday and we got there a little bit after the lunch hour. As such, it was fairly busy and the crowd at the horseracing section was quite varied – various ages, some couples, some work groups taking a late lunch and so forth. The rest of the pub was also rather busy. As with our previous visit to this place, we took seats along a sort of long arc shaped counter, with undermount lighting to help with the handicapping.
After purchasing a program for Woodbine from one of the printer machines, I sat down to study it. I was somewhat shocked to see that this program didn’t seem to have speed and pace ratings for each horse, but rather Beyer’s numbers. That was an unpleasant surprise, as my (so far successful) handicapping method had relied primarily on speed/pace numbers.
I should note that speed numbers give a ranking of the horse’s performance, relative to a what an excellent time would be in a race of this nature (e.g. conditioned on distance, track, type of race, etc). But, basically it is a measure of the horse’s inherent potential for speed.
The pace numbers are an estimate of the horse’s speed rating, if it had been calculated early in the race (the quarter mile pole or thereabouts, depending on the length of the race). That gives an indication of whether the horse is a wire-to-wire type or a closer type (late charge in the stretch).
Beyer’s numbers are calculated for each horse; they are meant to be a summative measure (i.e. one number) for that horse’s overall potential to win. In practice, it is heavily weighted towards speed, though modified by some other factors. What those are exactly, I don’t know. The formula is kept secret for commercial and competitive reasons, by Mr. Byers and the Daily Racing Form, I believe.
I suppose I should give a fairly detailed run-down of handicapping to put this into context. There are a lot of other things to consider when handicapping:
the date of the race,
the value of the race (the purse),
age or sex restrictions for the horses in the race (e.g. fillies and mares, 3 years old and upwards),
the track and track conditions for each of the races in the past performance charts for each horse in the current race (e.g. good vs sloppy at Woodbine or Santa Anita),
each horse’s positions in previous races (past performances),
the odds the horse went off at,
the post position it ran from,
its estimated time and position for each segment of the race,
its jockey and trainer,
the weight it carried,
the top three horses in the race,
and a comment about how the horse ran the race (the horse’s ‘trip’).
There is also ‘demographic’ data on each horse including its sex and age, its colouring, its birthplace, its parentage, each horse’s earnings over various time intervals (current year, previous year, lifetime) and its owner.
Then, of course, there are the non-horse related factors, especially the odds that the horse is being given as the start of the race approaches. Those odds are proportional to the amount of money that the crowd bets on each horse – the more money bet on the horse, the lower its odds will be. A horse that a handicapper thinks has a good chance of winning, but has relatively high odds, is a good bet (a so-called overlay). The same horse with very low odds is a bad bet (an underlay). Of course that assumes that the bettor’s estimation of probabilities are superior to those of the aggregate (the crowd).
Lastly, there is the possibility of shenanigans (i.e. cheating of some sort). Some of us ignore that (either that it doesn’t happen or that all of the different misbehaviours tend to cancel each other out). Others attempt to factor that into their betting. I suppose it all depends on your general worldview.
So, as you can see, there is a lot to think about. Given this immense volume of information, a very high-level statistical analysis (e.g. regression or logistic regression) is required to thoroughly analyze the situation (or a dedicated machine-learning algorithm). I actually did that quite a few years earlier, as I am a statistician by profession. It was interesting, but gathering the data was a lot of work.
In the absence of the speed/pace numbers, I decided to try using the Beyer’s numbers for my handicapping. In a previous iteration of my horse betting background, I found that Beyer’s numbers were quite good at picking winners but those horses were generally heavily bet down by the crowd, and thus had low odds. That meant that the strategy wasn’t viable, at least for me, in terms of making an overall profit. Others may have had different results.
On the other hand, some careful selection of speed and pace seemed to work better, then and now. That also included watching the developing odds, to ensure that the payoff was worth the risk (in cards they used to say ‘is the game worth the candle?’).
So, long story short, I made some adjustments and came out of the day with a profit anyway.
Amusingly enough, the next day I looked at the program again and noticed that the speed and pace figures were still there, just shifted over several columns, with the Beyer’s numbers in the column that held the speed/pace numbers previously. At least that’s how it appeared to me. The program can be a bit vague on some of these points.
As noted above, we arrived at Billy Bud’s in time for most of the Woodbine card. The first race we had a chance to handicap was the 3rd race. I developed my new Beyer’s related formula on the fly and worked out my numbers. It took longer than the measure that I had been using in the previous weeks, as it required a bit more examination of the program, to get a feel for early speed vs closers.
I have always preferred fast horses with early speed over closers. Just a personal thing. I guess the guy in the play/movie Glengary Glenn Ross wouldn’t have agreed with me. He’d be shouting ‘Always be closing!’ and I’d be shouting ‘Always go wire-to-wire!’. Neither the horses or the real estate salesmen would know what to make of us.
After working out my numbers, I pointed out the two horses that I liked to my brother Craig. He shrugged ‘could be’. The two horses did come in, hurrah!
But the horse I thought would be the early speed horse lagged and the one I thought would be the closer pretty much went wire-to-wire. So, I said to Craig, "It looks like I was both right and wrong". Fortunately I had boxed the bet (bet it both ways), so it didn’t actually matter. It wasn’t a bad price, though I thought it should have been more. But who doesn’t think that?
When I went up to the machine to cash in my betting voucher, an older gent headed there too. I let him go ahead, thinking that he had happily won on that race too. But he just put the voucher in the machine, which spit it back out, then he tossed it in the garbage.
I figured that he was a "Water Bill" type, who just double-checked tickets in case someone threw away a winner by accident. But later I saw him put quite a few bets through the machine, so I guess he was legit.
For the 4th race, my numbers came up with horse #2 to win, but it came in third. It had a nice late charge, but it came a little too late. I had also expected that horse to run at the front, but it turned out to be a closer. I was beginning to think that my impromptu early speed measure just wasn’t up to the job.
On the plus side, my brother picked up a nice score on a Superfecta, which paid about $40 on a $0.20 bet. That’s a four-horse bet, so he probably had to make multiple bets to win it. I think that bet was on the bucket-pullers at at different track.
The late lunch crowd was thinning out by now. A guy a few seats down kept repeating "I’m on the south side now" into his cell phone. Maybe a worker who was taking a long lunch hour and was getting the gears for it. Or maybe a shipper was checking up on a truck driver.
On the 5th race, my numbers came up with horses that didn’t even do as well as fourth place. So, another loss.
While working out the numbers, the waitress came by to see if we wanted a drink (still too early for me). A wine glass fell off her tray and shattered on the floor. One piece hit Craig’s leg, but there was no damage. She apologized, noting that she didn’t like carrying wine glasses, especially when they are empty. "Too tippy" I said, and she nodded in agreement. I said people ought to drink wine out of whisky tumblers. She nodded in agreement.
An interesting feature of that wine glass accident is that it was the second time a waitress dropped a glass which shattered on the floor near us in fifteen trips to off-track betting joints. Does that mean that we can expect this event to occur again within seven more trips? Nope, probably that is just an example of the statistical fallacy of extrapolating from a small sample (I did mention that I was a statistician).
On the 6th race, my numbers came up with horse #1 and #8 for an exactor box. The 8 did come in place but the 1 finished out of the money. So, another loss.
The 7th race had a very big field, some thirteen horses. It took a long time to work out my numbers, so long in fact that I didn’t quite finish in time to bet the race. Afterwards, I finished working out the numbers out of curiosity and it came out with horse #13 as the clear winner. It went off at about 8 to 1 odds and it did indeed win, paying $15.70 on a win ticket! Ain’t that always the way.
I should note that the horse had really good numbers overall, but its last couple of races had not been that great. I have noted that horseracing bettors tend to have a significant recency bias, so betting against that can pay off handsomely.
By the 8th race I had decided to enjoy a Granville Island beer. The waitress said it was a Christmas thing and had a sort of caramel taste. She was correct. It was alright, but more than one or two would get a bit cloying, I think. The beer meant a trip to the men’s room, in which there was one of those condom machines attached to the wall. I thought, "wow, I haven’t seen one of those in a long time." Give some guys a few beers and they get mighty optimistic.
I confined my optimism to the horse races and worked out my numbers for the 8th race. Horses #8 and #5 both seemed like good bets, so I put a place ticket on the #5. It looked good, leading in the stretch, and then a three-horse duel ensued. I thought for sure that I had it, since I bet it to place, but by some evil chance it came in third, presumably by an eyelash. It paid well to show, so it would have been a nice payoff to place. So it goes.
Craig won some bet or another, so he went to cash a voucher. But the machine wouldn’t take the ticket, as the paper hadn’t come off smoothly from the roll. He informed the waitress of the problem, who got the appropriate staff member to attend to the matter, who happened to be the bartender. She seemed a bit put off by it all. On top of the broken wine glass grazing his leg, it wasn’t Craig’s lucky day with bar staff.
I worked out my numbers for the 9th race, but the horse that the numbers liked (#1) went off at less than even money, which never seems like a good idea. Thus, I went by the old adage that discretion can be the better part of valour, and skipped the race. The #1 horse did indeed win, but only paid 3.80 for a $2 ticket. Prices like that won’t buy the baby new shoes.
For the 10th race, my numbers were close on the #6 and #1 horses. But the #1 horse was going off at 4 to 1, while the 6 was barely better than even money, so I bet on the #1 horse, though just a place ticket. It did place, and paid nearly 8 bucks on a $2 ticket (not that I only bet two bucks, that is just the way prices are usually expressed at the track), so that was good. It meant that I would earn a clear profit on the day, with 2 wins out of 6 races, at pretty decent prices. There were also a couple of near-run things (as the Duke of Wellington was said to have said about the Battle of Waterloo) in terms of just-missed photo finishes.
It turned out that the machine also didn’t rip my ticket properly, so I had to get the bartender to ‘do something’. I noted that it probably just needed to have the bottom bit of the ticket to be cut off cleanly, for the machine to read it properly. She concurred, saying "that’s what I did, cut it with a pair of scissors." I said "Normally I carry a pair of scissors with me, but I seem to have forgotten them today." Judging by her expression, I fear that this riposte did not align with her sense of humour.
There was an 11th race, but I skipped it, as I was too lazy to do much more mental math, and thus didn’t finish working out my numbers. Looking at it later, it the numbers did predict the top three horses, but they all paid short money, so it didn’t really matter.
After that, it was a matter of waiting for Craig to finish up his betting on Woodbine/Mohawk bucket-pullers, which took another hour or so. That also allowed time for the rush-hour traffic to die down. Craig told lots of old racetrack stories – I must record some of those for posterity, as they have a pretty good Damon Runyon feel to them.
As it was now around supper-time, more people drifted in to eat and play a few horses. A couple of young sports came in and sat near us, and asked a few questions about horseracing. We gave them a few pointers, based on long experience, and shortly thereafter we took our leave.
It was dark by now, but the unseasonably warm and not-snowy weather made it a pretty easy drive. And that was that for horseracing trip # 15.
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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
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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 backpacking in Northern Ontario, that a friend and I did some years back. It also has a bit of canoing and some day hikes with my wife.
A Summer Working on the Railroad
What follows is an account 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
Mexico: https://www.amazon.com.mx/dp/B0CN661P8Z
