I will be heading out on a road trip – with a bit of luck,
that will include observing a spectacular total eclipse in the beautiful state
of Oregon, U.S.A.. If all goes well, I
will blog about that later.
That will take some time away from blogging, so I am
presenting a piece that I wrote quite some time ago (late 1990’s), concerning my
attempt to “beat the horse races”, with the applications of computing power,
data analysis, intelligence and dogged determination. I did ok for few years, and learned a lot of
statistical techniques (via concurrent courses in multivariate analysis). I certainly learned plenty about the pluses
and minuses of data mining, and the wisdom behind the notion that one should be
careful about post-hoc analyses.
Plus, I had some fun – there is nothing quite like a big
score on a long odds horse that your system predicted, that hardly anybody thought
had a chance.
And some of the photos are old, so the quality isn't great, but they are authentic, so there's that. The better photos are from google images.
And some of the photos are old, so the quality isn't great, but they are authentic, so there's that. The better photos are from google images.
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Horse Racing Days (1)
I – The Early Years
Initiation
My family has long had a fascination with risk taking
behavior in general , and gambling in particular. We have not been notably good at it, but many of us have been diligent, losing
money consistently for decades. The main
vehicle for this has been the horse races, although casinos, sports lotteries,
and bookies have also seen their share.
I have not been seduced by gambling to quite the extent of
some of my brothers, but I have had two major intervals in my life where it has
obsessed me. The first was in my late
teens. It was during the summer between
my first and second years of university.
I had most of the month of August free, as I had quit a railroad construction
job in early August when it had become too difficult to continue. The story behind quitting that job was a long
one; suffice it to say that the job was hot, dangerous, isolated and low
paying, not things that the average nineteen year old has much patience for.
Upon my return to the city, I innocently accompanied my
older brother Jim to the racetrack one Saturday afternoon. I had been aware that this place held a
magical and morbid fascination for him, so I was curious to see the
attraction. It turned out, as it so
often does, that I had a spectacular case of beginner’s luck. I knew next to nothing about the sport, so I
hit upon the strategy of betting the jockeys with winning records. It is a common enough delusion among
beginners, one that I now know would never pay off in the long run. But it held that day, and for several more
weeks; long enough to feel the magnetic tug of money without work.
I still remember the name of some of those horses, twenty
years later. Pampas Host, Winning Red ;
names that are forever etched upon my mind.
If my memory serves correctly, the jockey who was my favorite at the
time was later discovered murdered in the United States, where he had moved on
to race after his early Canadian success.
It was widely believed to be the result of some racing skullduggery,
although the murder is still unsolved.
My favorite memory of that period was on the final day of
the racing meet, early in September. I
had already won a good sum of money that month, but not quite enough to pay for
my next year of university. I had picked
the winner of the feature race, but it was short priced, winning less than even
money. That netted only about a hundred
bucks, so I still had some ways to go to win my tuition and university
expenses. But I was feeling that the cosmic forces were with me. The tenth race was widely reputed to be a
scam, so rather than even attempt to handicap it, I decided to bet that two of the three longest shots on the board
would come in first and second.
Technically, this is known as a three horse quinella box to the
longshots. It is a highly unlikely
event.
I sent a friend of mine to make the bet, promising that he could have one-third of the winnings. The race was among horses looking for a final payday before being sent out to pasture, or less romantically, the glue factory. As such, it would not have been notable, but for the fact that my horses came in, paying over 500 dollars on a five dollar bet. Even after giving Marvin his one third, it put me over the top in my effort to ‘earn’ enough money to attend university. I sat for a long time in the upper deck of the grandstand, waiting for all of the other spectators to leave, before I got up. I wanted to be the last person to leave, ruler of the domain, King of Northlands Park. It was a glorious feeling for a nineteen year old.
My racing career for the next
few years was sporadic and undistinguished.
I had my good runs, but naturally the bad ones overshadowed them. It was to be a long time before I was to have
another meet as triumphant as that one had been. A lot would intervene – university, marriage,
a child, several jobs, and move halfway across the continent, to a city that
lacked a racetrack. This stopped short
my racing career, but eventually the racetrack would reclaim me.
Real life is pretty interesting, at the track, but fiction can be almost as good. So, here’s a short story that I wrote in those early years, about a horse-player and the devil (probably).
A Dark Horse
Just
what might a gambler give up, to go on the winning streak of his life? Even he
can't know for sure. Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus legend is given a
Damon Runyon spin, in this short story.
For those who aren’t familiar with it, the Faustus legend is about
someone who sells his soul to you know who, for fame and fortune. Things are not nearly so simple for the
character in the story, though.
This
is a short story of about 6500 words, or about 35 to 45 minutes reading time,
for typical readers. It is only 99 cents.
Amazon U.S.: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
Amazon U.K: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
Amazon Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
Amazon Germany: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
Amazon Australia: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
Amazon India: https://www.amazon.in/dp/B00OX60XJU
