Handicapping.com - Your Thoroughbred Racing Website

In the "old days," (before the Internet), if you needed today's results, you had to rely on (a) a friend who stayed at the track longer than you could, (b) a recorded telephone message, sometimes free, sometimes not, you could call after the races had ended with the day's results, or (c) the next day's newspaper--IF the paper published the racing results! And it was always hit-or-miss as to whether or not you would get any information other than who won and what they paid.

Today, all you need to do is log on to the Internet and there's everything you need and it's all free, right?

You may think you have it all when you visit a major information provider's website or a specific track website that provides free results but the truth is there is a surpisingly large variance in what you'd think would be basic information.

As I said in Handicapping in Cyberspace, there are five major providers on the Internet for entry and result information for US racetracks:

If you're only looking for horse names and numbers, who won, the order of finish and the payoffs, any one of these sources will do. But if you're a handicapper who wants fractional times, trip notes and racing comments, and more information to use to help fine-tune your handicapping next time a horse runs, you'd better know where to look first to avoid wasting a lot of time.

Virtually all of these providers list the same result information for starters: abbreviated race conditions, purse value and distributions to 1st-6th place, weather and track conditions, time race started, comment about start of race. But that's often where similarity ends.

Let's look at the meat of what each what each of these information providers provided for results for a track and date picked at random, Calder, Saturday, June 17, 2000. Note that of all tracks running on this day, I picked Calder because it was the first one I saw that I knew had its own website with "results" listed on the home page as one of the features of the site

Calder Race Course Website:First three finishers with payoffs, unplaced horses in order of finish, names of winning trainer and owner, and exotic payoffs, fractional and final times of the leading horse in fifths. Calder notes that the information is "powered by Equibase."

EQUIBASE: ALL of the information listed above, but with a number of additional features:

·ALL horses are listed in finish order by name and rider, with medication and equipment, position at the break, first and second points of call, stretch and final positions and final odds.

Clearly, the amount of free information provided by Equibase is superior to all the rest. For experienced handicappers (or those who wish to be), knowing which horses broke to the inside or outside from their post positions, and how they ran can be valuable information the next time these horses run.

Equibase says it covers all tracks in North America "which supply entry and result information to us electronically." And I have seen a few (usually smaller) tracks which do not fax or send their data to Equibase, so be aware that you will have to look around if you tend to use Equibase to get your result information on a regular basis.

TSN offers an online version of the traditional Daily Racing Form result charts for $1.00 per day per track, the equivalent of what Equibase offers except for a different trackman's comments.

BRISNET offers a hybrid mix of result information called Fast Charts for 50 cents per day per trackThis format contains the running positions for each horse, medication and equipment, final odds, payoffs, and a little more, but is extremely difficult to read on screen because of the way it is formatted.

I wonder why some services charge for what is essentially the same information that their competitors have offered for free for years, especially when the for-pay information is less complete than what you can get at the click of a mouse.

The Internet is filled with redundancy, which can be a very good thing when you're looking for general information. It takes a little digging to find more specific or highly detailed information, but once you find it, it can be very valuable, especially in the world of handicapping and wagering. When you find such information, like you've found here at handicapping.com today, bookmark it or write it down!