My friend "Spotplay" and I have been talking with horse players close to home and all over the country lately to see if our current perception of the state of handicapping is on target. 

Specifically, he and I think that as handicappers, we have entered a Golden Age in which excellent mutuels and increased ROI's are waiting to be taken by players, now more than any time in the past 20-25 years. 

What has brought about these wonderful opportunites? 

Apathy. Laziness. The "dumbing down" of America. 

People not taking responsibility for their own actions is the catch-phrase that has seemingly fueled everything from small and large lawsuits to problems with families, businesss, and Lord knows what else. In the world of handicapping, it seems to us that more people want easy answers and computer programs that spit out winners than to do the work needed to beat the races on their own with their personal edge. People not taking responsibility for their own handicapping. 

In his article last week here at HDC, Charles Carroll wrote: "Since public odds are overwhelmingly based upon the published Beyer Speed Figures, one way to find an “edge” is to have a strong set of alternative speed figures of your own....a good approach to building strong, local, and immediate speed figures can be to simply make your own Beyers.If  you work on a few tracks of your choice, you can make better Beyers than “The Beyers”—if for no other reason than the simple fact that you must do research and you must understand them.  The published Beyers are not bad speed figures, but the great value of Beyer’s approach, when he first introduced it, was that it was do-it-yourself." 

There is simply no substitute to making your own information and running with it. Your knowledge of the game and its nuances is greatly sharpened when you collect and generate your own information, and not just raw data. To stay with Charlie's example, personally-generated Beyers, when properly made, will beat the published Beyers every time, every track. Adjusting for runaway winners, real track bias, dramatic differences that often exist between sprints and routes, and the infrequent but very real speeding up or slowing down of a track because of track maintenance that requires an adjustment to par itself for the rest of a meet, are phenomena that a working handicapper can spot today and use tomorrow while non-working "just hand it to me" handicappers won't have for several days at the very least. 

And that's where a personal edge lies. 

It doesn't have to be speed figs. It can be in one or more of many different areas. For example, short-term post position win percentages can put you on to a track bias that may take the public awhile to figure out, and allow you to ride a short bandwagon to big mutuels. 

The point is that there are plenty of great bets, good solid betting opportunities for players who are willing to work, in much the same way that the players who made their own Beyers after Picking Winners was published, managed to hit solid horses at solid prices while those around them at the track muttered "How did THAT horse ever manage to win this race?" 

If you don't believe me, just look around and listen to the comments of your fellow horseplayers next time you're at the track or OTB. 

And welcome to the new Golden Age.