Beating the Races with a Computer

Steven L. Brecher

There are few books on handicapping that can be considered indispensable. It's likely that, a quarter of a century after its original publication, Steven Brecher's Beating the Races with a computer is no longer on that list. After all, the handicapping game has changed quite a lot in the ensuing twenty-five years. However, Brecher's means, methods, and processes are just as valid as they were then; the reader just has to change a few things in their application.

Brecher's book came out not long after Bill Quirin's groundbreaking Winning at the Races, and what Brecher does here is, to some extent, simply revise and extend the excellent work Quirin did. History has, of course, borne out Brecher's prediction that computer processor power would continue to come down in price (and his breathless exclamation that someday in the future, the racing fan would be able to take the whole database to the track came true with the advent of the laptop), and thus this book, instead of languishing in its present obscurity, would seem to be even more important to the do-it-yourself punter. Brecher describes ho to set up your own system for computerized handicapping, including a brief discussion of multiple regression analysis and how to set up a database, and then shows you his own findings. Where the present-day reader will find the most value in this book is in Brecher's descriptions of how the statistics work; it's pretty easy to read between the lines and figure out how most of the automation was done. And, of course, these days it doesn't require a minicomputer that costs "about as much as a Chevrolet;" your old 486 gathering dust on the shelf can handle this stuff easily.

If you're a handicapper who dabbles in programming your own handicapping software, this book will be absolutely invaluable. Do what you need to do to hunt down a copy.