The Odds Must Be Crazy

Len Ragozin

Len Ragozin has, over the years, developed quite a reputation as an arrogant SOB. But then, if you're one of the handful of people who's not only a documented multi-millionaire thanks to horseplaying, but who has also stayed that way despite ever-decreasing profits in the game, it could be pretty easily argued that you deserve to be an arrogant SOB. And despite what many may think, arrogance is not a deterrent to effective communication unless the recipient allows it to be.

The Odds Must Be Crazy is less a handicapping treatise than an autobiography that's specific to how Ragozin and his partners (his father during the early years and Len Friedman later on) developed a specific handicapping method and its reporting tool. commonly known as the Ragozin Sheets. Not to say there isn't a wealth of handicapping information inside, as Ragozin gives the outlines of the methods he and his staff use to produce the almost-legendary accuracy they achieve (he leaves the actual mechanics of how everything fits together out, but if you're obsessive enough to be figuring wind speed at your local track, you probably have the stick-to-itiveness to figure those numbers out yourself anyway), but the book, like many of the best and riskiest handicapping books to publish, is more inviting because it reads more like you're sitting at the bar, drowning your sorrows after your 80-1 longshot lost the photo finish, listening to the guy next to you tell you about the string of losses just like that he endured from 1975 to 1978. Of course, since he's wearing a sharkskin suit, you know things have picked up for him since, but that's not the point. He's been there, he's done that, he bought the T-shirt. And to the serious horseplayer, the only thing more valuable than time to handicap is having someone sitting there next to you for commiseration and analysis purposes.

While no one's going to confuse this book with the undisputed king of handicapping/autobiographies, Bill Barich's exquisite Laughing in the Hills, Ragozin's affable manner and ability to resist the more base forms of didacticism (a trap many hard-handicapping manuals fall into regularly) makes this one an easy, fun read, and if you feel the urge to glean handicapping info, it's there for you. Otherwise, just enjoy the story, and don't let the arrogance get you down.