In the beginning....an easy game

I can remember a time when, for the life of me, I couldn't figure out why any newspaper would waste the space and newsprint to cover horseracing. Who in the world could possibly care about all the printed jibberish? And, what kind of marroons would actually think they had any chance at picking one or more winners in a racing day?
I won't go into the details, now, of how I became thunderstruck with the sport. Simply said. A couple of effortless $22 and $35 winners made me believe wagering was an easy way to make extra money. Ha!

Not being an idiot, I wanted solid instruction on how to handicap. The first book I ever bought was "The Professional Method of Winner Selection," by Lawrence Vogele. This was my basic training. I inhaled it. As he suggested, I handicapped hundreds of races before ever placing a bet. When I was confident enough, I grabbed my binoculars and went to Aqueduct. And, I won. Easy money. Ha!

The rest of the tale anyone reading this already knows. Somewhere, along the road, I couldn't work the system. I started losing. My handicapping library grew to 46 books--on pace, on figures, on trips, on trainers, on track bias. Not one of them had the answer. Most, were well meant. But few ever pointed out the obvious fact, that to win at horseracing one must be able to master an infinite number of variables. What works in race one, won't work again for a dozen races. And, only after you've discarded the factor as having any validity, Welcome to my world.