Nearly $16 billion is wagered every year on Thoroughbred horses. But only 2 to 5 percent of horseplayers turn a consistent profit. Is it possible for a reasonably intelligent, normal guy to actually make a living at the racetrack? Ted McClelland takes us on a yearlong journey to find out.
A wildly diverse cast of horseplayers kindly adopts McClelland and teaches him an array of techniques for playing the ponies. There's the intensely disciplined Scott "The Professor" McMannis, who uses a complicated formula to calculate speed figures; Creighton R. Schoenfeldt, a cranky gentleman who devotes practically 24 hours a day to studying the odds; "Bob the Brain" and Steve "Stat Man" Miller; and dozens more hustlers and high rollers who sacrifice their lives to betting at the track.
We join McClelland on his fascinating year of exactas, Daily Doubles, racing forms, and colorful track patrons, as he seeks to acquire the elusive skills of a professional winning horseplayer while betting his book publisher's advance during daily visits to Chicago's Hawthorne Race Course and Arlington Park, off-track betting facilities, and other tracks around the country.
Horseplayers affectionately records McClelland's all-consuming passion with horse gambling. He schools himself through devout and obsessive study of speed figures and horse and jockey statistics, reading books written by the pros, trying different betting and handicapping strategies he picks up from the horseplayers, and in the end, he achieves a sort of horseplayer wisdom.
