One step at a time

[RichieP]

I received this PM yesterday. It came at a very good time(karma).

I am going to copy it here and this thread hopefully will move forward with some races in few days ok?

My thoughts are that some "collective feedback" on what will be shown will benefit us all.

Here is the PM:

HI Richie!

I've been using the Match-up 5 step approach for the last 2 months or so, and have gone thru Mr. Bradshaw's Match-Up 2 book pretty thoroughly (even though I bought it 2 years ago when he first offered it on Hat Check). The results so far have been pretty good. At first, I lost more than I won, but I have been profitable my last three visits to the track using only the 5 step approach (I finished only 60 cents ahead yesterday, but it's still a profit).

My biggest problem area so far seems to be shippers. I try to factor in whether or not another track is faster. Sometimes I'm right, sometimes not. I don't feel as though I have a handle on that yet. In race 4at Belmont yesterday, I threw out the winner because I thought he was a bit too slow to beat my eventual choice. But the winner had never run in New York. He had run only a few races at Oaklawn Park, and it turned out he was fast enough to win. My only consolation was that he beat my horse by a nose, and with a little luck, I would have had the winner. I wasn't too upset. It's all part of the learning process. (In the third and sixth races I also had the second place horses. In the 3rd, my horse lost by a head, and in the 6th my horse lost by half a length. A few inches either way and I could have had a very good day.)

Another problem I have is that I tend to be lazy. I've lost races because I haven't looked at ALL the lines. I tend to stop after the first three or four.

Lastly, I'm not too sure what to do with horses that are coming back from long layoffs. It seems that every day there are several horses that took the winter off and are returning to racing since Belmont opened. I know I've lost a few bets because some of those horses have come back ready to run. Then there are others who come back and I'm still waiting for them to finish.

I'm following your suggestions. I'm using the five step approach exclusively for the next month or two, and then I'll start studying the races in the Hat Check forum. I really feel that I am making progress. The Match-up is pattern recognition, and I see that unless I do lots of races using the 5 step approach, I am not going to acquaint myself with the patterns I need to recognize.