Newbie ?s

[kevbrim]

Hello all,

So I'm pretty much completely new to the horse game(about 4 weeks of reading/researching). I may not even use correct teminology, so forgive me if I say something wrong. I came across this board in some of my readings and it seems to fit how I want to approach the game. Mostly, I've been making fictitious bets, along with a few real ones and I've learned very quickly that betting low odds horses will not be profitable in the long term. Anyway, I think most of my focus so far has been on trying to find the pace of the race and then the horses that might benefit from said pace. Mostly right now I just try to get a feel for the race and order the top 4 horses. Most often my choices align with the betting odds but not always. All of this is done on paper with PPs. I'm actually "back testing" as Churchill downs gives free PPs to their historical races. So I download a PP, say for 5/27. Handicap it, and then watch the replays to see how my predictions come out. Anyway, there seems to be a WEALTH of information here, but I'm not really sure where to start. I did download the Follow Up 70-88 pdf and started looking through that. But I'm a bit confused, what exactly am I supposed to be looking for as I read through these? Most of it seems to be old PPs. I seems like there is decades of information, but no distillery to the nuts and bolts for a blank slate beginner. Any help would be much appreciated.