The Expert's Guide

Have you noticed - you probably have - how there are all these pages on the web everywhere: 'the beginner's guide to...' something or other.

I presume they think you need a degree to be able to smoke a cigar as an expert.

Maybe you won't be able to enjoy something unless you have an advanced University education.

Anyway since you are here, you get to have my astonishingly arrogant thinking lavished upon you - and today, we shall be discussing the capacity for the market to send out an obvious winner (race horse) at the luxury odds of 9/1.

This is Shiraz, with the world's best horseman on board

I refer to last Saturday's Randwick Winter Challenge (Race) Winner - Shiraz. 

Shiraz is a horse that can, in theory, gain a start in a Cox Plate - which is the most serious, most important real horse race in Australasia; it could, in theory, win such a race.

Shiraz is a serious, professional, straight-on, intelligent, and competitive sort of race horse. It's been in extremely high class company in its last set of engagements and it hasn't hit the winner's circle for those few starts - which was understandable. Many good, traditional style trainers allow a horse to gain experience and lots of race practice before they push them to the limits with a direct view to 'win.'

Shiraz is by no means any kind of certainty either to start or to win the Cox this year - but the point I'm really making is that it should never have been let to go to the starting gates at the price that they fielded it. So much for those 'in the know;' no one, evidently, knew anything. The horse won well.

I backed it. 

Randwick - but watch the people, not just the horses

So what this all about? What's my message or underlying theme?

Horse race gambling is a skill that relies on patience, and high levels of observation skills.

More than half the race information available to the observing eye, is not just in the horses but also in the people around the horses. 

There are not enough movies and stories about race winning 'detectives' - that is, the detective of the winning horse! The winner is a mystery before the race and an obvious thing afterwards. But frankly, the process of discovering the winner is similar to the mystery story profile of fiction books dealing with murders and crime mysteries.

The guy wears a fedora, hangs around bars and drinks alcohol, and listens to what is uttered from loose lips - and sometimes reads in between the silences thrown from faces that don't want to be silent.

A good racing 'winning horse' detective is good at human psychology and is able to make observations about the standard behaviours of trainers and owners, and compare these with when those people believe they are about to make a bunch of money.

This really is Mickey Spillane, btw

Horse racing is not crooked to this extent - you can't tell an animal what to do. Sometimes they just do what they want and not what you want. Some horses want to win sometimes and they do.

And so to give you a direct piece of information that you can use whether you are an experienced gambler or a novice or not a gambler at all - the way to assess this year's Cox is to focus everything else around the horse Shiraz. And by this I mean that if they start the race with some hot favourite far too short against a horse like Shiraz, then it will be a false favourite and you can afford to bet on something else. Not necessarily Shiraz - because by the time of the race, Shiraz too may have firmed too far in.

And - the way to think about any mystery is to play the part of the good observer...

Shove your fedora on your head, go out to where the barley-corn flows and listen, and watch, and think and assess, and consider. By and by, along will come an occasion and you will be in possession of vital knowledge and information, and others will not, and THEN and only then, must you or even can you, bet.

It's a culture. It's a life skill. You can spend the whole of your life believing if you like, that earning a living, or having a job and earning money is what it's all about and how you support yourself - but it isn't true. 'Winning' money is the ONLY way to make money, serious money. Windfalls - even if they are from entrepreneurship - are the ONLY way to make serious money. Windfalls are about placing yourself or your bucket in the path of what will be cast by the strong wind...

And this is about observation and deduction and intellect. It has nothing whatsoever to do with earning anything. 

A couple of days ago, Rolls Royce launched their new  'Phantom VIII.' The bulk of the market that will buy it consists of criminals and dictators and others who have grabbed power where there already exists a flow of wealth - such as, for an obvious case, in the Middle Eastern Oil 'nations.'

This is Fred Astaire's Rolls Royce on temporary display in London
right now

You will never be able to 'earn' your way into such wealth no matter how much advanced academic education you have indulged in. Those already 'there' are going to see to it you don't step on their toes. And they a very greedy people and won't give you even any of what they have. If you think they have given you some of it, they will control you and 'it.' You will have no freedom. And you may end up with nothing. You could, however, take a leaf out of the Clintons and take er '*s' to get such access. You could know all the secrets of the criminal money launderers and tax-dodgers because you were an accountant in Luxembourg and end up the head of the Euro-Group as a result. And that kind of thing works in the short term.

Or, you could just wait and observe all these fools. And bye and bye, they will lead us all to great prosperity.

And by and by, you will be able to pick their pockets while they are 'leading' us.