[AusRace] Robert Saunders Dowst - legend

[Tony Moffat]

Dowst was an early writer regarding handicapping in America. In the 30's as
betting popularity grew after the Depression Dowst published a series of
how-to books and some of these went into numerous reprints.

His 'Playing the Races' and 'Winners and How to Select Them' (my copy has
Xmas '44 and a signature/autograph?) explained in detail his inclusion and
exclusion rules for the uniquely American system of horse racing then in
use. We, in Australia, did not have to deal with claiming races for
instance, whereby your horse could be bought and paid for during the running
of the race itself! 

Mr Dowst used a 1 to 4 scale to rank horses winning percentages and a 1 to 4
scale to rank  horse running in the money, a different aspect.

 He used a 1 to 3 scale to rank horse class meaning if a horse had been
running in the class it was probably qualified for it and most certainly for
the class below. He did that to demonstrate horse facts, not opinions. The
author sought to find bets in better classes of races, those in which the
runners had shown or exposed some form.

He used a 1 to 3 scale for weight, the bottom third as a 1, the top third as
a 3, and the remainder as a 2. He used race times as qualifiers and did not
bother so much with decimal seconds, everything was smoothed out to fifths
and no less. 

A read of his books is an involvement in the words and culture of the
American track, what with 'breezes', stretch, 8th poles, sack runs etc.

Look for:
Profits on Horses
Horses to Bet, a renewable list of 200+ horses to back no matter what
Straight, Place and Show
Winners at Prices
In the Stretch
The Odds, the Player, the Horse

What is evident in his selection(s) techniques is a definite yes - your
runner had to be a stand out, separated from the also rans by a margin,
several pounds perhaps, lengths, percentages. One method shows 31 selections
over a season, with 90% success, after working out and over 12 races a day
for a 18 successive weeks. Two "offs" and mud caused the 10% to fail.

It seems he was a moderate backer. 

Another way - perhaps

Cheers

Tony


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