The Triple Crown Handicapper 2007

For over two decades, Jim Mazur's Progressive Handicapping has made a name for itself as the source for Breeders' Cup and Triple Crown handicapping angles. Florida-based professional horseplayer Mazur reveals his secrets to betting the Kentucky Oaks, Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, and Belmont Stakes. His system of "knocks" to eliminate non-contenders based on historical data can be used to point out possible longshot winners and horses to round out exotic bets. This is truly an indispensible tool in the betting wars.

To demonstrate how the system works, he takes the time to recap last year's Triple Crown, showing which horses were selected, which bets he made, and what profit (if any) was gained from those bets. He explains, "Now, this is NOT a forum for us to gloat about our successes. As you will see, we slip and fall numerous times en route to the windows!" Having done this, he now moves on to the angles.

Each race gets its own chapter. In each, he starts off with a list of the past 20 winners, then goes through the most powerful angles to use. These come from many sources, such as earnings, pedigree, jockey, trainer, and prep schedule. This is the most important section to study, since some of these angles have held true for years and may point to a false favorite or short-priced horse that, under this system would be an automatic toss-out. Each angle is assigned a knock or two, depending on the severity of the angle. Horses with the least number of knocks are considered contenders, while those with too many are pretenders. He calls the mid-range group "The Gray Zone", horses which have a few knocks but some positive attributes and may be worth a bet at a decent price, and definitely worth including underneath in the exotics. Needless to say, the objective of this exercise is to find the elusive "crush", given that Triple Crown races, and especially the Kentucky Derby, are often the home of boxcar payouts.

Also included in each chapter are the Daily Racing Form past performances of the last 15 winners and the last 12 Derby runners-up, so you can see where the knocks can be found and know what to look for this year. New for the Derby only this year, he includes a separate analysis for the second-place finishers, a new weapon for use when planning intrarace exotics like the exacta.