Everybody on the Internet these days seemingly has the daily pick to sell.
DelMarDon.com, for instance, boasts 30 years of handicapping experience, "consistently" serving up the best horse sense for a variety of races at different tracks, at a fee of $25 a month.
HandicappersEdge.com likewise provides full daily cards for four racing venues, including Del Mar, for the same rate.
"We work hard so you don't have to," the Alberta, Canada-based service informs gamblers at its Web site.
Railbirds no longer have to wait for the tip sheets at the track to come off the presses before trying to separate the Seabiscuits from the nags.
At least 400 for-profit dot-coms now provide strategies for amateur bettors and seasoned players, with some listing exhaustive analysis of every facet of the coming contests in lingo-laden style ("big splits all the way," "bore out under the bug rider").
They include electronic editions of such venerable thoroughbred papers as the Daily Racing Form and Today's Racing Digest, all the way around to makeshift Web letters operated by would-be equine buffs using esoteric mathematical formulas to gauge the speediest steeds.
"Deuce Bruce" Andrews, who has long hawked his two-sided tip sheet in a booth at Del Mar for $3, now maintains an Internet location where members pay $20 a month to access his daily Gold Card.
"I wanted to get on the Web to get my name out there" with other competitors, said Andrews, who makes about $500 a month on his Internet enterprise – enough to pay the mortgage on his one-bedroom condo.
The rise of Internet handicapping parallels the growing popularity of online wagering and off-site racetrack betting. Internet gambling sites take in more than $3 billion a year, according to government estimates.
The technology allows hundreds of armchair racetrack adherents to do all their business without going near the turf.
But let the buyer beware.
Racing industry executives say some Internet handicapping sites are aimed at novice track enthusiasts, and are put together by hucksters who may be simply lifting advice from other publications – or making it all up.
Most online handicappers are largely unregulated, unlike tip-sheet publishers who sell their fliers at the track.
The Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, for example, requires handicappers to sign contracts and file their cards every day with track officials. They also must register with the state Horse Racing Board.
"There are a lot of shaky guys out there" on the Internet, said David Bernsen, chief executive officer of San Diego-based LetItRide.com, which operates a handicapping Web site known as TrackExperts.com.
The service – which employs Bruno De Julio, Steve Fierro and six other veteran horse evaluators – is one of the most successful online race-tip guides, with about 8,000 clients paying $12 or more a day for cards from Del Mar, California Fairs, Arlington and Saratoga, as well as coverage of venues in Australia and Europe.
Bernsen, who has raced horses in the Kentucky Derby, unveiled TrackExperts.com last year after selling an Internet video company unrelated to horse racing.
"I retained a lot of rights (to Internet technology) that could apply to horse racing," said Bernsen, who employs nine workers besides his stable of handicappers.
Bernsen said the key to keeping customers ponying up for the electronic well – just like the subscribers to paper tip sheets of old – is not necessarily perennially picking a high number of winners, but selecting the winners that pay big.
"You can have a lot lower batting average that way, but theoretically drive in more runs," said Bernsen, adding that loyalists account for a majority of his customers.
Most online handicapping services maintain archives so potential customers can gauge how they've fared at the betting window over the previous weeks. Some also offer free daily picks and one or two days' worth of cards gratis before requiring clients to pay.
Like other dot-com entrepreneurs, online handicappers said the Internet gives them a far wider reach than they would obtain by standing at a racetrack and hawking their newsletters to passers-by.
Some said they also use their Web sites for such lucrative side projects as selling racehorse-related products.
George Kaywood, who has operated Handicapping.com since 1995, has sold dozens of copies of his book, "Handicapping in Cyberspace," at the popular site.
Besides offering daily picks for Del Mar and other tracks through an affiliation with a horse-tips service, Kansas City-based Handicapping.com also provides up-to-the-minute horse-racing news – usually between 25 and 50 headlines daily – and weather conditions at various tracks, among other features.
The site will soon air a live audio Webcast in which Kaywood, a radio talk-show host on KCMO-AM in Kansas City, Mo., interviews authors, handicappers and jockeys from the racing industry.
Kaywood said he got hooked on horses in the early 1970s when a friend took him to Saratoga, where he bet a few dollars and won $160. He subsequently became a hard-core fan and writer for American Turf Monthly.
By the time he decided to post Handicapping.com, Kaywood said, he had compiled a warehouseful of horse-racing data.
Kaywood does little handicapping himself these days because of the demands of his morning radio show, restricting himself to the Triple Crown and Breeder's Cup events.
"I'm not yet making enough (from the Internet) to retire on," Kaywood said, laughing. "This is really a labor of love."
At least one horse-racing Web site is run by a real insider.
L.J. Brooks rode hundreds of horses as a jockey in Northern California from 1978 to the late 1990s before moving to Texas, where she initially did handicapping work for an established Internet racing site.
But she quickly figured that she could be more successful with her own online business, and founded Hi2Winners.com in 1999.
Brooks charges subscribers $19.99 a month for coverage of Saratoga, Arlington Park, Calder Race Course, Sam Houston Race Track and Del Mar.
She handicaps the old-fashioned way: thoroughly perusing the Daily Racing Form, then mulling dozens of variables for each race, from horses' past performance to track speed, before dispatching her final picks into cyberspace.
Brooks said she envisions Hi2Winners as being more of an educational tool for less-than-savvy bettors than as a moneymaking enterprise.
"As a rider, I saw a lot of people in the stands who did not know what they were doing," said Brooks, adding that she spends most of her waking hours maintaining the Web venture, even though it is barely breaking even. "This is the best way I know to give back to the industry."
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20030802-9999_1b2tipsheet.html
DelMarDon.com, for instance, boasts 30 years of handicapping experience, "consistently" serving up the best horse sense for a variety of races at different tracks, at a fee of $25 a month.
HandicappersEdge.com likewise provides full daily cards for four racing venues, including Del Mar, for the same rate.
"We work hard so you don't have to," the Alberta, Canada-based service informs gamblers at its Web site.
Railbirds no longer have to wait for the tip sheets at the track to come off the presses before trying to separate the Seabiscuits from the nags.
At least 400 for-profit dot-coms now provide strategies for amateur bettors and seasoned players, with some listing exhaustive analysis of every facet of the coming contests in lingo-laden style ("big splits all the way," "bore out under the bug rider").
They include electronic editions of such venerable thoroughbred papers as the Daily Racing Form and Today's Racing Digest, all the way around to makeshift Web letters operated by would-be equine buffs using esoteric mathematical formulas to gauge the speediest steeds.
"Deuce Bruce" Andrews, who has long hawked his two-sided tip sheet in a booth at Del Mar for $3, now maintains an Internet location where members pay $20 a month to access his daily Gold Card.
"I wanted to get on the Web to get my name out there" with other competitors, said Andrews, who makes about $500 a month on his Internet enterprise – enough to pay the mortgage on his one-bedroom condo.
The rise of Internet handicapping parallels the growing popularity of online wagering and off-site racetrack betting. Internet gambling sites take in more than $3 billion a year, according to government estimates.
The technology allows hundreds of armchair racetrack adherents to do all their business without going near the turf.
But let the buyer beware.
Racing industry executives say some Internet handicapping sites are aimed at novice track enthusiasts, and are put together by hucksters who may be simply lifting advice from other publications – or making it all up.
Most online handicappers are largely unregulated, unlike tip-sheet publishers who sell their fliers at the track.
The Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, for example, requires handicappers to sign contracts and file their cards every day with track officials. They also must register with the state Horse Racing Board.
"There are a lot of shaky guys out there" on the Internet, said David Bernsen, chief executive officer of San Diego-based LetItRide.com, which operates a handicapping Web site known as TrackExperts.com.
The service – which employs Bruno De Julio, Steve Fierro and six other veteran horse evaluators – is one of the most successful online race-tip guides, with about 8,000 clients paying $12 or more a day for cards from Del Mar, California Fairs, Arlington and Saratoga, as well as coverage of venues in Australia and Europe.
Bernsen, who has raced horses in the Kentucky Derby, unveiled TrackExperts.com last year after selling an Internet video company unrelated to horse racing.
"I retained a lot of rights (to Internet technology) that could apply to horse racing," said Bernsen, who employs nine workers besides his stable of handicappers.
Bernsen said the key to keeping customers ponying up for the electronic well – just like the subscribers to paper tip sheets of old – is not necessarily perennially picking a high number of winners, but selecting the winners that pay big.
"You can have a lot lower batting average that way, but theoretically drive in more runs," said Bernsen, adding that loyalists account for a majority of his customers.
Most online handicapping services maintain archives so potential customers can gauge how they've fared at the betting window over the previous weeks. Some also offer free daily picks and one or two days' worth of cards gratis before requiring clients to pay.
Like other dot-com entrepreneurs, online handicappers said the Internet gives them a far wider reach than they would obtain by standing at a racetrack and hawking their newsletters to passers-by.
Some said they also use their Web sites for such lucrative side projects as selling racehorse-related products.
George Kaywood, who has operated Handicapping.com since 1995, has sold dozens of copies of his book, "Handicapping in Cyberspace," at the popular site.
Besides offering daily picks for Del Mar and other tracks through an affiliation with a horse-tips service, Kansas City-based Handicapping.com also provides up-to-the-minute horse-racing news – usually between 25 and 50 headlines daily – and weather conditions at various tracks, among other features.
The site will soon air a live audio Webcast in which Kaywood, a radio talk-show host on KCMO-AM in Kansas City, Mo., interviews authors, handicappers and jockeys from the racing industry.
Kaywood said he got hooked on horses in the early 1970s when a friend took him to Saratoga, where he bet a few dollars and won $160. He subsequently became a hard-core fan and writer for American Turf Monthly.
By the time he decided to post Handicapping.com, Kaywood said, he had compiled a warehouseful of horse-racing data.
Kaywood does little handicapping himself these days because of the demands of his morning radio show, restricting himself to the Triple Crown and Breeder's Cup events.
"I'm not yet making enough (from the Internet) to retire on," Kaywood said, laughing. "This is really a labor of love."
At least one horse-racing Web site is run by a real insider.
L.J. Brooks rode hundreds of horses as a jockey in Northern California from 1978 to the late 1990s before moving to Texas, where she initially did handicapping work for an established Internet racing site.
But she quickly figured that she could be more successful with her own online business, and founded Hi2Winners.com in 1999.
Brooks charges subscribers $19.99 a month for coverage of Saratoga, Arlington Park, Calder Race Course, Sam Houston Race Track and Del Mar.
She handicaps the old-fashioned way: thoroughly perusing the Daily Racing Form, then mulling dozens of variables for each race, from horses' past performance to track speed, before dispatching her final picks into cyberspace.
Brooks said she envisions Hi2Winners as being more of an educational tool for less-than-savvy bettors than as a moneymaking enterprise.
"As a rider, I saw a lot of people in the stands who did not know what they were doing," said Brooks, adding that she spends most of her waking hours maintaining the Web venture, even though it is barely breaking even. "This is the best way I know to give back to the industry."
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20030802-9999_1b2tipsheet.html
