Make Art, Not Tout

Reader McCarron recently wrote: I will never understand paid tout sites. Isn't the fun, skill, and ultimate aim of the game to pick your own winners/have your own opinion? Why pay someone else to tell you what to think?

I wholeheartedly agree with the notion that, at least at my modest level of play and though the money is always nice, a large part of the reward from winning is the mere satisfaction of getting it right. I replay in my mind the moments at which my brilliant deductions were first formed, to be later cultivated and assimilated into a winning ticket. Or two.

Having said that though, no one forces you to go to a tout site; and besides, guys like my buddy at Discreet Picks have attracted a loyal following of knowledgeable players with a spot play or two a day accompanied by smart analysis and insight which can be ultimately worthwhile even if that particular selection doesn't work out.

But where I personally have been starting to have a problem with touting is at the track itself; and, recently in particular, at Saratoga. It's not like at Belmont where you can't hear a damn thing. I'm hanging out in the backyard, the TV's are blasting and first, you have the former Siro's show before the races with some of the wisest handicappers in the game going through every race in a fair amount of detail. Serling, Crist, even Beyer was there for the Woodward. Guys who are not always modest with their opinions to be sure.

And then, the damned bell, reliably counting down the remaining seconds of my active life, rings 18 minutes before the first, and here we go again with the analysis. We don't even get Jan Rushton anymore, just more opinions. It gets oppressive to me after a while, I'm like, enough already.

I'm not begrudging or belittling those people who like this stuff, and it helps willing beginners, and others, to get involved (which of course is part of the point, and I don't recall the last time I heard any track handicapper say that a race sucks, I think you should sit this one out). But I do think I'm in the majority at the track - and I'm talking about the real horseplayers - who are fiercely independent and competitive, and who are just not particularly interested in having anyone - even (especially?) smart guys like the aforementioned - telling them who they should, or should not, bet.

Besides, handicapping is a purely subjective endeavor; everyone has their own theories, their own approaches. I consider it to be a form of art. The past performance lines are rows of data which can be interpreted in countless different ways, any way you'd like....none of which, in the long run, is likely to do you much good considering the high random element to the results of most races. There's rarely any right or wrong here, only after-the-fact. Your opinion is as good as anyone's.

At museums, some people like to follow tour guides, or they rent headphones with recorded explanations that tell you what a painting means or suggest how you should react to it emotionally. That's fine if that's your thing, but they don't blast it over loudspeakers at the Met. So I think that tracks should similarly rent out headphones, so those of you who wish to can listen to other people's opinions, and the rest of us can not only concentrate and think for ourselves, but we can also bask in the sounds of the rustling of the trees, the clomp-clomp of the horses walking down the path, the excited murmur of the crowd, the approaching thunder in the distance....or, at Aqueduct, the songs of the gulls, the roar of the jets, the anguished cries of "blood clot," the familiar happy cacophony of the video slots.....