When life is seen as a football game, then losing appears unacceptable. But horse racing isn't like that. In wagering, good decisions are more important than good outcomes, winning happens over the long haul, and hitting winners that pay well is more important than just hitting winners. As Peter Fornatale, in his excellent book 'The Winning Contest Player', points out (p. 199): "In gambling, you can still hate losing, but you also must learn to live with it." Losing happens more often than winning in horse racing and successful wagerers adjust to its relative frequency.
2. They over-estimate the thrill of winning
Winning on the horses is as easily misconstrued as losing on them. You're not a handicapping genius because you hit a 150-1 daily double - maybe your system's just working. Winners at the track can get lost in the exhiliration of the moment and mistakenly believe they can back winners all day. Fornatale's book (p. 201) quotes well-known tournament player Brian Troop in warning bettors against this: "If you win a race and you get a good price, you should forget about it because there are more races to come." In other words, learn to hit the re-set button.
3. They under-estimate horses
Research indicates that horses are not the simple-minded oat-bags we used to think. For example, we now know that they have powerful memories of significant events in their lives - often dating back years. Positive recollections no doubt have as great an impact on horses as on humans and with similar results: if a horse has done well somewhere and been rewarded, it remembers that event vividly and will try to repeat it. Horse-players often mistakenly think horses are only as good as their last few races, whereas value often lies eight races down or more. Form guides that go back that far cost extra but are worth it.
4. They over-estimate others' opinions
Most racing programs have a morning line - the odds of the horse - printed under the horse's number. Many race-goers think that this figure represents the actual odds (or chance) of the horse winning that race. Not so. The morning line represents what somebody thinks the final odds of the horse will be at post time. In other words, it's one person's prediction of what the combined total of a whole lot of other people's predictions will finish up at. Confused? They might be, too. Same goes for all those other "handicapping experts" on TV and in print - it's all just individual opinions. Like yours.
5. They under-estimate their own abilities
Following on from that, there's a reason Norman Vincent Peale's book 'The Power of Positive Thinking', first published in 1952, is still being reviewed on Amazon to this day. Distilled to its essence, Peale's message in the book is for horse-players (and everybody else, of course) to "believe in yourself." Remember the old horse-track saying: "If you want to know who the competition is, look around". As tough as it sounds, you have to ask yourself, in times of self doubt, whether you're really as incompetent at this as that knucklehead over there. Peale was right - believe.
