I am The Fat Cowboy.
My articles have been published in dozens of magazines and newspapers around the world, including several handicapping articles in “American Turf Monthly. I’ve written several handicapping books, including “Finding the Hidden Horse,” “Killer Angles,” “Betting Exactas, Trifectas, and Superfectas for Fun and Profit.” I’ve also developed several betting sheets that help you handicap the races on the spot.

I started handicapping the horses about thirty-five years ago. With reams of lined yellow paper, calculators, slide rules, Daily Racing Forms, probability tables, par figures, linear regression tables, and you name it.Going to the track with me was about as much fun as watching a semi-bright sophomore take his Aerospace Engineering final. I used everything from the law of gravity to quantum theory to rate the horses. Sometimes I won, sometimes I didn’t. Sometimes a horse who could win running backwards lost big time. And every once in a while a horse won who, according to the statistics, couldn’t possibly win unless all the other animals in the race dropped dead. I bet on such a horse once, and it changed my life.

I was at Remington Park in Oklahoma City talking to an old friend, standing beside the walkway on which the horses are taken from the paddock to the track. A horse caught my eye as we talked. When our conversation ended I went to the window and bet the horse across. His name was Candystar, and when he romped across the finish line he paid more than $200 — the biggest $2 win payoff in Remington history at the time. To my then unknowing eye, and with my then commonplace methods, he was virtually invisible –impossible to pick from his past performances.

Do you know how much fun it is to hit a horse that pays 113 to one? Not many do. Let me tell you, for a handicapper it’s the most exhilarating feeling in the world. Better than Mom’s apple pie. Better than a raise. Better than sex. Believe it. There’s only one thing more exciting: being able to find that horse among a crowd of others.

As I crammed my winnings into my bulging pockets, I vowed to begin a quest — a quest to spend whatever time, whatever money, whatever energy it took to find the secret of making money at the track. Lots of money.

It took an enormous amount of time, money, and energy. I read every handicapping book I could find, from Tom Ainslie to Dr.Z. I wrote computer programs NASA would have been proud of. I often spent 12 hours or more handicapping a single race card. When I found something that seemed to work, I tested it, tested it, and retested it, till I knew whether it was worth betting on. Eventually I found the secret. Then I wrote a computer program to sort through all the thousands of bits of information to find the nuggets that were most important and line them all up for me. Then I developed an evaluating, sorting and rating system that would line the horses up in right order.

Now it’s finished, and in the past year or so it’s averaging 50% exactas and 22% trifectas over more than 2000 races run just about everywhere: Pimlico, Belmont, Del Mar, Remington, Santa Anita, Canterbury, Fair Meadows, Bay Meadows, Golden Gate, Louisiana Downs, Monmouth, Arlington, and every other track in the country. It’s hit $18,000 superfectas, $5,000 tri’s, and $1,000 exactas. Needless to say, it’s also hit a ton of huge win horses — up to $125. Of course it’s also hit a bunch of supers, and countless other exotics such as pick 3’s daily doubles. And an interesting statistic — the winning horse is among the Fat Cowboy’s top five horses about 88% of the time. So you can almost throw everyone else out for the win.

Eventually this website will offer the Fat Cowboy’s picks for all the major tracks in the country to a fairly limited group of serious handicappers — meaning those who go to the track at least a couple of times a week or more. I don’t want the whole world to have this information because I play the horses every day, and don’t want too many folks sharing my big ticket. But right now it’s open to everyone who wants an edge.