You!
Yes 'You'!
You are the most important factor in racing.
We are a dying breed, the ones who actually take the time to develop and nurture our own exclusive information. Let me explain:
Horseplayers nowadays are narrow minded, they scour social media for their information, mainstream information is like getting your news at the family dinner table.
Pass the salt, and get an earful about what's happening in the world today from your consipracy theorist uncle or brother-in-law on the drones in New Jersey. That's social media in a nutshell.
Those rolls taste a bit better with a good conspiracy theory at the table.
Your pocket book, which funds your racing related activities, wants to have a word with you, when you are listening to some random dude on social media even if its a family member.
You have no idea who that random dude is, but you pretty well know he has been in trouble with the law, is being sued on his variety of off kilter activities, but you listen anyway, like he's Jim Jones passing out the kool-aid, with a smile on his face, as if its for your health.
That's reality in all aspects of life, we listen to random pundits on life itself, whom sound like they have life figured out but whom, may or may not, have two nickels to rub together, but that's how we stay 'informed' these days.
These same people would give their right arm or equivalent body part for a nugget and cash a ticket.
I mocked today's society with the X post this past week:
You make your own luck, you make your own future. You are driving your own Patridge family bus.
I know because of I have done so, I left a career behind to get into racing. I developed my own info and spent a lifetime delivering it, not many people in this industry can say that, but I am not here to pat myself on the back, I want YOU to pat yourself on the back.
Start with believing that You are Your most important factor. The buck starts and stops with YOU.
I have made monies when I needed to, out of necessity. I recall vividly in December 1999 sitting in the press box at Santa Anita with only a $20 bill in my pocket (those were the days you could hit the ATM for ONLY $300 a day), playing the races at Hollywood Park (the location where SoFi Stadium resides now) and turned it in $1200 by the end of the day. I got myself and 5 buddies in the Bon Jovi concert at the Great Western Forum next door to Hollywood Park that night. I felt like i accomplished something.
Handicapping and cashing is about controlling your own narrative with reality, not bullshit or hear say.
I have become a much more judicious and thoughtful handicapper over the years. I trust my process.
I recall the early days when I did poorly on a given day, I would change things up, change what I looked at.
Nowadays I do the same thing everyday. I trust THE process. I trust ME and my competence.
I learned by reading the best like Barry Meadow, James Quinn, and Steve Davidowitz. i learned to understand how figures are made, making my own Beyers. The infancy of Brunowiththeworks was when an old school trainer, the late Jack B Haynes taught me about horses, or Rick Lochner at Today's Racing Digest pushed me to start clocking in November of 1991.
"You'd be really good clocking'', he told me in the break room of Trade Service Corp in Torrey Pines, Lawrence Lopes who showed me the ropes of marketing, Jay Privman who published my first workout report in the opening day issue of the Racing Times, December 26, 1991.
Just like Mr Miyagi and the Karate Kid 'Wax on-Wax off" rub your hands together ......
I am living proof, proof of life, it can be accomplished in the world we live in, and enjoy the fruits of our resolve.
Yes, there are good days and poor days to be had, but again its you, YOU are the most important factor. You are your own MVP.
If you have to bet or wager, and you find yourself betting for the sake of betting, get help. You need help, but if you are in this game, to figure out a puzzle, and get paid for it, come on down, like John Pardo used to exclaim on the 'Price is Right.
There are players that think they are playing Let's Make A Deal with Monty Hall betting prices like its an exchange, some play the Dating Game with its original host Jim Lange, by dating horses thru thick and thin, or as horseplayers say it 'that horse owes me monies' and they keep chasing.
Is that you? You chase horses ? This isn't Nascar or Formula 1 Racing, the racehorse is ever changing, each race is a puzzle and sometimes you have a piece missing. Find it, its far more encompassing than having to choose from ''Bachelor 1, 2 or 3''.
You are at the forefront, not tips, not sheets nor rags, not Beyer figures, YOU.
You make your own luck. You make your own confidence. Horseplayers nowadays have no confidence they live off likes and follows, that's cashing a winning ticket to them.
Those likes and follows may taste better with the bun buttered, but nutritionally speaking its the pits. No fiber.
Just like the two brothers whom spent hours on social media calling out trainers they believed were cheating, only to have their trainer get caught cheating..... mums the word since. What happened to them? Who cares.
The best handicappers lives like Michael Corleone in The Godfather saga 'you never tell them what you are thinking''.
You want to succeed? You want to make monies at the game and get that G I Joe with the kung fu grip for your boy, that Cindy Crawford make believe make up kit for your daughter, or that new cookware from Gordon Ramseys Hell Kitchen for your kitchen?
Invest in You!
Merry Christmas, a cheerful Hanukkah, and Happy Holidays to YOU from Racingwithbruno and staff