Joseph G. Mitzen....The cousin of Edward E. Newman

Damn, where should I begin...Oh, I know where....AMAZON DOESN'T ALLOW "PHONY" REVIEWS!!!! If you have NOT purchased the book; then you cannot leave a review of it!

Hence the reason why the raving lunatic, (comments are below), had to write his rantings as a "comment". A comment of another's review, I might add! Additionally, he copy/pasted this into MANY of my other books, and not only on "The Tuttle Way". Now (if I wanted to be a whinny little BITCH (like this Mr. Mitzen); I could most definitely bring this to the attention of Amazon, and they would promptly remove them.

But, I choose to publicly humiliate this cowardly individual, in my own way. You see, this friggin" DB wants to challenge me to a Del-Mar handicapping contest. For starters, how about picking a venue that's currently running! Secondly, what gives you the right (and have the audacity) to write such a long-winded "comment"?

Seriously, it seems borderline insane to have such a disdain for someone that you've never met, and whose only "crime" is trying to help others. Agree?


Tell ya what DB...(DB IS YOU MITZEN)....Call me sometime (561.503.7804), and I'll grab ANY DRF form that is readily available to me, and I'LL PROVE TO YOU; JUST HOW FREAKIN" DUMB YOU REALLY ARE!!! One last item DB, to insult me, is to insult my dead Father....YOU PIECE OF SHITE! I got a cool quarter-mil says this fag NEVER calls me!



Joseph G. Mitzen says:


Yawn... you pasted this identical "this should shut you up" post to every negative review of all of your books on Amazon. Congratulations for finally having a winning day! :-) Sadly, these predictions have scrolled off of your website so there's no way now for me to confirm them... and of course, there's no way to know they weren't from someone else's tip sheet.

My invitation to you I made in another comment thread to enter the free online Del Mar Handicapping Challenge starting July 22 with me and see which of us does better still stands.

Mr. Cobb, you sir are not the weasel, chalk-eating or otherwise, in this discussion. ;-) Your review was excellent and I applaud you for standing up to the flood of retro-snake oil books Mr. Tuttle has been flooding the horse-racing literature with.

You were wondering about the source of his 81% of all winners had between 29 and 119 days off figure. That's simple: there isn't any. He made it up. I'm sitting right now with a classic, seminal piece of handicapping literature in my lap: "Winning At the Races: Computer Discoveries In Thoroughbred Handicapping" by William L. Quirin, Ph.D. (mathematics). First of all, even if the 81% figure were correct, it wouldn't mean anything if 81% of all starters had last raced between 29 and 119 days ago. As Dr. Quirin explains, the formula to compute the Impact Value is %winners divided by % horses who have that characteristic. For instance, if 10% of all winners are grey, and 10% of all starters are grey (a set of figures I recall reading), that's .1/.1 for an impact value of 1.0. In other words, grey horses win their fair share, and color has no effect on winning. To quote from Dr. Quirin's fantastic book:
"A study of 2,021 races indicates that horses away from the races for more than 30 days are at a disadvantage in their first race back."

According to the chart he presents, 1-5 days away has an impact value of 1.13, 6-10 of 1.16, 11-14 is 0.97, 15-21 is 1.0, 22-30 is 0.88, 31-90 is 0.76, and 91 and up is only 0.55. Even though this book was published in 1979, there's no reason to doubt the general trend has flipped, as it has been backed with more recent studies. In Quirin's study, horses with last races between 1 and 21 days ago accounted for 83% of all winners, and 22 to over 90 for the rest, meaning Tuttle's claim is wildly at odds with Dr. Quirin's results.

Quirin goes on to show that days away affects claiming and sprint races far more than allowance and route races, asks questions about the quality of the last race before the layoff, etc. He concludes that chapter with (everything he references was demonstrated in the chapter with statistics):

"The fact that a horse made a good effort in its last race loses its significance when it is learned that the race came several months ago.

"'What have you done lately?' is a valid question in thoroughbred handicapping.
"A horse that has been idle for over one month is a poor risk.

A horse that has failed to run a good race in over a month is an even worse risk.
"Among horses that have raced (raced well) within the month, the exact number of 'days since' does not seem to matter, with one exception. Sprinters coming back within 10 days of a good race do very well - almost well enough to allow their backers to break even, without considering any of the other parts of the handicapping problem."

[His results on a three thousand horse sample showed an impact value of 1.74 and a return of 1.96 for ever 2.00 bet.]


Mr. N. Bozovsky, the reason you see positive reviews is as Vinco states: Mr. Tuttle uses "sock puppets", or aliases, to post positive reviews to all the books he writes, and the rest are associates of one form or another. Rather than judging by the number of reviews, examine the logic of what Mr. Cobb writes vs. the empty praise of the positive reviews. Do you really think that the color and markings of a horse can tell you who will win? That's like a former mechanic of mine who along with a friend of his hatched the idea that all of racing is fixed and the order in which the horses are loaded into the starting gate was a signal as to who would win the race and wanted my help to do a massive statistical study for them of the post parade to crack the code. Needless to say, said mechanic is still a mechanic today and not hitting 80% winners at the track. And needless to say I found a less gullible mechanic. :-)


Thank you again, Mr. Cobb. I hadn't realized how truly poor Mr. Tuttle's books were until I read your examples of him actually citing decades' old wives tales as gospel. My confidence of scoring better than him in any handicapping contest has soared to 100%.

Mr. N. Bozovsky, you'd be far better served investing in the classic racing work that has stood the test of time, like Tom Ainslie, Andy Beyer, either of Bill Quirin's books, Tom Brohamer, Mark Cramer, Steve Davidowitz, Dick Mitchell, etc. Mr. Tuttle's books are self-published and he's written according to him 19+ of them, pontificating on not just horse racing, but baseball, basketball, harness racing, football, etc.

For a guy who claims to have spent 10+ years as a professional handicapper, he's apparently had the time to master every other sport you can bet on except jai alai and greyhound racing (and I'm not sure he hasn't written a book on greyhound racing). He also publishes each one under a different pseudonym to help disguise the fact that he's behind all of them - especially interesting when each of the horse racing books markets a different system.

Please don't let his sock puppetry and phony positive reviews fool you into spending money on snake oil. The handicapping literature has come a lot further than Mr. Tuttle's level of work and the time you spend with books the handicapping community brands classics will be richly rewarded. Then you will have the knowledge, wisdom and experience (like Mr. Cobb) to judge the newer works, like Mr. Tuttle's.



MY RETORT....




YOU ARE A COMPLETELY ENTITLED TO YOU OPINION. But, you're defaming a methodology THAT WORKS!!!!! Additionally, have you even tried implementing the "progression" and "regression" rates philosophy into your everyday handicapping? I BET NOT!

I'm willing to bet that YOU are a former www.findthetroublehorse client, and you're so incredibly disgruntled because of it "going under". For that I will apologize for. As far as your claims are concerned, I'm of the opinion; that YOU'RE NOT completely cognizant of one crucial factor: THE "CRUDE" Speed Ratings have been getting published in the DRF for a lot longer than you or I have been of the Earth! To completely dismiss them as being insignificant is asinine!!! And, at the risk of sounding redundant; have you tried using the "progression/regression rates" concept??? I'll let others decide for themselves; by adding a vital excerpt to this "comment".

Before I make this continuation; I must make a small preface. This gentleman's original review can be found on my website....www.thetuttleway.com I HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE!!!!



[Progression]

The most-commonly run distance race in North America is the six-furlong sprint race. A six-furlong sprint consists of 6/8ths or 3/4ths of a mile. This means, that the final 1/8 of a six-furlong race (otherwise known as the "Stretch Call") is 17% of the race. At seven-furlongs it would equate to approximately 14%, and at a flat mile it would equal 12.5%.

If a horse were to improve their position within that final eighth by 2 lengths (in a one-mile race), that would equal a progression rate of 25% (12.5x2=25). Now, imagine that you were looking over a horse's PP's, and you saw a consistent pattern emerge of this horse always "progressing". Wouldn't you feel a bit more confident in betting on such a horse? The answer to that question is a resounding "YES"!

Although this is book dedicated to harness racing, I feel compelled to show the following example from a thoroughbred facility.

On Friday May 30th 2008, I recently wagered on a horse in the 3rd @ Hollywood Park (by the name of True Suggestion), who won like breaking sticks and paid a very generous 11-1.
In this particular race only two horses had positive progression rates. The #2 horse True Suggestion and the #1 horse: Vegas Runner.

True Suggestion had a score of (+79) and Vegas Runner was a (+42). Below is how I derived True Suggestion's number.

True Suggestion's pattern of "Progression or "Regression" read as follows: +55, +33, -21, +18, and +18. Then, I simply added all of those numbers together (which went on to equal +103). I then proceeded to add the 103+55 (the 55 being this horse's last outing), which equaled +158 and divided it by two, which gave me the derived number of (+79). The real beauty behind this numbers system is in the fact that all of the percentages are constant. And, irrespective of whether a horse has recently raced over the turf course instead of the dirt, it has absolutely no barring over these derived rates.



[Regression]

Naturally, if a horse is showing a consistent pattern of "Regression", then one can make the assumption; that something may be wrong with that particular horse. In my use of this system, I have rarely come across a race in which every horse has a final number in the negative.


Due to this fact, I'm extremely confident in saying that one needs not be overly objective in deciphering these statistics. Starting from most recent race and going down a maximum of four more starts; if a horse's PP's look something like this (Example below); here's how we determine that particular horse's progression or regression rate. Keep in mind that all you need to be looking at here are the final two parts of any horse's charted line(s). Let's call our mythical horse: Big Daddy Dude. Big Daddy Dude: Last start he was 8th (at the deep stretch call) and 5 lengths behind the leader (85) but he finished 9th beaten only 9 lengths. Now, assuming that the race in question was @ 1 mile event, what was his regression rate?


A mile race has a progression/regression rate of 12.5 per length gained or lost. Just in case you're not the most analytically inclined person, you can use any household calculator to figure this out. In this instance, Big Daddy Dude lost 4 lengths inside the final 1/8 of this race. You simply multiply 12.5x4=50. So, a score of (-50) is given to the horse, in this instance.


Hypothetically, if he raced his previous four races at six-furlongs, and gained exactly two lengths in all of those four starts, he would have: Four (+34) scores to go long with the one bad (-50) score. His final tally would be (+18). Which for the record....(+18) is a typical good score amongst most claimers. Now that I might have enlightened you a bit more in how one should gauge class and ability, the burden now rests with you to stay cognizant of all of these factors.




Signed,
Joseph J Tuttle