How I Broke the Bank at the World Series of Handicapping

I would like to share with you the story of how I broke the bank at Grantville.

Grantville, the home of the World Series of Handicapping, is a town in southeastern Pennsylvania that is as pretty as a postcard and not much bigger.

This is a wholesome story about gambling on horses. Nobody takes a ride in a car trunk. Nobody finances his next bet by hocking a loved one's crutches.

In fact, this story is not even very sexy, except for an event that took place three years ago in Arkansas, when I was laying the foundation for my stab at immortality. That day, at a race track in Hot Springs, I stood in a collecting line behind a girl who was so happy her boyfriend had bet the bra money on a winner that she grabbed the bottom of her sweater and yanked it over her head. Winning a horse race really gets the blood flowing, even when you win only a couple of bucks. Stuff like that doesn't happen in lines of losers heading for the exit.

The sexiest thing that happened in Grantville was when I stopped in a bar for a quick beer and was told to dance by a woman whose arms were the size of loaves of bread. The people in that part of the country seem firm, physically and emotionally, and don't want to take no for an answer. I told the woman who wanted to dance that I didn't know how, and I made a graceful exit before she could knock me out.

All the time I was in Grantville, I maintained a very low profile and devoted all my time and energy to winning the World Series of Handicapping. You can't pick winners after being punted around a dance floor. Picking winners is a full-time job. If you're not studying the Daily Racing Form, you're praying. The ten minutes I was in that bar, I never once looked at the dance floor. When you're in training, members of the opposite sex, even ones who move across the dance floor like International Harvesters, can seem awfully charming.

I was not nearly as conservative as some of the others who had gone to Grantville to become the world's best horse player. One poor dog worked himself into tournament shape by swearing off sex for the two weeks preceding the contest. That strategy backfired, and the guy went broke betting all the female jockeys, a couple of whom were attractive but most of whom rode like they might at any minute remove pistols from their holsters and begin shooting bottles off the rail.

Grantville is not exactly a party town.

Although the only things that bump and grind in this story are horses, I think you will still find it worthy of your interest, because I am going to explain how you, too, can go to Grantville and clean house.

•

First, you need to know a little something about horse racing, which is publicized, obviously by itself, as the world's most popular spectator sport. That is true in a roundabout way; it's like calling blackjack a spectator sport.

If you don't make a bet, horse racing is about as stimulating as jai alai, which is a thing where people catch and throw balls with baskets. Before it was legal in a few states to gamble on jai alai, the game drew crowds of ten or fifteen flies that came to see what was in the baskets. Now jai alai draws OK, which proves that people will gamble on anything.

Horse racing is a better gamble than most because of the odds. While the odds at a casino are carved in tombstones and cement blocks, the odds at a race track (continued on page 223)Handicapping(continued from page 158) are written on the wind by people who bet horses that remind them of something sweet. During a practice round before the World Series of Handicapping, I stood at the rail with a woman who had bet $50 on a horse named Earl's Ice Chest. I had studied the horse in the Racing Form and marked a skull and crossbones beside its name in the margin.

''My first husband,'' she said to me, blushing, ''was named Earl.''

Even though I guessed that he was fat and 50, he could have outrun this horse.

Earl's Ice Chest started crisply but wilted on the turn to home and finished somewhere in the middle of the pack. Old Earl must have been a little slow on the draw, too, because the woman merely sighed and shrugged, like she was used to coming up empty-handed.

Let's assume, for the sake of conversation, that I had picked the winner Jn that race. (Unfortunately, I had beta horse that listed a bit to the starboard side. When my horse crossed the finish line, it didn't look like the jockey was carrying a whip. It looked like he was holding a cane out so he and his mount wouldn't bump into anything. This track didn't need a vet. It needed an optometrist.) Had I picked the winner, Earl's ex-wife and all the other losers would have paid me and all the other winners after the track had taken its cut. A track takes about 17 percent off the top each race, which at first glance suggests that winning money consistently at die races is about as likely as winning a Teddy bear at the fair by knocking over pewter milk bottles with rolled-up socks.

What you have to remember, though, is that the track brings together, under one roof, guys in tweed over denim and dolls in tight jeans and cowgirl booties who wouldn't know a winner if it bit them on the keister. Your competition at a race track is, for the most part, people who regard gambling money as entertainment money--people who expect to lose. I'll gladly tip the track 17 percent for the opportunity to trade shots in the dark with tourists whose hunches frequently come from their childhood or their diaries.

The real reason I prefer horse racing to other gambles is what happens after you lose your ass.

It stings, just like when the blackjack dealer digs up the last five on earth or when the stupid basketball team you bet on lets the opposition stuff one at die buzzer, one that affects the point spread, one that causes your guts to burn and your head to spin. But when you make a losing bet on the wheel or on the felt in Las Vegas or Atlantic City, the majority of the money goes to a gigantic corporation and is plowed back into the community only indirectly--for example, when a pit boss goes to have his pinkie ring reset.

When you make a bet with a bookie and lose, God only knows where that money goes, but I doubt that it's to poor children. When I lose a big bet at the track, I always pretend my money goes to a guy who needs a hearing aid or a little old woman with no teeth.

At the World Series of Handicapping, you bet play money. You pay $300 to enter, and then, if you hit enough winners, they give you a check. Last year, when I was there, it was $45,000. This year they'll double that. Each finalist starts with an imaginary bank roll of $1000, and after three consecutive days of racing--there are ten races a day--the top five finishers are rewarded with prize money; the 85 (this year 145) other contestants get to keep their name tags.

You must bet every race. You can bet as little as two dollars. You get 25 races--two-and-a-half-days' worth--to establish a limit for your win, place and show betting. If, for example, after 25 races your biggest win bet was $500, then during the last five races on the third day, that's the most you can bet to win. This rule keeps a person from blowing a bunch of two-dollar bets, then going all or nothing on a long shot late in the contest.

The final-round contestants are made up of about one third seeded professionals--writers and handicappers--and two thirds amateurs who have qualified at one of the four preliminary tournaments in Grantville. So many amateurs entered the 1981 tournament that the four preliminaries were filled by pulling names from a vat.

This is the only world championship in which there is no rule stipulating that the winner has to know what the hell he or she is doing.

•

Some race tracks are difficult to get to and uncomfortable once you're there.

The last time I went to Belmont Park in New York, I rode the subway and a cranky old man sat on my lap. I was then tossed out of a box seat because I wasn't wearing a tie.

A few years ago, I was about side-swiped trying to get to Santa Anita, which is near Los Angeles. Cars on those freeways are considered legally stalled if they aren't going 50 miles per hour.

The Penn National Race Course, the home of the World Series of Handicapping, is in the middle of a field at the base of the Appalachian foothills, which glow in October. There is no traffic, unless you count things that hop or crawl. The grandstand looks out of place, as if a tornado had dropped it, in the field.

You can drive right up to a door at Penn National, park on a paved lot, walk in five minutes before post time and get a seat anywhere--including, I might add, on a horse. At small tracks such as Penn, your investment is frequently carried around the horn by a rider without much experience at weaving beyond Atari. I have plants older than some of those jockeys.

Penn National is open all year. Consequently, the people who work the betting windows are friendly locals who don't try to palm quarters due you. The regulars may pick your brain but never your pocket.

Grantville, which is about a mile from the track, is made up of a laundromat, a few neat houses and churches with tall steeples; and it is typical of the burgs and the townships of this part of Pennsylvania. It is as though, 75 years ago, an aspiring city planner did his lab work here before moving east to design for the record. The towns seem incomplete, as if the architect had designed a general store and a couple of shops, stepped back and said, ''This isn't quite right.'' Then everybody piled into the truck and went 15 miles down the road to try again.

The area is neither wilderness nor crowded. Just when you start wondering which berries may be edible if you have car trouble, you crest a hill and find another of those villages in progress.

I found Grantville on the third try.

A woman in the laundromat said, ''It's right here,'' and she pointed at the third washer from the end, as though that were the geographical center of town. Hershey is only a 15-minute drive from Penn National, and it is a perfect place to cure the blues. The air there is semi-sweet with the smell of chocolate. Chocolate is thought by scientists to help cure depression, so many of those competing in the handicapping finals stayed in Hershey and lapped up the atmosphere.

October in southeastern Pennsylvania is the perfect time of year for horse racing.

There is a bite in the air.

That's a Three Mile Island joke I heard from a waitress who offered to light my cigarette by placing her finger to its tip. Three Mile Island is near Harrisburg, where, if you have been living right, you land. Penn National is only 30 to 45 minutes from Harrisburg International as the crow flies. The last crow that attempted the trip was hit by a semi; the freeways are a little hectic.

I flew from Washington, D.C., to Harrisburg on a contraption that had wings and motors above the windows. It looked like a seaplane.

''Not the jet, the one over there,'' the ticket agent said after he announced that my flight was available for boarding. It looked to me like it had been available for boarding since 1955. I had not been in a propeller job in many years, and it took some getting used to. I had forgotten how to sit with my head between my knees and how to use the bathroom while being banged off the walls.

We never attained an air speed that made me feel like we were slicing through this clear October afternoon. Once we reached our cruising altitude and the captain turned off the no Fishing sign, though, we did show a couple of motorcycles our exhaust. That was after we had taxied so far that I thought we'd show them our tracks.

The landing at Harrisburg was slow but exciting. We followed the Susque-hanna River to the runway. When we dipped down the first time, a woman below us pulled her children close to her bosom in case we tried to snatch her loved ones and tote them off to our nest.

Most of the finalists for the big tournament were from Eastern cities and they drove in. The commuter flight I took is much better for morale, and I recommend it without reservation. You just get on it and when you land, you feel like you're already on a lucky streak.

•

The first day was one of grand arrivals. I about fainted several times just from being in the same room with all the big hitters.

An Oriental gentleman from New York arrived and consulted with a hulking associate who, according to rumor, knew the position of every dirt clod on the Penn National track.

Andrew Beyer of The Washington Post looked sharp and carried a fat briefcase. Somebody said it might be full of C-notes. Beyer wrote a book called My $50,000 Year at the Races. He takes his racing very seriously and is not the kind of guy you would chuck under the chin and ask whom he liked in the feature. Everybody has his favorite Andrew Beyer story. Mine is the one in which he goes to a betting window and says to the clerk in his deep, rich voice, ''I'd like a four-dollar win on number three, a six-dollar place on number four and a $20,000 exacta on four-five.'' Andy is an expert at exacta wagering--picking the top two horses of a race in their order of finish--and he has been known to bet them up.

I met Nick Horvath, a professional seed and one of the favorites, who works for a Harrisburg newspaper. He looked a little sleepy. The word was Nick had been awake the past couple of weeks looking up past performances that were not listed in the Form. If a horse had finished second in a race in Cold Fanny, Wyoming, in 1976, Nick knew about it.

Randy Sonderman, who writes for a publication called Turf Flash, which picks winners at tracks all over the country, worked off a little excess energy by hurdling some benches out by the rail. Randy assured me that if he didn't have a breakdown, he'd win the contest. He had been at Penn National for a month or so, getting ready.

Mike Warren showed up in a splendid corduroy suit that accented his perfectly styled hair. At first, I thought it was somebody like Fabian. Warren is a professional handicapper best known for his football predicting service based in Baltimore. His associates acted like they would begin spraying perfume in the air at any moment. Warren seemed a little removed from the grubbiness of a race track. When he made a bet, the spectators swooned and frequently went to a window to invest something in one of his big picks. Warren made 20 bets during the first two days of the tournament, lost them all, which is damned near impossible, and returned to the relative security of the gridiron trenches, where, at least, the warriors won't lift a leg on you in public.

I had already met a contestant named Nathan (he was not one of the Detroit Nathans, though), Marty ''The Lock'' Blum and the guy who went to the bathroom every five minutes; I doubted that anybody more colorful existed.

During the tournament's first hour, Blum introduced himself to me several times and in each instance said, ''I'm a lock to win this thing,'' as if the rest of us should just go on home.

Then: ''Meet Kelso Sturgeon,'' one of the tournament officials said.

I looked over his shoulder toward the paddock. I thought Kelso Sturgeon was a horse. Instead, he was a huge, friendly man who works for a racing magazine. Five years ago, Sturgeon invented the World Series of Handicapping. It was like meeting the guy who thought up the half-time number, which enables a person to bet a pro football game after two quarters and perhaps salvage a rotten pregame hunch.

With a name like that, I expected Kelso Sturgeon to be big but not nearly so pleasant. He went broke competing in the finals as a professional seed, but he was the happiest loser in the joint because his contest had become so popular. That man ought to get a penny every time a horse race is run in this country, the way inventors get royalties on their far less intriguing games.

It's almost impossible to concentrate in the presence of so many celebrities. And, besides, just between you and me, I didn't know exactly what I was doing early on. But then, this contest has never been won on the first day.

As a finalist, you sit in a roped-off area under the grandstand. You have to make your bet seven minutes before the post time of a race. After you mark your bet on a card, a tournament official picks it up and hangs it on a wire over your head so the public can see how much of your imaginary stake and your mind you risk on each race.

Once you've made your bet, you should get up and go somewhere. I made my first bet and sat there. A spectator on the other side of the rope looked at my bet and then at me and said--altogether too loudly, I thought--''What a goddamned idiot.''

After every race, your running (or slipping) total is updated on a gigantic leader board.

Nobody did much early the first day except a spunky guy named Waleszczak, who came out of the gate betting $100s all over the place and was last seen pacing in small circles with the program clenched tightly in his right fist, wondering what had run him over. It hadn't been one of the horses he bet. They barely walked. Waleszczak lost more than half of his imaginary roll in the first six or seven races.

That kind of thing can scare hell out of a person, so after Waleszczak got creamed, everybody else more or less sat around looking sneaky.

The tournament started on a Friday night, and by the fifth race, I understood many of the more important rules.

As a professional seed--I had written a novel about a guy who lost everything he had at the track--I sat behind Andrew Beyer and did everything he did.

Thank God he didn't bet much.

All I had with me was a Raring Form and a pencil. The contestant next to me had a fat notebook full of figures he'd been working on for three months. Many of the finalists had their own special systems based on everything from speed ratings to bloodlines to wind velocity.

Don't worry about it.

Before too awfully long, the man next to me closed the cover on his fancy figures and, sitting there broke, wondered if his wife would ever take him back. He even asked my opinion about a race once--he became that desperate.

About all you really need to hold your own in this tournament is a Racing Form, which lists the past performances of all the horses, and a pull of whiskey every hour or so for your nerves.

During the first night of racing, while everybody else was renewing old acquaintances and comparing dirt samples from different parts of the track and yelling ''The three horse is lame!'' I tuned everything out.

The person who had yelled that the three horse was crippled then probably bet a ton on it.

These people are tricky.

I made a little something on a race halfway through the card and was pleased until I checked the leader board and noticed that a couple of dozen others had made a lot more. Normally, my goal at the track is to leave with at least 75 cents more than I came with. At the World Series of Handicapping, my object was to make more than 89 other people. You can have a career day and still feel like throwing yourself into a vat of chocolate.

After a series of small bets on Friday, I escaped with $900 and change, which was above average.

A male nurse took the early lead with a couple of grand.

I congratulated him.

''I'm not a male nurse,'' he said. ''I'm a nurse. Are you a male writer?''

What can you say?

Leading this tournament makes a person a little edgy.

•

Saturday, I had been told by those who had been here before, was the day to make my move. It was the proper time to place a sizable bet and spring from the outhouse to the throne, and I know in my heart that I would have done precisely that had I not discovered two hours before the first post time that I had the wrong damn Racing Form.

Do not, under any circumstance, buy a Form from the gift shop in the Holiday Inn next door to Penn National. It sells Sunday's Racing Form on Friday night. That leaves Saturday unaccounted for.

I discovered that I had studied the wrong Form for 12 hours when I called the track to check on the scratches for Saturday's program. You get the scratches from a recording. I couldn't believe it when a woman read off a list of horses I had never heard of. I hung up. badly shaken, and looked at the date on the Racing Form; then I went a little crazy and began driving in circles, searching for some current material.

''For God's sake, let me through,'' I said to the woman who stood guard at the entrance to the backstretch. I had been told by a man whose kitchen door I had banged on that I might get Saturday's Form ''over there.''

There is nothing around Penn National except a couple of gas stations and some big fields and little houses. The backstretch, as at any track, is situated as far from the public eye as possible. That's because the backstretch is where people who sweep up horse manure sleep and shoot dice and wait for the break that will elevate them from the shovel to the pail to the much more glamorous horse-hosing detail. The tour bus speeds up when it goes by there.

''You what?'' the guard asked.

''Am in the World Series of Handicapping.''

''And you don't even have a Racing Form?''

I explained again what had happened.

''You're in the finals and don't even know the names of the horses running tonight?''

That was about the size of it.

''How pathetic,'' the guard said, lowering the chain.

I drove to the backstretch kitchen but didn't try the hamburger meat, and I was told by some little guys watching an old television there that there were no Racing Forms anywhere in the area because all the big shots from the tournament had snapped them up. I feigned surprise at the mention of a tournament and drove at high speeds back to the motel bar. I downed a few quick ones and casually asked the person on the next stool whom he liked in the first race.

''Subon.''

At least I had a name to drop.

I finally got a Form at the gate shortly before the races started and made one good-sized bet Saturday night. I lost the bet when the jockey dropped his whip as he was overtaking the leader. The horse grinned and finished second. I complimented the little oaf for keeping his pants on and made notes for what would now have to be an enormous finish on the tournament's last day.

The horses at Penn National became increasingly difficult to figure. The average race card there features a lot of $2500 claiming races, which means that a qualified person--a trainer, an owner or a regional buyer for a company such as Purina--can purchase one of these sweethearts for the claiming price, or $2500. It's tough to put this kind of horse in perspective. A $2500 claimer is a lot like a 1958 Chrysler Saratoga: Both cost, start and corner about the same and, on a chilly day, are about as predictable. It's wise to bet the two-dollar tournament minimum on these cheap horses and stay the hell away from the rail in case one of them falls that way.

After what happened in the tenth and last race of Saturday night's card, I was able to get a little rest, convinced that my problem with the Racing Form was a sign from above--a good sign.

Many contestants bet a horse named Istria's Son, which went off at odds of nine to one and came from Siberia to win by a length. Unfortunately, Istria's Son came on like a battering-ram and was disqualified after officials viewed a replay of the race and completed a body count.

I watched that debacle with a silver-haired fellow who had bet $200 in tournament money on Istria's Son. It was morbid.

When the horse hit the wire way ahead, the man shook me by the shoulders and said his victory was going to put him into first place. When the disqualification announcement was made, his color went from pink to ashen. When I volunteered to get him a drink, he made sounds like he was being strangled.

Each time I returned to that spot by the door, the guy was still standing there, like a house where all the lights were on but nobody was home.

Marty ''The Lock'' Blum lost a bundle on Istria's Son and was so dazed, somebody said, that he rode the mechanical bull back at the motel bar. For about two seconds.

A Canadian took the lead in the contest with nearly four grand and was shortly thereafter rumored to have begun a very interesting conversation with himself that lasted well into the wee hours.

The pressure was choking us all.

I had $800 left.

''That stinks,'' a spectator analyzing the leader board said.

''But I had no Racing Form.''

Spoken like a trué champion.

•

Here's the way it works:

You read the Racing Form and you narrow a race down to two or three horses that have not made fools of themselves recently. You go to the paddock to see if any of them is spitting blood. If you are unable to separate one horse from another by further scrutiny of the Form, you close your eyes and erase your mind and wait for a vibe.

My vibes come into my mind left to right, in script. The good ones spell themselves out in red letters, the fair ones in blue. A reverse vibe is one that flashes, which means a horse is to be avoided. When you get a strong vibe, it looks and feels a lot like a nervous breakdown.

It's all a bunch of horse feathers, you see. A nag can win or lose for any one of 100 reasons. Picking a winner is 40 percent skill, 41 percent luck and 19 percent eerie.

My horse on Sunday, Muddy Run, broke fourth.

It was a decent horse.

I am a decent person.

Come what may.

A big race like this one is the ultimate diversion. During the time it takes a horse to run from the starting gate to the finish line, nothing else matters, not even your daughter's boyfriend who picks her up by banging hubcaps to gether. The start of a race is even more stimulating than the finish, because by the time the end limps around, the average horse player is in no condition to enjoy all the pretty colors.

The unknown is both frightening and thrilling, and when the horses show themselves for the first time, you're at once pleased that yours is upright and outraged that it is fourth.

I bet Muddy Run big to win at odds of more than three to one. That was the fourth race on the last day of the tournament. If I hit it, I would be among the top five.

The race was run on the inner turf course, on the grass, so I climbed the fence near the paddock for a better view. Muddy Run had more guts than I did--I was about to cry--and he was third at the top of the turn to home and a strong second coming out, no more than a pucker from the lead.

What followed was the most exciting stretch run since the day long ago, at a seedy dirt track outside Houston, when I bet $100 on the brown one against a fat man's $100 on the other one, which was black. The brown one lunged at the wire to win, but when I went to collect, the fat man held out his hand and said, without humor, ''You lose.'' As it turned out, the black one that lost was owned by a man named Brown. I should have bet the other one, the brown one owned by a black man or some damned thing like that.

Muddy Run and the other rat came off the turn together, and I began running with them, bringing my knees up high, churning my arms, gulping the crisp autumn air, going basically mad.

The horses took turns leading by hardly anything.

As the three of us crossed the finish line, it was total exhilaration.

''You win it by a length and a half,'' some guy at the rail said, ''but I don't know about the horses.''

The Photo light went up on the tote board; the race had been too close to call.

•

I'll take a diversion over a delusion any day.

I've given this a lot of thought.

It has been my experience to observe that delusions alter the mind and diversions alter the pocketbook. Either one taken to excess can hurt like hell. But speaking purely in a creative sense, I'd rather be broke than nutty.

Furthermore, people who use their minds in their craft seem to do some of their finest work soon after they tap out.

See, losing your ass can be a very healthy thing sometimes.

I formulated this need-equals-creativity theory after the fourth race. After that race, I sat there on the ground by the rail for a long time and risked being pelted with pennies, like a wino.

I could have puked.

As Bill Nunnenkamp explained later, my horse had gotten caught on an uneven part of the turf course. Bill does his handicapping from a wheelchair, and though he didn't do much in the 1981 contest, he is regarded by his peers as one of the best.

''You mean a damned molehill beat me?''

That was approximately it. Muddy Run lost by a kiss.

Poor, I played a few long shots and lost the last of my imaginary stake on the next-to-last race of the tournament.

The Canadian got conservative.

The nonfemale nurse got wild but rallied to finish third.

A real-estate man from Maine got well. He bet everything he had--$800--on the last race of the tournament, hit a medium shot and won the 45 grand over a kid generally known as The Kid.

Sherman Brown is the winner's name. He is probably signing big endorsement deals for binoculars even as we speak.

They say he is a hell of a horse player, which means that Penn National and, for that matter, the racing industry as a whole, has lucked out again.

One of these years, somebody like me is going to win it all and explain something goofy like the vibe system on national television.

I broke the Grantville bank by cashing a few traveler's checks.

It was a small bank.

''When I lose a big bet at the track, I always pretend my money goes to an old woman with no teeth.''