Documenting your betting history, Part 2

by Frank Cotolo

Part 1 is here.

Ike’s Marine. I do not remember the sire or the mare or the class of the race. Nor the trainer or driver (although I would swear the driver was Shelly Goudreau). I remember the track (Hollywood Park at its Western Harness Racing meet) and the month and the year (November 1978) when I handicapped two races in which Ike’s Marine caught my eye; in the second he deserved my support with a win bet.

More details of the two races are fortunately available 58 years later thanks to a volume of my handicapping and wagering records kept in standard Mead Composition books dated so it is easy to find among the many in my personal library devoted to pari-mutuel activity. In each composition book I can find information on most of my racetrack activities. Statistics and a bankroll ledger and trip notes and personal thoughts on anything related to the current handicapping/wagering campaign are handwritten throughout the books. Sometimes much of the information is moot. Other times the data alone is precious and valuable to the present.

I only wish I kept such records for all of my racetrack history but the learning curve is so steep it takes the player through a painful gauntlet of progress until it becomes necessary to heal the wounds by shedding an amalgamation of garbage disguised as proper approaches to handicapping and wagering; to accept the only road to profiting from pari-mutuel participation is to play like a professional.

It is never too late, however, to start your library and file the important facts and impressions as written evidence to trace the reasons for wins and losses; for mistakes and luck; and for prompting painful and euphoric memories. The value of the information recorded will give you a healthy relationship with all matters of gambling. And there is much to learn from the ways and means of those gambling on anything; certainly, these days when the betting platforms create a wild west show of being shot down in the process.

Most people I talked to tell me the “performance diary,” (PD) as one person called it, works for me because I am a professional writer with a long history of creative work. “I’m not going to sit around after a day at the track and do homework,” he said. The idea intimidated him and others. I understood. But there are no specific ways to keep a PD and no one is going to grade it. Just simple information is needed. There is no reason to think you are writing a novel. Or anything anyone else would ever read for that matter.

Another great reason for physically writing a PD is longevity. My personal experience proves this. One racing season while living in San Diego I decided to use my thrifty MacIntosh computer to write and store my PD contents. I created Word files for subjects. In the late ’80s it was becoming common and efficient to use personal computers for storing data and subjective experiences in all sorts of endeavors. Certainly, for financial records.

It was nifty and comfortable and modern and professional and I entered a great deal of data and information on the same platform where I did my professional writing and creative pieces. The Mac also housed entertainment. I enjoyed playing a baseball game from a program considered an antique in 2026. And I thought it all safe because I backed up my important files on floppy disks. The tools of my life at the time were good. Protected by modern technology.

One day during the ninth inning of the baseball game I played on the Mac there was a flash on the screen. The pitcher in the game began to fire balls to the batter in rapid progression and the batter kept swinging but never hit a ball. I did not panic even though the Mac never behaved in such a manner. It must be the baseball program. Nothing more. All I knew to do was reboot.

I did not want to believe what happened next. The Mac would not reboot. It went on again after shutting down but there were no signs of my folders; the ones housing my information. I tried to reopen the baseball game. No response. Thank goodness I had my floppy disks. I did not care if the baseball program was corrupted out of existence. I cared about my PD files.

The end of this story is my sole evidence for the importance of handwriting crucial information in one’s business. None of the floppy disks worked in the Mac. My PD records were kaput. Back to the handwriting board.

From there on I knew keeping records was not just important to the business of handicapping and wagering; keeping them at all was the point. No matter how useful they are to becoming smarter and more successful in whatever the venture.