Nice Book
Although I do not use the "figure handicapping" that is suggested in the book, I think that overall the book is very good; even though it was written nearly 40 years ago. To be quite honest, horse racing has not changed that much when it comes to handicapping for 90% of the players who play the game. Most players are still walking into their local facility and purchasing the DRF, a program, the racing digest, and/or a tip sheet, what have you. Most of the players are not walking in with handfuls of computer generated data, pace ratings, pedigree info, trip notes, or charts. So, where the book breaks down is just in "time", horses don't run every 10 days anymore, maidens rarely run win with winners anymore, we now have synthetic tracks, Beyer Speed numbers are available, Thomlison Pedrigree (dosage) numbers are available, horses win off lay-offs all the time, etc...all the same things that happen with every book written in every industry if you picked it up from 40 years ago.
Time changes things. So, in summary, some great ideas, great information, and you probably would do a little less than break even just using the information given in the book as-is. A person willing to put in the work could probably update "figure handicapping" with today's values and do better than average.
