Why Horseracing?

Hi guys, good morning, it's Tom Guarriello, back from the Breeders' Cup where we had a good time, and in Louisville, Kentucky, which I didn't actually expect to be as much, as cool of a town as it turned out to be. A lot of fun, interesting, great restaurant scene, great The art scene looked like fun. The place was, uh, place was cool. It's a river town. I haven't been there— this was scary— haven't been there in 40 years. Last time I was in Louisville was, uh, the 1966 Kentucky Derby when I saw Kawhi King win the Kentucky Derby. That— see, all this talk about horse racing is what I wanted to talk about briefly this morning. Um, makes it sound like I'm a big horse race or horse player or horse fan. I'm not. I enjoy horse racing and I enjoy watching horse racing. And one of my subscribers, I think it was, uh, Zia 107, uh, said horse racing, why, why am I going to be interested in a video about horse racing? Okay. So let me tell you a couple of reasons why I think horse racing is cool. First of all, remember in, what was the baseball movie, There's No Crying in Baseball? I forget the name. You know, Tom Hanks, that. There's no crying in baseball. There's no bullshit in horse racing, and here's why. Horse racing is about— betting on horses in horse racing is about predicting the future. And, you know, all of us predict the future every day, whether we realize it or not. We predict the future every day, either in things like stocks or in things like majors that we're taking in college or in places that we decide to work. We're all essentially trying to predict— people that we have relationships with or get married to, we're all trying to predict the future in things that we do. Now, in horse racing, here's what happens. If you've never, if you've never been involved in horse racing, you have no idea of the amount of information that's available to you if you're interested in horse racing. There's this thing that comes out every day called the Daily Racing Form, and in the Daily Racing Form, there is an enormous amount of information. It's really like looking at a stock table. I'm gonna— this is where I want to insert a close-up image of a page from the form right here. So if you take a look at the information that's there, you have all of the information about this horse, including who the horse's parents were, what the horse cost when it was bought, what the stud fee was for the father, the sire of the horse, in order to breed with the dam, or the mother of the horse. You have the number of times the horse has run. Every race that the horse has ever run is there in black and white for you to analyze. Where the horse was at the quarter-mile mark of each race, the half-mile— an enormous, enormous amount of data. So that's in there for you to study if you choose to. Now, the whole point, of course, is to predict who's going to win the race. And here's what you do: you bet, right? You bet. You go, "Let's see, I think that this race is going to be won by horse number 4." Now, I've established a theory of this race in my head, And now I'm going to put my money on that theory. So there's no, like, bullshit in horse racing. You try to predict the future, and if you're right, you win, and if you're not, you lose. Now, there's— that in itself, for me, that's very interesting. And remember, what happens is that everybody else in the crowd, and nowadays everybody else on the internet is also making their predictions. And the odds on the horse, how much the horse is going to pay if the people who bet on them are correct, those odds are determined by us as a crowd. So it's kind of like if we all think, like, like the vast majority of us did on Saturday in the Classic, if we all think that Bernardini is Bernardini is going to win this race and we bet on Bernardini to win the race, the odds that we're going to get— the amount of money that we're going to get paid if Bernardini wins goes down because there are a lot of us who would have to be paid. But if only a few people think that a particular horse is going to win and they bet on that horse, then they get paid lots of money in case that horse wins.— which was the case with many horses on Saturday. That happens at the Breeders' Cup a lot. So, you've got the factors of, let's see, everybody else thinks this horse is going to win. What do I think? How influenced am I by what everybody else is going to think? A lot? A little bit? Maybe? Hmm, I like that horse, it's going to pay a lot of money if it wins. Yeah, but the chances of it winning are very small. All of this is going on in your head all the time, and you have to decide in the midst of all of that and all the emotional stuff that gets caught up in that, right? Like, oh man, I'm not doing so well today, I would like to do better, and if I bet on this horse which looks like it's going to pay a lot of money if it wins, I'll be able to come back and I'll be able to make my money back. Or, hmm, I'm doing pretty good, I don't want to risk too much on this horse that I'm not sure about, uh, so I only bet a little bit. Oh, that horse won, why didn't I bet more? All of the emotional second-guessing, all the stuff we do with ourselves when we make decisions, all that stuff is going on all the time. But you don't have forever. You have, you know, 3 minutes to post. You gotta be sure you get your bet in or else you're not gonna get the bet on the race. So there's all this stuff going on in your head. You're watching the crowd, you're watching what's going on. It makes it a very interesting kind of a situation. Now, that's fantastic. Then you have the fact that we're dealing with horses, animals. If you're going to decide whether or not you're going to bet on a career in medicine, well, you can talk to other docs, you can talk to experts, you can talk to people and say, "Well, what do you think medicine is going to be like in 10 years?" when I graduate and I go— but you're talking about a horse. Horse can't tell you anything. I wonder how the horse is feeling today. Don't know. Looks good. Can't tell. Uncertainty. A lot of uncertainty. Is anybody cheating with this horse? Are they— so, you know, you're dealing with an animal, majestic-looking animals. I have a few images of horses that I put in that I have in this video. For you to see how incredibly beautiful these animals are. So you're dealing with that, the fact that you have an animal that's involved in all of this, and And probably you put those two things together and you put together the beautiful setting in which all of this takes place. Racetracks are beautiful places. They're vast, you know, you've got, you know, an oval, a mile, in some cases at Belmont, a mile and a half. And a half around. Big, vast thing. So, um, kind of in the spirit of asking people why they like NASCAR— and thanks, by the way, to the people who responded to the NASCAR video, I really appreciated that a lot. You had some great, uh, reasons for why you like NASCAR. This is my explanation of why I like horse racing. No bullshit. There's animals involved. And it's a beautiful setting to spend the day. And then of course there's luck. Now, luck, luck is a factor that most of us realize has some impact on the things that happen in our lives, but, you know, We, we tend to ascribe to luck, um, the bad things that happened to us. Oh, that was really bad luck, that guy pulled out right at the— but the good things that happened to us, we rarely ascribe those to luck. It's skill somehow, you know. Of course the good things that happen to us are a result of what we do. Um, well, in horse racing You know, there's a thing they simply call racing luck, and we saw racing luck on Saturday when, at the Breeders' Cup races, when two horses in the same race were both suffered injuries, one of which turned out forced the horse to be euthanized. Now, I had bet on both of those horses in that race. That was bad luck. You can do all the figuring and all the analysis and be as smart as you can possibly be and still have bad racing luck. Well, again, I think, you know, there's a little— there's more life lesson in there for me that says, you know, You do everything you can, but then there's luck, and that plays a role. So, another way that racing, horse racing, to me is an interesting pastime with enjoyment and lessons connected with it, which is kind of like the way I like most of my pastimes to be. So, there's luck. So that's it. I'm going to have some images of the Breeders' Cup in this video. I hope it's not too long. And back to you soon. Take it easy. Bye-bye. To me, I'm that happy. Hey hey! Come to me, come to me.