by Dick Mitchell
One of my students as Los Angeles City College thought a very good professional handicapper should make over $250,000 per year. When I asked him why, his rejoinder was, "Well, top insurance salesmen, top stockbrokers, top automobile salesmen, and top in just about any profession makes this kind of money."
I had to quickly disabuse him of his romantic notion that winning horseplayers make anywhere near this kind of money. In fact, horseplaying is one of the lowest paying professions I can think of. A good example of a low-paying profession is acting. The average actor makes something like $4,000 per year, while Arnold Schwartzenegger, Tom Cruise, Jim Carrey and others, make near $20 million per film. What you might call a little disparity. There is a similar disparity among horseplayers, but it's skewed to the negative. Bad enough, that less than one-in-twenty regular players show a profit at the end of the year; the ones that do are not exactly rolling in dough.
Barry Meadow asked a good question in the September 2000 edition of Meadow's Racing Monthly. "You play the races twice a week, generally betting $100 per race on four races a day. How much is a reasonable amount you might expect to win for the year?" The answer he gives is approximately $2,100. That's for the entire year!
The big secret is the fact that you have to bet a lot of money, to win a lot of money. In Meadow's case, his records show that he has an edge of around 5%. That is, for every dollar he puts through the mutuels, he gets back an average of $1.05. If he wants to make $250,000 next year, he'll have to put $5 million through the mutuels. That amounts to $100,000 worth of bets per week, or $20,000 per day.
Don't misunderstand, I'm not saying there are no horseplayers making over $250,000 per year. I am saying there are damn few. There are a helluva lot more actors making the big "quarter mil," than horseplayers. This is the very reason I'm in favor of $250,000 prizes in handicapping tournaments. At least, it will put one member of our profession on par with his stockbroker. See you on the short line.