Customer Reviews:
 Not bad. Not great, but not bad. November 11, 2004
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Henry Kuck, Winner's File (Morrow, 1993)
When one is picking up a book on handicapping the horses, one is likely to find two things: outdated information and thoroughly inaccurate information. Sift through the book enough and you may well find some new ideas and things of value. The more of those you find, the better the book it is. (Hint: to date, I have not read any book on "smart money" that has a single word in it worth reading. Avoid them like the plague.)
Winner's File, unfortunately, has little either new or accurate to offer. There is some stuff that makes it worth your time, though, but it's more a "take it out of the library" than "spend lots of time hunting down a copy." Kuck has some interesting insights to offer, especially in the worlds of class and workouts, but most of the rest you've read before. Multiple times. It's arguable, as well, how much one can fault Kuck for his chapters on speed figures and bounce theory, both of which were relatively new as widely-accessible ideas at the time this book was written, but almost every word of the chapters he wrote on those topics in 1993 has by now been thoroughly discounted as the public has gained better knowledge about such things. (On the other hand, he's dead on about the public's use, abuse, misuse, and overuse of the term "track bias." Go figure.)
It's worth a look, but you probably won't canonize it. **
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