Jenn, Ryan and I spent a wonderful Saturday afternoon with our friends Jen and Chris Danchetz and their daughter Claire.  It was a good chance to visit one of New York’s most revered and hallowed historical sites, Saratoga Race Track.  Horse racing is an interesting sport that mixes overly pretentious wealthy people with alcoholic “mortgage your house for the next bet” hicks and this all converges on one place in August, Saratoga.  (Pay no attention to the fact that the overly greedy, money grubbing NYRA extended the season into July to take advantage of the aforementioned hicks.)

For my family, going to Saratoga has been a tradition passed on from previous generations.  I look back fondly on the time my father has spent teaching me how to meticulously read a racing program and determine the chances of winning a carefully placed wager after a solid twenty minutes of analysis and discussion.  I took pride in my ability to wade through the data and choose a winner.  There’s almost a man’s man type mystique about reading a racing form that pits even the closest of friends against each other to determine a clear winner and the one sure bet at Saratoga is no one knows just what their losses for the day were but they can sure remember every penny of their winnings.

This long entry brings me to one sad, disturbing fact.  I’ve wasted 30 years of my life perfecting an imperfect science.  To bring this to a closing point, on Saturday I handicapped two races and spent $12 on those races.  I lost them both.  I let Claire and Ryan pick the other horses and won $110.10 (remember…every penny) including Claire’s $90 4-5 exacta pick.  If you want some incite on how they did it, check out this video.  This all reminds me that you shouldn’t spend so much time being a perfectionist because, in the end, an eighteen month old will show you a better way to do it.