Where would we be without easy to access race replays? I’m sure I’m not alone when I say that I can easily spend hours at YouTube watching replays just for fun. But they’re not all fun and games, they’re a vital handicapping tool and have the potential to help market the game.

Since I only came on the scene in 2007, I queried my fellow r2-ers for their insights. Dean had this to share:

Replays are interesting to me, since I used them as a kid and growing up: 1990′s standing at the track watching the replay center races and waiting for a race you wanted to watch, or having to get there early to watch yesterdays races – hilarious. When the racing channels came aboard we would tape the races and that was our replay center.

I can only remember RaceReplays.com as the main source of replays when I first started playing and fellow r2-er Jessica confirms that she had an account as early as 2004. NYRA also used to embed their stakes races from RaceReplays.com into their site (now they have a direct log in which seems less useful).

As far as ADWs are concerned, I had a BrisBet account and don’t recall their replays however Jessica confirmed that they existed but were a pain to use. I’m happy to note that over the past 2-3 years that replays have exploded down the stretch, if you will.

Replays are standard fare for ADWs, and I can only assume some do it better than others.

Twinspires has two ways access them:

1) via track/date/horse search using the incredible TwinSpires TV:

2) via the race card’s program:

Youbet also has an extensive replay library as does TVG and Xpressbet.

While filed under Handicapping Software for the purposes of our countdown, DRF’s Formulator also has embedded replays which makes for some incredible ease of use.

Recent interesting and welcome additions to the replay arena are Thoroughbred Times and Blood Horse. Thoroughbred Times focuses on stakes but Blood Horse has an excellent extensive archive that also includes Non-Graded Stakes, Allowance/Optional Claiming, Maiden Special Weights and Maiden Claiming.

The replays are only one component of the archive that also features order of finish, payouts and pedigree information. They get extra points for having a dedicated Twitter feed (@BH_RaceResults) that automatically kicks out results.

The proliferation of race replays has not only been crucial for a handicappers, it’s also an excellent way for potential and/or new fans to connect with racing. Folks like Partymanners and CF1970, who have digitized their own personal replay collections, are squarely responsible for part of my racing self-education!

Tracks and such have followed suit with Churchill leading the way by adding what seems like all of their race replays from 2006 to the present. Hollywood Park has their stakes races both current and historical while NYRA, NTRA and Breeders’ Cup all make great use YouTube.

Easily accessed AND embeddable race replays have allowed for radically increased exposure to racing. Bloggers post races on their sites and fans post races on their profile pages at social media sites such as Facebook. For every racing fan who posts a race on their Facebook profile, N more people are more likely to see that race (where N is equal to the number of their contacts)… that’s some nice visibility.

And lastly, as a fervent iPhone user, I also enjoy NTRA & Breeders’ Cup replays as podcasts. Podcasts may seem pointless with a web enabled phone but they’re much higher quality than YouTube.

Not only are they useful as racing Prozac, they come in handy as a one-on-one gorilla marketing tool. I’ve been able to easily show friends and potential fans such thrilling races as Rachel Alexandra’s Preakness as we stand on a street corner or are grabbing a bite. Now if someone would just get Zenyatta’s Classic uploaded I would have all the high points of the year in my pocket, and if that’s not innovative I don’t know what is.

Panelists Comments

“When YouTube hit the web around mid-decade, everyone knew the web would never be the same. Video sharing was impossible (slow & clunky) to deal with before YouTube and the proliferation of Flash players. Sure HD is great but to get that souped up race car we had to start with the Model T. Having replays on the web, at the push of a button, changed *everything*.” – o_crunk

Reading a racing form to prepare for a day of racing can take hours. In harness racing where horses race week to week, having your pulse on each horse is a full time job.

But computers have changed everything.

During this decade, software, spreadsheets/databases and myriad other tools have exploded with horseplayers. We have all seen the ads, or heard a friend speak of a new handicapping tool he/she might be using. What took some players hours upon hours, might now take only seconds. This has arguably helped handles. With wall to wall racing (on some Saturday’s we can play over 30 tracks) how can one possibly handicap all of them manually.

“I can play every track if I want to with software,” said professional player James Erickson at a recently concluded conference at the Meadowlands. “It gives me information in a manner that makes it easy for me to have an opinion on the race. I still have to use my brain to decipher the numbers that it gives, but it gives me a quick, precise summary on what I have to look for. When I go to the track without my software I might only play $20 or $30 for fun.”

To contrast handicapping by hand, and with software, take this scenario, where the two players land on the same horse. Let’s assume the players have never played this racetrack. Also, let’s make the winning horse lone speed, dropping in class, the track bias is heavy to speed and the trainer of the horse is shipping him in and has a hit rate of over 50% with dropping shippers.

With a program, the pen and paper handicapper will see the lone speed, after some study. She will then go through all the charts and see the track bias of the past several cards. She will find, either in the form or elsewhere, trainer numbers, but maybe not a subset of them. Regardless, she lands on the lone speed and believes that the trainer is pretty decent in this situation. It takes some time, and skill.

Conversely, with the computer capper, he downloads the file and uploads it to his handicapping software. Immediately he is alerted to lone speed – he does not even see the form, it is there for him. He then checks the track bias “bot” in the software and sees that the track is heavily speed friendly. He then runs over to Formulator, or uses his own software and sees a model on the trainer signaling a green light shipper. He also has a minimum odds or probability line he will take on this horse, that he has used with this model through thousands of races. Poof, in seconds he has come to the same conclusion.

If you read chat boards, or follow racing closely with ADW players, you get to see just how important software is this decade. It is not uncommon to see talk and arguments on software packages and/or the inner workings of them, that a laymen might find difficult to understand. In fact, some packages have what many would describe as a cult status.

In a society that is busier and busier, where we are bombarded with numerous gambling and entertainment options and have many races to choose from on any given day, the speed and accuracy of software is a big part of the handle picture, and certainly one of the top innovations of the decade.