As an unprecedented year winds down and cases of COVID-19 rise once again across North America, the horse racing community like all other areas of society continues to make changes in response to the pandemic. Many racetracks currently operating are doing so without spectators or with limits to attendance, and have instituted strict safety screening protocols for essential employees who are already on the grounds to provide daily care for horses.
Month: December 2020
Casino Games History Or How People Have Learnt To Count Cards Part2.
Thorp’s Era.
If you don’t know, now we are living in 43th year of Thorp’s era. This person had such a great influence on the blackjack and all the gambling industry, that I seriously consider that he is worth of setting up a monument while alive, by the way at the casino’s expense.
Being a young scientist, Edward O. Thorp regularly read mathematic journals. When he was a student, he was pressed for money. The idea of outplaying the casino on the basis of calculations appealed to Thorp and he decided to check the results of the “excellent four” and see what will come out of it. The result of his activity was a phenomenal book Beat The Dealer, now its sales are approaching million of samples.
Thorp chose the other way – he did not make analytical calculations, but with powerful at that time computer IBM (they were also called mainframe) he wrote several programs on Fortran, creating quite original methods for 60s. By the way, Thorp together with his research instructor Claude Elwood Shannon, a great scientist, were also involved in solving the problem “how to outplay the roulette?”
From his calculations Thorp understood that dead cards had a considerable affect on the gambler’s chances this or that way. His main idea was about memorizing the dead cards in somewhat simplified way and when the situation is beneficial for the player, make high stakes. By the way, this system still remains the basis of any methods and counting systems of blackjack.
The counting system introduced by Thorp, was rather complicated for usage in real casinos, required great concentration and large amount of mentally arithmetic actions. However with good training there was nothing impossible in its application.
Thorp’s book immediately became a success and bestseller. Everyone understood that with quite simple actions you can get an advantage. Every reader dreamt of enormous prizes. However, the casinos also knew the score.
Panic seized them. And in 1962 after Thorp’s book, all Las Vegas Casinos without exception changed their rules being afraid of mass influx of “system players”. The quality of the rules worsened terribly and no counting system could ever help you to win. Though the effect for casino turned out to be quite unpredictable and reverse – people stopped playing blackjack. And during several months, all the casinos had to return to the former rules for their own survival.
Another interesting effect caused by Thorp’s book- incredible popularity of blackjack outrunning the favorite American craps. A lot of people, after reading the book considered themselves potential winners and rushed to the blackjack tables. However, most of them had a bad understanding of the mathematical principles of the game did not become winners but quite vice versa. Therefore, casino got more clients and moreover losing clients. Since then their number is only increasing.
The system presented in the first edition of Thorp’s book was quite difficult even for professionals and only the few could apply it under the conditions of a real game. Something should be simplified.
The power behind the throne.
Julian Braun is quite a unique personality. He had hardly ever played a deal in real blackjack. But he played millions and maybe even billions of deals on the computer. Braun was a good mathematician and programmer and he got interested in Thorp’s idea and offered him cooperation in the sphere of calculations and programming.
Braun became the person who first invented the counting system Hi-Lo. He was behind the development of all modern systems the authorship of which belongs to Revere, Humble, Wong and Uston. He wrote the only book How to Play Winning Blackjack, but what a book!
Braun upgraded Thorp’s system on FORTRAN and made considerable changes and the second edition of Thorp’s book also contained Hi-Lo system in its modern form. It was quite a revolution in gambling world. Braun worked in IBM corporation and had access to probably most powerful computers of that time. This fact helped to build simple and efficient tool in struggle with casino.
Using Braun’s calculations the gambler mostly known as Lawrence Revere developed his own counting system and presented his results in the form of convenient tables which are applied in most counters of the world. Lance Humble based his HiOpt systems on Braun’s experience.
Regardless the fact that Julian most probably had never been to the casino, he became a power behind the throne of the blackjack and all the mathematical modeling of the game fell on him.
Common Colic Myths Debunked
The signs of colic are well-known to many horse owners: abdominal discomfort shown by pawing, kicking at the belly, repeatedly rolling, sweating and increased heart and respiration rate. Though colic is unfortunately common in horses, only about 10 percent of colic cases require surgical intervention to resolve.
Colic surgery can seem scary, but improvements in the past few decades have lessened the chance of a negative outcome, reports The Horse. Yet, myths regarding colic surgery remain. Dr. Jacqueline Hill, who practices at Littleton Equine Medical Center in Colorado, dispels some of the most common colic surgery myths.
Myth 1: A horse will never return to pre-surgery performance levels. Though colic surgery is a major surgery with a long recover period, horses can go back to their pre-surgery performance levels. A study that used over 200 horses of different breeds found that 84 percent of the horses returned to their discipline after colic surgery and that 79 percent were performing at or above the level they were at before the surgery.
Myth 2: A horse can be “too old” for colic surgery. The life expectancy for horses, like humans, has lengthened in the last few decades, with many horses ridden well into their 20s. A recent study from the University of Pennsylvania compared horses between 4 and 15 years old that had colic surgery with horses that were over 20 that had colic surgery. They found that both categories had similar post-operative complications and survival rates.
Myth 3: A horse is never the same after having a resection. Horses tend to fare differently depending on the section of intestine that has been resected: horses that have had their small intestine resected tend to fare better than those that have had the end of the intestine resected. It was recently reported that horses that have had their large colon resected have 65 to 75 percent long-term survival rates; small-intestine only resections see up to 75 percent of patients with long-term success.
More evidence is needed to resolve the myth that horses that have had colic surgery are more prone to colicking again. Studies have reported that between 0 to 35 percent of post-surgical horses have another colic episode within 12 months of a colic surgery. Factors that appear to affect this include what portion of the bowel was affected and what surgical procedure was used. Generally, if a horse doesn't colic in the first year after surgery, his risk of colicking again is similar to a horse that didn't have surgery.
Read more at The Horse.
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Brendan Walsh Joins Writers’ Room 2020 Wrap-Up Show
It’s been an eventful year to say the least, and Wednesday morning, the crew of the TDN Writers’ Room presented by Keeneland wrapped up the biggest stories of 2020 and looked forward to the promise of a new year with an assist from trainer Brendan Walsh. Calling in via Zoom as the Green Group Guest of the Week for the second time, Walsh talked about the highly-anticipated return of barn star Maxfield (Street Sense), what his hopes are for the implementation of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act and trainees he’s excited about sending out in 2021.
Maxfield, a blowout victor of the 2019 GI Claiborne Breeders’ Futurity, missed the rest of his 2-year-old season with an ankle injury and, after a victory in the GIII Matt Winn S. in his sophomore debut, had to be taken off the GI Kentucky Derby trail soon after with a condylar fracture. Returning to training in late September, he’s set to run for just the fourth time in Saturday’s Tenacious S. at Fair Grounds.
Asked about how he manages the mental toll of conditioning the talented but oft-injured Maxfield, Walsh said, “It’s been disappointing and frustrating each time [he’s gotten hurt], but the saving grace of it all is the fact that the horse could come back from when he’s gotten inured. There was always something in the future. As far as fractures go, it was non-displaced and a pretty easy fix. I’ve had lots of horses with fractures like this and the recovery rate is actually very high for them. So yeah, it was disappointing, especially this year, because it meant missing a potential chance for the Derby, but we always knew that eventually we were going to get another crack at it late in the game.”
The conversation turned to the expected passage of the HISA in 2021 and how important it would be to establish the kind of centralized regulatory body that the Irish-born Walsh dealt with in the British Horseracing Authority.
“I think we’ve made big, big leaps forward this year,” he said. “Last time I was on the show, we touched on this and I wasn’t totally confident about it happening. But it looks now like there’s a very good chance it will happen. I think it’s highly essential that it happens for racing here. We’ve made a lot of advances in various states with medication policies, etc. but it’s very important to have a uniform policy all over the country. It’s going to make it easier on everybody because people will have a clearer picture on medications we are and aren’t allowed to use. That’s what we’d all like to have.”
Elsewhere on the show, the writers assessed where the industry stands with its most pressing issues such as the FBI indictments, HISA, equine safety and handle trends and how they expect and want those stories to develop in 2021. In the West Point Thoroughbreds news segment, they talked about the demise of greyhound racing and how horse racing’s powers that be may be finally acting just in time to save their industry. Then they discussed what horses they’re most looking forward to seeing next year and relived the best of host Joe Bianca’s 2020 rants. Click here to watch the podcast; click here for the audio-only version.
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