The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-03-06
RACING MAXIMS FAIL
A TURFMAN ON SOME OF THE
 SAYINGS OF THE TRACK.
Aphorisms as to Running of Horses and the Fortune of the Betting
 Men Not Sustained
 E6r by the Facts.
New York Sun.

inns if you've any idea of following the game" advised a veteran turfman the other day. Race track maxims don't go. ." "A first class horse can run on any kind of track is one of them. That's dream. Some of the greatest horses In the history of the American turf couldn't walk in the mud. much less run in, it. limp came pretty close to being as great race horse as ever stood on iron in this country. She could set fast track on fire. But she fioundered around in the mud like a tumble bug turned on it's back.
 T call Advance Guard a great horse as great a long distance runner as Ben Holladay, which is saying a lot. But Advance Guard can't beat steam roller in the mud. You're not going to find much grander colt than Hamburg in search of our racing animals. and you Il recall the smothering that Bowling Brook gave him in the Morris Park mud.
 "'Never play steeplechase rases-they're all fixed is another of these Poverty Dick phonies of the tracks. Dig up the figures and you'll find that in recent years a larger per centage of fayorites in steeplechase races have won than favor ties on the flat. The maxim maker pre-
 
 wagers his money on a steepiechase race. Ask the bookmakers about that. They will tell you that there's a certain class of plungers who never play anything else but the races over the jumps. They will also inform you that these fellows usual ly get the money.
 "'You can't beat the ponies with a, two-dolar note is another of the aphor-. isms of the wisdom packers. That's an other trance. I watched a red-headed St. Louis wharf rat run a forty-cent craps winning up to $S5OOo inside of ten days. If the maxim makers want modern in stances there's that city hall boot black who got into the Aqueduct bookies to the tune of S40,000 a couple of springs ago. beginning with case note.
 'Whftey' Langdon had something like two bones when he set his little campaign ngoing a year or so ago. and If he hasn't got S10000O this afternoon. he hasn't got the price of a brush-off. Joe Yeager, who only recently bested the Hot Springs pool rooms to the tune of $150.000 on a few days play, had nothing but his health and a good strong pair of galluses as remember him only a few years ago.
 There was an ex-waiter making book on the deadline on the New York tracks last season who shoonyed dollars worth Of dimes that he got as tips into $S00oo at the Morris Park spring meeting last year. A chorus girl who started in by vonturlng half dollars with a chum in the same company on Tommy Burns mounts last spring concluded to quit and bank her winnings at the wind-up of Saratoga. and she tucked away $20,oO0 that know of.
 This sort of thing isn't happening ev- cry day of course, and for every race hn oafa with there ten thousand who get bumped; but 1t has happened and is still happening often enough to drivo spike into the track maxim that the ponies can't be beat with Q two-dollar note.
 ""There never was a system yet that could beat 'em.' is one more of the croaks that have been repeated so often as to be finally framed up into track maxinls. That's still another hasbeesh fantasy. There are a dozen perfectly practicable systems of beating them. and not mere- ly on paper. either. And there are thou sands of fellows who are playing these systems and beating them every year.
 But these fellows have got something else in their heads besides mayonnaise dressing. The systems are all right, but twenty-four out of every twenty-five chaps who play the systems are all wronk. They lack nerve, or balance, or both.
 "Any old system is all right if it's ad- hered to and played consistently. The fellow who starts in to win $1O a day on system is liable to become hos for money if he finds that his $10 a day system works all right for a couple oi weeks running and then he starts in tc win $100 a day on the same amount of capital as he got together to inaugurate the $10 a. day win, and, of course, he gets pn the crags. Systems are all right, but lhcyire not meant to be played by mer with pearshaped heads.
 ''The bookmaker cant lose if he sticks 10 his percentage and doesn't play 'em himself Is another of those ambient rddies that you'll often hear from the hot-air bunch Well, I'd like to have one rute Yokohama yen for every layer that I've seen chasen off the block during the past generation while trying to fix UT bound books. and never so much as Ereaming of betting on the horses.
 "Another of the idiotic turf maxims is that the beginner at the game always wins at first He does not-not one-halt of per cent of him. Beginners are peo- pie who become interested in the game from attending the races on days when pig events are run. like the Brooklyn or Inc Suburban. About 90 per cent of holi- lay visitors at race tracks generally re- hlrn home broke, or nearly broke. Occasionally a man who never visited race track before in his life will fancy he name of long shot and beat it pure Y by accident, and that's the way this maxim got going. But the great majority If people making their initial visits at Sace tracks get swatted such a whole plenty at the outset that they make bp their minds on the ride in that they'll bever risk another dollar on a horse race Is long as they live and breathe. All women are hard losers is another lne of those pat-sounding things. but 1t e no more true than that all men are Nagyars. There are women visitors at tace tracks, of course. who will screech pr else dab at the corners of their eyes with wadded handkerchiefs when they lose ollar on a 150 to 1 shot, but these Bre the exception.
 You watch the women coming home Hrom the tracks. those whose husbands 3 have lost. say, and compare their conduct md manner with that of their spouses The men. as rule, have a zrouch thai couldn't he dented with a battle sx. and bpend their time gnawing their nails and # biting their mustaches and talking abou The stewards being in on deals to shred # The public, while their womenfolIy ar, laughing and chattering and irving f, sheer them lP.
 Because it is their husbands and ,o themselves, who have lost, you sav9 ye. but in such cases it s the women vh' have to stand the gaff, and therefore +ba1 .~I,.-