1/20/2014 @ 3:10PM |
In Esquire's 'Horseplayers,' The Gamblers Take Center Stage
How do you handicap a horse race? It depends on whom you ask.
In Esquire TV’s new reality series Horseplayers, viewers will see both traditional and unorthodox approaches to wagering as cameras follow seven men trying to qualify for the National Handicapping Tournament, held next week in Las Vegas.
Team Rotondo will show viewers the tried-and-true. Peter Rotondo Jr., the Breeders’ Cup vice-president of media and entertainment, and his father, a former public handicapper (the Staten Island native was also the straight guy in a 2006 episode of Queer Eye), break down for viewers the intricacies of past performances in the Daily Racing Form and talk to one of the nation’s leading jockeys, John Velazquez, about the differences between dirt and turf racing.
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<cite class="box_byline clearfix"> </cite>
</aside>Christian Hellmers takes a different approach.
“I do something called muscle testing,” he said by phone from his California home recently. “It’s applied kinesiology. I want to know what my body thinks.”
Hellmers doesn’t rely solely on intuition, though; he’s spent more than a decade developing a mathematical model to predict the outcome of horse races, crunching data, he said, over and over again and watching thousands of race replays.
“Your mind can only remember so much,” he noted. “I’ve analyzed more than 10,000 races and I listen to my body when I talk about a certain horse or a certain race. If my muscles go weak, maybe there’s something embedded that I can’t remember that’s telling me it’s not a good bet.”
Horseplayers is a production of GoGoLuckey, the same company that produced the reality show Jockeys for Animal Planet. GoGoLuckey president and executive producer Tina Gazzerro Clapp brings her own love of the sport to the new series.
“I’m a fan first,” she said. “Horse racing is a really rich, beautiful world. There’s a lot of action, it’s a fun community, and the athletes are amazing.”
Aimed at males in their late 20s to early 40s, Horseplayers will, Gazzerro Clapp hopes, dispel some of the stereotypes associated with the racetrack.
“People have a misconception about horse racing,” she said. “They think it’s really degenerate, or it’s fixed, or that it’s about doping, or that it’s stuffy. It’s none of those things, and I’d love to see a younger racetrack crowd out there. It’s a fun, cheap day, and it makes a lot of sense for young people.”
She’s quick to point out, though, that her primary goal isn’t to create a marketing instrument for the sport.
“First, I want the show to be entertaining; I’m not in the racetrack business,” she said. “As a fan, I’d love for the show to bring more people to racing, but that’s not going to happen if it’s not entertaining.”
She compared the atmosphere at the track to the frenzy of a trading floor, as depicted in the movie Boiler Room.
“It’s that excitement, that sort of potential,” she said. “If you like to play the stock market, multiply that by 100,000. At the track, you get your results in two minutes.”
Like Gazzerro Clapp, Hellmers sees serious betting as akin to stock trading. He has an extensive background in the tech world and worked as the director of U.S. business development for Betfair, an international betting exchange. Describing himself as an “entrepreneur first, and a trader on horse racing second,” he distinguishes between gambling on horse racing and trading on it
In Esquire's 'Horseplayers,' The Gamblers Take Center Stage
How do you handicap a horse race? It depends on whom you ask.
In Esquire TV’s new reality series Horseplayers, viewers will see both traditional and unorthodox approaches to wagering as cameras follow seven men trying to qualify for the National Handicapping Tournament, held next week in Las Vegas.
Team Rotondo will show viewers the tried-and-true. Peter Rotondo Jr., the Breeders’ Cup vice-president of media and entertainment, and his father, a former public handicapper (the Staten Island native was also the straight guy in a 2006 episode of Queer Eye), break down for viewers the intricacies of past performances in the Daily Racing Form and talk to one of the nation’s leading jockeys, John Velazquez, about the differences between dirt and turf racing.
<aside class="vestpocket" data-position="4" style="">
<cite class="box_byline clearfix"> </cite>
</aside>Christian Hellmers takes a different approach.
“I do something called muscle testing,” he said by phone from his California home recently. “It’s applied kinesiology. I want to know what my body thinks.”
Hellmers doesn’t rely solely on intuition, though; he’s spent more than a decade developing a mathematical model to predict the outcome of horse races, crunching data, he said, over and over again and watching thousands of race replays.
“Your mind can only remember so much,” he noted. “I’ve analyzed more than 10,000 races and I listen to my body when I talk about a certain horse or a certain race. If my muscles go weak, maybe there’s something embedded that I can’t remember that’s telling me it’s not a good bet.”
Horseplayers is a production of GoGoLuckey, the same company that produced the reality show Jockeys for Animal Planet. GoGoLuckey president and executive producer Tina Gazzerro Clapp brings her own love of the sport to the new series.
“I’m a fan first,” she said. “Horse racing is a really rich, beautiful world. There’s a lot of action, it’s a fun community, and the athletes are amazing.”
Aimed at males in their late 20s to early 40s, Horseplayers will, Gazzerro Clapp hopes, dispel some of the stereotypes associated with the racetrack.
“People have a misconception about horse racing,” she said. “They think it’s really degenerate, or it’s fixed, or that it’s about doping, or that it’s stuffy. It’s none of those things, and I’d love to see a younger racetrack crowd out there. It’s a fun, cheap day, and it makes a lot of sense for young people.”
She’s quick to point out, though, that her primary goal isn’t to create a marketing instrument for the sport.
“First, I want the show to be entertaining; I’m not in the racetrack business,” she said. “As a fan, I’d love for the show to bring more people to racing, but that’s not going to happen if it’s not entertaining.”
She compared the atmosphere at the track to the frenzy of a trading floor, as depicted in the movie Boiler Room.
“It’s that excitement, that sort of potential,” she said. “If you like to play the stock market, multiply that by 100,000. At the track, you get your results in two minutes.”
Like Gazzerro Clapp, Hellmers sees serious betting as akin to stock trading. He has an extensive background in the tech world and worked as the director of U.S. business development for Betfair, an international betting exchange. Describing himself as an “entrepreneur first, and a trader on horse racing second,” he distinguishes between gambling on horse racing and trading on it
