About

This blog-site is mainly dedicated to providing picks and analysis for the Triple Crown races, and Breeders Cup.

Whitey has been capping horses since the 1980’s,  when he worked as a ticket sweeper at old Philly park in Bensalem, PA, during the summers of college.

Back in 2010, he started the Ponycapper website so that friends and family could pick up tidbits, have some fun with his picks, and perhaps profit from the analysis.

Whitey’s strong-suit is the Belmont Stakes. Going back to 2011, he gave out the Belmont exacta that paid over $900. In 2012, he gave out the winning exacta again. In 2014, he crushed it with 9-1 Tonalist, also giving out the Trifecta. In 2016, Whitey’s dreams were crushed when his 8-1 pick Destin lost by a nose. He used the agony of defeat as motivation to come back strong in 2017. Whitey caught lightening in a bottle in the 2017 Belmont, as he gave out the winning Superfecta – correctly predicting the first 4 runners in the exact order of finish, leading to his biggest score at the track.

Whitey’s key philosophies for crushing the track and turning a profit include….

  1. Focusing on profits, not winners. This means finding value on the tote board and having the discipline to stay away from under-laid horses.
  2. Focusing on one or two race meets, where an “edge” can be gained by local knowledge of horses, trainers, troubled trips, and track bias. Currently, Whitey’s specialty and main focus is Tampa Bay Downs, where he has consistently turned a profit for this track over the last 5 years.
  3. Smart Wagering – Minimizing the volume pushed through the windows by limiting tracks played, races played, and action bets. Essentially, only wagering when there is a strong opinion, value play or over-laid horse.
  4. Ramping-up bet amounts when there is a strong or very strong opinion, or when all handicapping angles point to one horse as the one to beat in the race (and the tote board offers value)
  5. Focusing on a process for crushing a race meet, and creating and leveraging tools to compile, store and use key pieces of handicapping information and data points, such as troubled trips and play back horses, track bias info, key meet and trainer angles, false favorite angles, and most importantly, the tools to assess field quality and key races. Whitey recently developed a “meet dashboard” tool to collect and reference the above info, which has been absolutely vital to his success at Tampa Bay Downs.
  6. Commit to becoming a winner – and using never-ending research and data compilation to become a better handicapper. About 7 years ago Whitey did a self-assessment and lessons learned and found his main blind spot was wagering on too many tracks. Hence, an exclusive focus now on crushing Tampa Bay Downs and an acquired philosophy that if you can’t beat one race meet, then in all likelihood, you are unlikely to beat the races on a consistent basis and turn out a profit. 

Whitey has been capping horses for over 30 years and has accumulated a treasure-trove of key handicapping angles. These have been essential to the capping process, and have become instrumental to every day success.

More broadly, Whitey adheres to a “manifesto” or some over-arching and fundamental handicapping philosophies and approaches, which include:

  1. Understanding basic handicapping factors such as class, speed, pace, form, race set up, and which factors are key or most weighted for a given race or specific race condition
  2. Using pace projections and race set up to visualize how the race may unfold, the horse that might benefit from the pace – for example fast and contested – and the most likely winner
  3. Understanding and emphasizing race conditions as a main handicapping tool for identifying key contenders who will likely excel in today’s race, or are the “best-fits” to improve under today’s race condition
  4. Adopting a liberal or forgiving view of a horse’s running lines, where appropriate. Often, huge scores can be made if you draw a line through a race. The key is which ones to forgive, and not being rigid or too quick to dismiss a horse’s chances in today’s race.
  5. Leveraging a home-built database of hidden turf sires to identify and capitalize on live long shots making their first appearance on the turf. Whitey has spent 20 years researching and analyzing turf pedigrees and turf races and this has become a critical staple in his arsenal towards turning profits.
  6. Understanding key factors and intangibles and their potential impact on a horse’s performance or on an expected race result. Some of these include: fitness, age, equipment changes, jockey switches, race distance, and barn changes.  
  7. Leveraging initial key race and field quality assessments as part of the handicapping process. Over the years, Whitey has developed a proprietary method and tool to score race fields on overall quality, and make projections on “live” or “key” races. If you are not assessing the quality of competition in each race – and only looking at raw beyer speed figures or racing form data – then you are behind-the-curve on “projecting how horses will run in today’s race”. Why? because of the extreme variance of the “quality of fields” for a specific race condition, from one race to the next. For example, a maiden race—  where the winner of the race in turn wins a stakes race in his next start —- should be upgraded as “key” or “strong”. Compared to another winner of same maiden condition who in turn runs next time out in a claimer and loses by 10 lengths as the race favorite. The maiden race this horse is exiting  can be downgraded or labeled as “reverse key race” or “weak”.

When Whitey retires form his full time job, he will be compiling his years of experience capping the ponies into several tell-all guides.

He is currently working on compiling:

  1. A blueprint for crushing a race meet
  2. Summary of key handicapping angles for the recreational handicapper
  3. Tell all guide for crushing maiden races

If you like Whitey’s Triple Crown analysis and picks, feel free to pass along the blog-site link to friends.

Good Luck to all readers in their quest to pick a few winners, and maybe make a few bucks in the process !!!!

Whitey