A bunch of topics related to handicapping have been bouncing around in my head over the last few weeks. Hopefully at least one of them will help sharpen your prognosticating skills. I’m a firm believer in listening to the opinions of others after you have formed a view of your own. Whether a skilled handicapper or not, you never know what information another mind may uncover that could be vital when making your wager. The above said, lately I’ve been hearing thoughts about favorites that directly contrast my view. I’ve heard some horses being touted as “seemingly unbeatable” that I completely dislike, mostly because I saw something while watching the replay of their previous start that made me sour. That leads me to the first point of this column:  Sometimes your best opinion is an opinion against a horse. Handicapping is not always about picking one horse to win. Feeling confident that a favorite or heavily-backed horse will lose can be just as powerful. Every time you eliminate a horse at lower odds from your thinking it opens up a wealth of possibilities to make a major score. Don’t be afraid to go against the public because in most cases they are no smarter than you. Deciphering class More often than not your local track offers multiple divisions of the same exact conditioned race on any given night. That means there could be two races for “Non-winners of $5,000 in last 5 starts (NW5000)” with the same exact purse. Often enough the mistake is made to consider these two races to be on par in terms of quality when handicapping. Nothing could be further from the truth. All NW5000 are not created equal. One division of the class could contain horses of better quality that are dropping down from a higher level (NW8500) while another could be filled with horses that have been lingering in that condition for weeks getting minor rewards. Another sneaky situation is when a horse “seems” to be in a class which is too tough for them but in reality should be very comfortable. An example race that sticks out for me is the 11th at The Meadowlands from February 9. While it was put together as a race for non-winners of $8,500 in their last 5 starts, not one of the entrants had shown a win in the class going back over two months. Only one horse was dropping down from a higher level and he finished ninth and tenth in his last two races while losing by 25 combined lengths. So, what was the “true” condition of this race? I’d say it was a weak to mid-level NW5000, since only one of the horses in the race had a win at that level since the start of December and three others had wins at the lower NW3500 class. The key here is to take multiple tools away from this one example. By breaking down this one field we have knowledge to use for this week and for the next time these horses race. When we look at the past performance lines next week, we’ll know that this race was more of a NW5000 while many less informed players will see it as a NW8500. Am I in the middle of a slump? There is a fine line between winning and losing. That statement has been all too true for me over the last few weeks when it comes to my Meadowlands selections. The numbers say I’m slumping with just 9 winners selected on top in my previous 52 races (February 1-10). I have no excuses. That number should be at least 12 and probably closer to 14 winners. What is very frustrating is how close I’ve been to success without tasting it statistically. [Editor's Note: Derick Giwner went 4 for 16 with a positive R.O.I. of of $18.40 during the weekend of February 16/17 at The Meadowlands.] Over the same span of 52 races, 36 of my top three selections have won. That’s right, 36! So I’m keying in on the right horses in each race but either luck is not on my side or I’m making some bad endgame decisions. Making the numbers even more frustrating was realizing that if I simply bet a pick 3, pick 4 & pick 5 on those nights using my top three selections only, I would have come away with a profit of $11,904.25. That’s a tough pill to swallow! I picked 10 horses between Feb. 9 and 10 at The Meadowlands that went off at 5-1 odds or higher and none of them won. Six of them finished either second or third! Is that bad luck? Did I do something wrong? Meanwhile, four of the horses I picked second or third won at 5-1 or higher and two were north of 10-1. My main point in bringing all of the above to light is that you shouldn’t always get frustrated when you are losing. This game is filled with highs and lows. The key is to play within your budget so you can withstand the nights when you handicap well but it doesn’t result in a bigger wallet.