For those who don’t know, I took a job last month working as a Copy Editor/Multimedia Content Producer at Life Chiropractic College West. It’s a great gig, and I’m working with a lot of wonderful people.

One of my first assignments was covering Champions Weekend, one of the school’s admissions events. In the introductory speech, Mary Lucus-Flannery, the dean of enrollment, challenged prospective students with an important, but daunting-sounding, question.

“What is your why?”

I wasn’t the target audience for that question, but it’s been in my brain for a week and I can’t get it out. Horse racing may be a side hustle for me now, but it’s something I’m still incredibly passionate about. Whether some in the sport want me to be or not, I firmly believe I’m as good an ambassador for the sport as there is. My goal is to use the platforms I have to communicate, educate, and drive people to want to know more about the game.

To be honest, I am not racing’s target audience, in many ways. I bet, but not outrageously. I’m young, but I don’t go to the track to party. I respect people and companies within the industry, but that’s not going to stop me from calling a spade a spade (hi, Breeders’ Cup Derby!). I can come across as conceited sometimes (at some point, I REALLY need to tell the full story of how Gimmick Andrew was born; if you hate it and you’re curious, find me), but my actual approach to handicapping is very nuts-and-bolts.

My background, and the way I approach things, means I can communicate to people on a variety of levels. That’s what I’m striving to do. What comes next are the pillars of that platform, ones that answer the, “what is your why?,” question. This acts as an unofficial mission statement of everything I’m trying to do and why I’m trying to do it.

1) Passion.

Without this, everything falls apart. I’ve been passionate about horse racing since my dad took me to Saratoga when I was very young. For better or for worse, by the time I was in middle school, I was able to interpret PP’s as stories, not as overwhelming numbers and figures that looked more like hieroglyphics.

I learned right away that there’s money to be made in this game if you put in the work. I also learned that you have to be REALLY passionate in order to put forth the amount of work needed to be successful. What’s more, successful bettors bet more, which means that smarter fans are what keeps the sport going.

I don’t charge for anything on this website. If people can take something away from the content I create and use it in their own ways moving forward, that’s infinitely more valuable to me than whatever money I could make. I’ve got a steady job. Right now, racing needs the churn more than I do.

2) The challenge.

Picking horses is hard. It’s similar to hitting a baseball, in that if you’re successful three out of 10 times, you’re one of the better people in your chosen profession. Even the best handicappers go through prolonged slumps where horses seem to lose in the most improbable of ways.

I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of “beating the game.” I imagine it’s the same thing that drives a lot of professional poker players, which explains why I was pretty good at that for a while, too (before the U.S. government decided online poker players were criminals, that is). Put a challenge in front of me, and I’m going to do everything in my power to overcome it. That’s just how I’m wired.

3) Transparency/honesty.

I put my name on everything I write, and my face is generally in there, too. I’m an easy guy to find. Don’t like something? The contact feature of the site is right here, and I see/respond to every piece of email I get.

I have no patience for “handicappers” that give people like me a bad reputation. I’m not talking about the outspoken folks that put their names/likenesses beside what they write. I may not agree with them, but I respect them having the guts to attribute their thoughts to a name and face. I’m talking about folks who come up with fake names, don’t put their faces on their profiles, don’t post picks, and blast those who are putting in the work. Furthermore, some members of this crowd impersonate others for no good reason, and sling vicious, unprovoked abuse towards others solely because they can. People like that can take long walks off of short piers.

When I write something, or say something, or pick a horse and say why I like it, you’ll always know where it’s coming from. There are times where this has worked to my detriment (more in my memoirs!), but I value this. I wish others did, too.

4) Competition.

The very nature of pari-mutuel betting hit me right away, even at an embarrassingly young age. It’s my money against your money. If I’m right, I win. If you’re right, you win. Either way, there’s another race coming up in a half-hour, so we’ll do it again in a little while.

The premise of handicapping, to me, is as simple as that. It’s looking for an edge on everyone else betting into the same pool you are. It’s being able to acknowledge when the heavy money is right, and being able to capitalize when it’s wrong. I don’t need fancy hats, or overpriced cocktails, or any of the ridiculous accessories tracks try to market on big days to people who don’t bet. When I go to the track, it’s a business trip (though I will never say no to a well-made sandwich from a carving station).

This also covers one of the things I really enjoy doing. Every summer, I’m one of five handicappers in The Pink Sheet, which is produced by The Saratogian. In that pick box, I go head-to-head with a number of people I genuinely like and respect. We’re not the only paper that does this, and I have an obsession with keeping track of everyone else and seeing where I stand.

Bottom line: I want to win. I want to be considered one of the best in the game at what I do, and I’ve got enough in the way of results to where I should be in the conversation. That leads into the last pillar…

5) Respect.

There are people in high, HIGH places who would prefer if I stayed far away from the sport. That may seem like an outlandish statement. It’s not, and I’ve got experiences that back that up (this site was born in 2017 as a direct result of one of them).

Like I’ve mentioned, I’m not a marketing department’s target audience. My existence isn’t the idea of some decision-maker somewhere. What I am, however, is one of the better handicappers in the country, and I’m not going anywhere. I’ve put in too much work to allow that to happen.

I’ll be filming DRF Bets Formulator Angle videos, producing Saratoga content for The Pink Sheet, guest-starring on Northern California handicapping seminars/preview shows, and calling into podcasts for as long as their respective hosts, editors, and managers will have me. My mere presence makes people who don’t like me go absolutely crazy (for proof, see the Twitter war I was in with a troll a few weeks ago; muting him was fun, but ultimately I had to block him once things went too far), and that’s how I like it.

I was the leading handicapper across all media at Saratoga back in 2017. I had a chip on my shoulder for a while, one that I’m sad to say wasn’t around for the last few months for various reasons (there’s one person you can blame for that, and that’ll be in my memoirs, too). Having said that, that chip’s back now.

I want to hear from people. I want to know what you’re looking for so that I can provide whatever high-quality content I have the resources to produce. I’m an easy guy to find, and as I’ve mentioned, I respond to everything that comes my way.

To those that have read my stuff for any length of time: Thank you. I’m going to continue being the best handicapper I can be. I owe it to my audience, as well as to a sport that, whether it wants to admit it or not, needs me (and people like me).