'Kill Everyone' revised; finally -- a new book on harness racing

2 July 2009

By Howard Schwartz

Kill Everyone, 2nd Edition, by Lee Nelson, Tysen Streib and Steven Heston(373 pages, paperbound, $34.95), freshens up and expands the original, this time with material by Bertrand (Elky) Grospellier, World Poker Tour Player of the Year.

There are four major sections to this important work: Early-Stage Play; Endgame Strategy; Other Topics; and Online Short-handed No-Limit Hold'em Cash Games. Overall there are 50 new pages to this revised edition, including vital fear-and-fold equity and equilibrium advice; optimal strategies for the bubble; the endgame and smart end-play guidance. The book contains a good amount of charts, tables, graphs, hand examples and a solid, easy-to-use index.

Interestingly, the short but powerful section titled "Tournament Preparation" might end up as the difference between winning and losing at the final table -- for no matter how brilliant, successful or respected the player, it can all fall apart when physical and emotional fatigue creates an atmosphere for errors.

The irony about harness racing and new books on the subject of handicapping the sport is that each seemed to wait for the other to regain popularity and neither occurred for many years. For without new, hungry-for-information bettors, the sport dies on the vine, and without a fresh book, there is apathy. Books do create bettors and bettors re-invigorate the sport.

Dave Brower's Harnessing Winners (131 pages, paperbound, $14.95) is well written, well priced and easy to use, with many past performance examples, sample races and analysis, tipping you to things to watch and why things happen -- alerting you to concepts worth storing away for the future.

In 15 fast-moving chapters, you'll learn among other things the sport's basics; trips; replays and track bias; qualifiers; barn changes; driver changes; key races and shippers; tote action and value; handicapping trotters and two-year-olds; improving form and class drops; first-time Lasix; warm-ups.

For beginners, the book tells you how to read past performances; provides a glossary of track terms; gives a list of tracks nationwide; lists 2008's leading sires; and information about two of the book's major contributors, Keith Gisser of Northfield Park in Ohio and Derick Giwner, editor of Harness Eye.

'Kill Everyone' revised; finally -- a new book on harness racing is republished from Online.CasinoCity.com.