With rock-solid handicapping credentials and a self-deprecating sense of humor, Noel Michaels is a perfect fit as Case the Race’s new handicapper for New York. In addition to handicapping expertise acquired through his education and various horse racing industry positions, including a period as a full time handicapper at the Daily Racing Form, he maintains a genuine positivity about horseplayers and horse racing. As a fiction and non-fiction writer, former television host, seminar instructor, and current house handicapper and Director of Player Development for Nassau County Off-Track Betting in New York, he is a horse playing Renaissance man. An extended biography of Michaels is available on his page, under N.Y. Reports. In a recent interview, we asked him about his handicapping style, preferences, and his notable tournament background.

Case the Race: Is there anything about your handicapping style or method that sets you apart from other handicappers?

Michaels: I think that I pay attention to a lot of factors that other public handicappers ignore, and I put in the hours that others are unwilling or unable to devote to studying the races, the results, and the past performances. I believe there is a reason or reasons why each horse wins or loses each race that it runs in. I try to read between the lines to find out which horses currently are better than the public thinks they are, and which horses are overrated. That's the key to finding overlays and finding value. It's all about catching horses when they are ready to run their good efforts and knowing when to steer clear of a horse that is sitting on a bad effort.

Case the Race: Do you have a favorite kind of race to handicap?

Michaels: I love turf racing. Whether it's traditional routes or turf sprints, grass racing has always been the easiest for me to figure out. Plus, grass races always seem to have the biggest fields, so you can bet an obvious contender and still often get 3-1 or even 5-2 odds sometimes on a favorite. When you have a 12-horse field, the 5th or 6th favorite in the race will probably be around 10-1 odds, and that gives you the best chance to cash on a $20 type of horse. The thing about turf races that's great is that they're all about pace and class, and most of all trips. The raw numbers and speed figures aren't always as important as other factors that aren't as black-and-white such as which horses have been facing the best competition lately and which horses have been helped or hurt by good or bad trips in their recent races.

Case the Race: Do you have a favorite kind of bet?

Michaels: More and more I have been gravitating toward win bets, and multi-race bets such as pick threes and pick fours. I deal with horseplayers every day in my profession, and I also make my own plays on a daily basis. I can't tell you how many times I hear players say "Oh, I loved the winner in that race, but I couldn't hook him up in the exacta or trifecta." I make this mistake on my own, too, and it's a killer. People end up picking the winner of a race and still losing money! Playing that way just doesn't make any sense to me anymore. One thing playing in tournaments has taught me is to zero-in on the win contenders in each race, because it's so much easier to try to pick a winner than to try to figure out which horses will come in third or fourth. Realistically, almost any horse in a race can finish third or fourth, and to me that makes trifectas and superfectas very difficult bets to hit with any degree of regularity. Plus, the take-out is higher on exotics than it is on win bets, so over the long run, it's easier to come out ahead betting to win.

Case the Race: You have a strong tournament background. Tell us about the evolution of your involvement with tournament play?

Michaels: I love handicapping tournaments, play in them regularly, and firmly believe they are the best way for handicappers to play the races. My attitude has always been that I have very much more to learn from tournament players than they have to learn from me, and that belief down through the years has taught me a lot and made me a better handicapper, because I have given myself the chance to learn from the best and incorporate the best pieces of everyone's game into my own handicapping puzzle. I started playing in tournaments in the 1990's after I had already become a pubic handicapper. I used to think that the best handicappers were the guys picking for the newspapers up in the press box, or the guys writing for the Daily Racing Form, but tournaments really opened my eyes to the truth. It's not even close! The best handicappers are not up in the press box, they're all down in the clubhouse playing in handicapping tournaments.

Case the Race: Tell us about your introduction to horse racing.

Michaels: I would occasionally go to the track with my dad when I was growing up in Chicago, and sometimes I'd tag along with my dad and his friends to the harness races at night, but my dad was just a $2 bettor and we never really went to the track with any real regularity. Instead, I really got into horseracing on my own, mainly because I love horses, I love sports, and I love betting, and horseracing is the one thing that ties all of those things together. I really didn't become a hardcore racing fan and horseplayer, however, until the great 1989 racing season when Sunday Silence came along in the west, Easy Goer came along in the east, and Arlington Park was rebuilt into the beautiful palace it is today right in my own backyard in the Chicago suburbs.

Case the Race: Are there one or two high points in your handicapping history that really stand out?

Michaels: Every horseplayer can rattle off his or her "greatest hits," but the ones I remember the most had to do with my professional career. I covered the 2001 Kentucky Derby for Daily Racing Form dot com, and spent the whole week in Louisville picking Monarchos on every television and radio show across the country that year. I cashed pretty good on him and now I have a cat named Monarchos. Also, I should mention that I told everyone I knew that Volponi was going to win the Breeders' Cup Classic in 2002, but judging by his $89 win price, I guess not too many listened to me.

Case the Race: Anything else our readers should know about you?

Michaels: The best people I've ever met in my life have all been associated with horse racing in some way, whether they're bettors, horsemen, fellow writers, friends, or just common acquaintances. I met my darling and enchanting wife, Venice, at a handicapping contest. My best friends are all horseplayers or have had some kind of connection to the racetrack. People at the racetrack are the hardest working people I know, and most of the smartest people I've ever met over the course of my life have been horseplayers and handicappers. The thing is, I think horseplayers have an uncommon sense of humor about themselves and about life. That's why I wrote my crazy crime caper novel, Fix Six. It's all about degenerate horseplayers, and all the things that we think is funny. It's like, we don't want to be put down or picked on, unless it's by one of our own or by ourselves. Then we can see the absurdity of this crazy game called horseracing, and how strange we all must seem to outsiders who just can't understand us and never will.