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Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind
To be honest, you sort of just need to watch as many replays as you can and learn for yourself what is a bad trip or what is important. It's very hard to quantify things.
One thing I find important is position. What I mean by that is multifaceted. Did your horse encounter early trouble that placed him farther back than he should have been? Did your horse find itself too close to a fast pace? In order to do this you have to have a reasonable mental picture of how a race " should " unfold and how it actually unfolds. It's esoteric, and not what most people think when they say " trips ", but I think it gets to the heart of trip handicapping.
The best way to start is to watch the replay, pan and head on, enough times so you have noted where every horse was on the turn ( or turns ), and if any of them had trouble. From there you disect the race and see how the trip may have affected the horse.
From here it's important to distinguish between real trouble and fake trouble. The horse who saved ground behind a contentious pace, yet had to steady for room while waiting to get out, had a good trip overall. The horse who tried to rally wide behind a slow pace that never came back had an untenable trip.
All in all, you have to watch a lot of races, and learn for yourself what trips are. It's a lot of work, but I find it the most fascinating part of the game, and potentially very profitable.
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The difficulty of this particular aspect of handicapping Andy cannot be over emphasized enough. It is known among most players to be the hardest part of the game. There are many that readily admit that they are not good trip handicappers, that they do not watch race replays and garner as much information as others may. For many, and if I recall, even Andy Beyer, states in his books that this was the most difficult aspect of the game to attain proficency. He said that it took him years and year to do so.
You have achieved quite a lot in being so adept in this way.