You can't tell the players without a scorecard: A typology of horse players

Horse racing, America's number one spectator sport, attracts a loyal core of patrons who persist at gambling on horses despite the low probability of financial gain. Traditional perspectives which view gambling as a social problem and the behavior of its regular participants as deviant have narrowly restricted scientific investigation into a track milieu, and the wide range of behaviors demonstrated by these gamblers have never been placed into a systematic framework. Using data collected from an empirical investigation of several race track settings, I identify a community‐designated typology of “horse players.” This typology is unique and serves as an initial conceptual model for objective inquiry into behavior of inveterate horse race gamblers.