The ground-floor…
By Alex Ginsberg
The sign over the store reads, “Astoria Mud Hut Ceramic Studios,” but there are no pots or vases inside. And there is not even any mud — unless you want to discuss the muddy track for the fourth race at Churchill Downs on Sunday.
The ground-floor commercial space at 23-11 24th Ave. in Astoria — previously a ceramics workshop — is now home to Equiform, a horse-racing data supplier that provides expert analysis for the serious bettor or horse owner.
The two-man operation has worked out of the location since January 2001, but Cary Fotias, the company’s president, said it never really occurred to him to change the sign.
“We don’t do walk-in trade,” he explained.
Instead, Fotias, a former Wall Street currency trader, provides complex data through his Web site, www.equiform.com, to a core group of about 4,000 horse-racing enthusiasts. Buyers pay $10 to $30 for Equiform’s rundown on the races at a particular track on a particular day.
Fotias said he is only one of about 10 people in the world who provide this sort of service.
The 50-year-old entrepreneur, together with his office manager Richard Hanechak, 42, rate each horse, but not simply on the basis of previous performance times. They also account for track conditions, weather and other factors that often get lost in the numbers.
Serious bettors can then use the data to determine which horses are undervalued, and bet on them. A horse is undervalued when the odds, determined by the public’s betting, are longer than the horse’s actual chance of winning.
“The crowd doesn’t get it wrong all the time,” he said. “But they do get it wrong.”
Take, for example, the much-talked-about Funny Cide, the gelding who won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness but failed in his bid to take the Triple Crown at the Belmont Stakes last month.
Although Funny Cide was rated at 12 to 1 to win the Kentucky Derby, Fotias said his own analysis showed the “real” odds to be more like 8 to 1.
So he bet. Heavily.
“I made a big score,” he said.
No serious horse bettor, however, would expect such results every time, Fotias said. Identifying a good value bet — like Funny Cide at the Kentucky Derby — does not insure victory; Funny Cide should still have lost seven times out of 10.
But by consistently betting the undervalued horses over an extended period, serious enthusiasts can walk away with a tidy profit.
“A professional will be very happy with a 10 percent return on their investment,” Fotias said.
Fotias is originally from Grand Rapids, Mich., where he first fell in love with horse racing. He moved to New York in 1986 and opened Equiform 2 1/2 years ago, recruiting Hanechak from a newsstand where a publication Fotias now competes with was sold.
The two work from 8 a.m. to 3 or 4 p.m. in the ground-floor office, surrounded by televisions broadcasting horse races and computers churning statistics as they crunch the numbers that keep the customers winning.
All of which leaves Fotias with only a small amount of time for his own betting, which he does on occasion.
Customers still walk into the store looking for the ceramics studio, only to be confused at the sight of the two men buried in their array of statistics, formulae and technology, Fotias said.
“They see all the televisions and they think we’re some kind of bookie’s joint.”
Reach reporter Alex Ginsberg by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 157.
