Tom Brohamer was probably the first of the “Sartin Guys” to become the real deal. When I discovered the Sartin Methodology in 1987, Tom’s now-famous “Brohamer Model” was already being used. Of all the things that catapulted me to becoming a winning player that year, it was the Brohamer Model that had the biggest impact.
Tom’s concept was a simple one, really. He taught that each track-surface-distance had a current-and-ever-changing profile of what it took to win. This put THE ANSWER within the grasp of any player who was willing to put forth the time to keep a track model.
There were actually two different components to the model. The first simply addressed which columns on the worksheet for a race were to be considered in the handicapping.
The second one was commonly referred to as “Percentage Early,” and represented the energy distribution of each horse at the first call. The idea was that there would be a range of acceptable PE%. The expectation was that too much early left the horse gasping at the end of the race, and that too little early energy left him too far behind to ever catch up.
I was never successful in the use of Percent Early, but know many players – Tom being one of them, of course – who swear by it to this day.
To this day my own handicapping process is still influenced by the work of Tom Brohamer, although it morphed drastically since around 2002 or so.
My belief now is that a model should be kept based not only upon track-surface-distance, but also the amount of pace pressure in the race. Of course, to apply such a model demands quite a bit of past data, making this approach almost unusable for all but the big database guys. That is why I worked hard to develop the 1-2-3 System as it stands today.