Many racing fans feel such a natural attraction to the sights, sounds and excitement of the track that they believe they were born to be horseplayers. Tyler Hoffman might be the only one who can back up that claim with photographic evidence.
In a photo taken in 1992 by his mother, Tracy, 4-week-old Tyler is in the arms of his father, Alan, alongside his grandfather, Ron Kojis. In the background is the Santa Anita racetrack marquee, and at least two of the three guys in the picture are looking at the Daily Racing Form. It’s the first time Tyler’s parents took him out of the house.
The family’s love of handicapping horses was passed down through the generations starting with Kojis, an avid weekend bettor, and Alan’s father Dale, who calculated his own speed figures.
“My parents met in the paddock at Santa Anita in 1981,” Tyler said, in case you want more proof of his parimutuel pedigree.
From those beginnings, Tyler was off and running as a racegoer.
“(Dad) taught me how to read the (past performances),” said Hoffman, 33, a San Gabriel Valley native and Pasadena resident. “I’d read him the odds out of the program and he’d write them in the Racing Form. I’d take all the turf races, and I’d give him the closing quarters (times) of all the horses. I was good at fractions much earlier than I should have been.
“It became my passion.”
Hoffman has parlayed that passion into documented success as a handicapper and bettor. Starting Friday, he will be one of more than 600 contestants in the 26th National Horseplayers Championship at the Horseshoe Las Vegas hotel. It will be his eighth time – and his father’s 14th – playing in racing’s biggest tournament, which will offer $5 million in prize money, the winner to earn $825,000 and an Eclipse Award as Horseplayer of the Year.
A player has to qualify for the three-day NHC, and Hoffman did so by finishing third in the Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge at Del Mar last November, turning his $7,500 tournament bankroll into $115,500 in wagering profits plus $152,100 in prize money.
That’s a long way from his first tournament triumph, when he won Santa Anita’s ShowVivor contest at age 18 with a more than one-month streak of picking one horse a day who finished third or better. The prize was $3,000.
“I was a college freshman,” Hoffman said. “$3,000 was like $300,000.”
Hoffman, an alum of Gabrielino High School in San Gabriel, went on to the University of Washington, where he studied communications and sales and served as basketball team manager, a job that included recording and editing game and practice film for coach Lorenzo Romar and his staff and players.
Now he works with his father in the family’s general contracting firm, PAG Construction. He and his fiancee, Lauren, a national marketing manager for Live Nation Entertainment, will be married in September. They chose a date between the Del Mar summer and Santa Anita fall meets.
Racing is a hobby, but he said he treats it like a profession.
“He’s smart. He’s always willing to learn new approaches to handicapping,” said Tom Quigley, who knows a lot of serious players as Santa Anita’s VIP player concierge and pre-race handicapping seminar host. “He’s the future (hopefully) of our sport.”
Hoffman, whose best NHC finish was 46th in 2018, recommends tournaments for profit-minded horseplayers in part because prize money isn’t affected by the computer-assisted wagering (CAW) that can drive down parimutuel payoffs with big, late bets. Counting qualifying events, he plays in a tournament almost every week.
In tournaments and everyday play, Hoffman said, his search for horses worth betting on combines the use of a commercial computer program (of the kind found through Google) to narrow down contenders, the hard work of studying video to spot horses who had “subtle trouble” in recent races, and trip handicapping aimed at visualizing how the upcoming race will unfold.
Most of his betting, Hoffman said, is exactas and doubles. He has gone off win betting because of the CAW-induced late odds drops.
Those approaches led to the two winning exacta bets that lifted him to third place in the 2024 Breeders’ Cup tournament: An approximately $30,000 payoff in the Filly and Mare Turf, keying winner Moira (who was nearly 6-1), whom Hoffman spotted having subtle trouble at Woodbine and envisioned getting first run on the leaders. And a six-figure score in the Dirt Mile boxing winner Full Serrano (13-1) with runnerup Post Time (7-1), because Hoffman liked Full Serrano’s combination of early speed and stamina coming out of a second-place finish in the 1 1/4-mile Pacific Classic.
With success like that, it’s no wonder Hoffman said his love for racing has only grown.
“My (gambling) is almost secondary to the handicapping,” he said. “I love the puzzle. I love trying to figure out how a race is going to be run. I love trying to figure out the placement of a horse in a race. Why are they (running here)? Why are they making an equipment change?
“All those little nuances are what I find stimulating. Some people like doing crossword puzzles, they like playing Sudoku. I like handicapping the races.”
Enthusiastic racetracker. Expert handicapper. Potential Horseplayer of the Year.
Clearly the young man was raised right.
Follow horse racing correspondent Kevin Modesti at X.com/KevinModesti.
