If you don’t know who Joe Estes was, then you need to do some reading. Look for the book “The Estes Formula For Breeding Stakes Winners” published by Russell Meerdinck,” which is a compilation of articles Joe wrote when he was the editor of The Blood-Horse back in the day (1935-1936). Joseph A. Estes was a meticulous researcher, and he was a numbers guy. History and pedigree analysts remember him as a real party pooper, because he “poo-pooed” nearly every breeding theory based purely on pedigree and compiled statistics to back up his opinion.