November 29, 2008

Cigar Day

The Cigar Mile at Aqueduct is the lone Grade 1 race around the country today, but there's something for everyone on today's stakes menu. Like juveniles? There's a quartet (Remsen, Demoiselle, Ky. Jockey Club, Golden Rod) of Grade 2 dirt stakes for 2-year-olds at Aqueduct and Churchill. Like grass? Hollywood's got the G3 Turf Express for sprinters and G3 Generous for 2-year-olds, while Churchill's got the ungraded Grand Canyon and Caressing for 2-year-olds. Like big wheels? It's Breeders' Crown night at The Meadowlands. Still hungry? Stay up until 1:20 a.m. ET for the Japan Cup.

Closer to home, this is the toniest day of the Aqueduct fall meeting but the three big stakes came up a mixed bag.

The Demoiselle looks like a virtual walkover for Sky Diva, the Frizette winner who was a strong third to Stardom Bound in the BC Juvenile Fillies. The only other stakes-winner is the longest shot in the field of six, 15-1 Stormy's Smile, who won a statebred stakes at 75-1 last time out. I'll stand alone with Sky Diva on 80 percent of my multirace bets, backing up with a dash of Springside and Bluegrass Princess, the two closers who could benefit from a lively pace among the three frontrunners drawn to the inside.

I've never seen a Remsen quite like today's: Not a single entrant has ever even run in a stakes race! No one's returning from the Nashua (which was unnecessarily boosted from a G3 to a G2 for next year), and you've got four maiden winners and three N1x winners -- and those N1x victories were at Delaware, Keeneland and Philadelphia, since they apparently can't make a N1x for 2-year-olds fill in New York anymore. Five of the seven entrants are making their third career start including logical favorite Old Fashioned, a 15-length winner at Delaware last out with a field-high 96 Beyer.

The Cigar Mile, however, is as tough a race to handicap as you'll find all year and perhaps the only Grade 1 stakes where the only previous G1 winners (Tale of Ekati and Visionnaire) are both 12-1 on the line. You've got sprinters like Kodiak Kowboy stretching out, grizzled routers like Wanderin Boy turning back,  big-figure winners like Bribon and Storm Play making their graded-stakes debuts, and Monterey Jazz coming in off a seven-month layoff. Nor are Harlem Rocker and Arson Squad impossible. Sheesh. Figure this one out, which I can't, and you'll get paid at a square price.

The Cigar is the last Grade 1 race in New York until the Wood Memorial/Carter card in April, and the inner track is scheduled to open Wednesday. It's that time of year: The 2nd at Aqueduct, a statebred MSW, just went to 7-1 Giant Ryan, giving trainer Bisnath Parboo what looks like his first victory as a trainer after a 0-for-60 run in 2008. Parboo had finished first in a race once, when Western Decision appeared to score by a head back on April 26 at Aqueduct, but was disqualified and placed second that day.

6:00 pm: Turned out to be far from a festive Holidayfest card at Aqueduct, as the popular 7-year-old Wanderin Boy had to be put down after breaking down during the Cigar Mile and the 2-year-old filly Springside is facing surgery after breaking a bone moments after winning the Demoiselle by 9 1/2 lengths.

In between, Old Fashioned won the Remsen by 7 1/4 lengths under a hold, stamping himself a leading classic prospect for 2009 for owner Rick Porter and trainer Larry Jones, second in the last two Kentucky Derbies with Hard Spun and Eight Belles.

Springside came roaring from off a solid pace after 1-5 (0.35-1) Sky Diva couldn't get past frontrunner Ain't Love Grand and got leg-weary in upper stretch. Springside, a Canadian-based Awesome Again filly, blew past them and stopped the timer in 1:51.71 but appeared to take a bad step just past the wire.

Old Fashioned went right to the front in the Remsen, was all alone through a pokey 1:14.18 (vs.1:12.65 in the Demoiselle 30 minutes earlier), got one whack from Dominguez in midstretch and won in a laugher. The gray son of Unbridled's Song from the Meadowlake mare Collect Call sold for $800k as a yearling in 2007.

The Cigar Mile ended in controversy as Harlem Rocker reached the wire a nose to the good of Tale of Ekati after a mile in 1:35.01, but was disqualified and placed second for dropping over on the runner-up in the stretch. It wasn't a clear-cut takedown and horses have stayed up after committing greater sins. No question that Harlem Rocker did come over, but it's debatable whether he was clear of Tale of Ekati when he did.

As expected, the public was all over the place in the Cigar Mile, sending 6 of the 9 starters off at between 7-1 and 9.70-1 (Harlem Rocker, the longest shot in the field.) Monterey Jazz, who set the pace of 1:09.42, faded to sixth as the 3.10-1 favorite.

Earlier on the card, the Elusive Quality 2-year-old Quality Road made a splashy debuty, winning by 2 3/4 lengths in 1:16.11 for 6.5f, which is going to come up a fast number on a somewhat dull track. The two races preceding it, also for 2-year-old maidens (albeit statebreds and $75k maiden claimers) were timed in 1:11.86 and 1:11.74.

Wanderin Boy, a Stone Farm homebred by Seeking the Gold, won 9 of 25 starts and $1.2 million during five seasons of racing including the 2006 Ben Ali and Brooklyn. He also ran second to four different champions in Grade 1 races: to Invasor in the 2006 Pimlico Special, to Bernardini in the 2006 Jockey Club Gold Cup, to Lawyer Ron in the 2007 Whitney and to Curlin in the Jockey Club Gold Cup eight weeks ago.

Posted by Steven Crist on Nov 29, 2008 at 1:08:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (40)

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November 25, 2008

Stuffing

Here's the Thanksgiving Weekend lineup of 14 graded stakes, four of them Grade 1's and all at Aqueduct, Churchill or Hollywood:

Thursday's featured Fall Highweight Handicap at Aqueduct is not a graded race this year but was among the 10 currently ungraded races that are being elevated to G3 status next year, part of the annual tinkering by the Graded Stakes Committee that was announced earlier today. A few quick reactions to the announced changes:

  --I'm not clear why the Pat O'Brien at Del Mar needed to be upgraded from a G2 to a G1. This now creates a summertime coastal inequity: Del Mar's two sprints for older males are now both G1's (the Bing Crosby and the O'Brien) while Saratoga's Vanderbilt is a G2 and the Forego is a G1.

--Similarly, why upgrade Keeneland's Madison from a G2 to a G1 without doing the same for Belmont's Gallant Bloom? Just because Ventura won it last year? It's hard to see much difference between the two races for older filly sprinters.

--And if it sounds like I'm just whining about New York races not being upgraded, I see no reason why the Jamaica Handicap at Belmont deserved a boost from G2 to G1 status. Top 3-year-old grass horses should be running against their elders by October, not being encouraged to stay out of those spots with a G1 restricted by age so late in the season.

--The GSC deserves credit for not bestowing Grade 1 status on all three of the Breeders' Cup races introduced last year that were eligible for grades for the first time in 2009. They made the F&M Sprint and Dirt Mile G1 races but gave only a G2 to the Juvenile Turf. Here's hoping they're even more conservatiove next year when the newer Juvenile Turf Fillies, Marathon and Turf Sprint are eligible for grading. None of them shold be given G1 status.

Posted by Steven Crist on Nov 25, 2008 at 8:48:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (33)

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November 23, 2008

Bomby, Not Balmy

2:45 pm: Halfway home in the Sunday one-day carry at Aqueduct, but so's the rest of the world. After a bomby (and not at all balmy -- it's freezing here) weekend including a $143.50 winner in today's second, they've been running like trained piglets since the pick-6 began:

That 70-1 winner in race 2, Fourteen and Out, led to a $50k early pick-4 that would have paid on 3/4 with half the field in the the fifth race. Fourteen and Out was a turf-to-dirt, route-to-sprint turnback, who had the field's third-best fast-track fig if you were willing to go seven starts back and overlook his most recent six losses by a combined 80 lengths.

Sheik's Serenade wasn't favored in the 6th until the last two minutes when she was finally bet ahead of Treasure Trail, Zenyatta's 2-year-old half-sister, who was a plodding fourth in her debut and a plodding fifth today.

So I'm 6x1x5 or 3x3x2 the rest of the way, the single being Stormin Normandy in the featured $65k Itaka Stakes for statebreds going a mile. Stormin Normandy is at his best at six furlongs, but looks like the lone speed in a thin field and I'm hoping he and Prado will hypnotize the others early and just make it to the wire.

3:35 pm: The Shaughraun at $19.80 just made things a little more interesting, though this is the kind of winner whose value is hard to gauge: The Shaughraun was technically the 8th betting choice in a field of 10, but this was everybody's spread race, with 8 horses were between 7-2 and 8-1, the winner one of three 8-1 shots, and the 9th and 10th choices were both over 60-1.

3:55 pm: Never mind. Didn't expect any of today's racing at Aqueduct to remind me of Belmont Stakes day, but that's what the feature felt like around the far turn as Stormin Normandy, wearing the IEAH silks, pulled a Big Brown and was virtually eased as the field ran by him one by one. Big Truck wasn't much better fading badly after pressing him, and Icabad Crane got going way too late and could manage only second to the hard-to-like Love Abroad ($34.80).

Worse, a few people did like him: Everyone's covered in the finale, ranging from 5 winners at $35k with favored Hangingbyathread to one winner at $179k with the 3,4,5,8 and 10.

4:20 pm: A dead-heat in the finale between 6-1 Yield Bogey and 15-1 Blues Street. So instead of two winners at $89k with Yield Bogey or one at $179k with Blues Street, there were three winning tickets with either, worth $59k each.

This raises a longstanding theoretical point: Why aren't pick-4 and pick-6 pools split with two payoffs when there's a dead-heat the way that win pools, daily doubles and (usually) pick-3's are? That way, $79k would have been allocated to each horse, and there would have been two winners at $39k with Yield Bogey and one at $79k with Blues Street, reflecting the respective difficulty of coming up with each.

The argument for doing it that way is fairness and consistency; the argument against is that if there were two dead-heats in a pick-six sequence, there would be four pick-6 payoffs, with a possibility for further confusion if there were also gate scratches with transfers to a winning favorite. Still, it doesn't seem fair you would get the same pick-6 payoff with a 50-1 shot who dead-heated with a 1-5 shot. Whaddya think?

Posted by Steven Crist on Nov 23, 2008 at 3:08:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (23)

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November 21, 2008

Compuhell

I'm slowly emerging from a day and a half of computer hell that began when I installed the new PC game Fallout 3 on my laptop yesterday and settled in to play it. The game launched flawlessly, the scene-setting movie looked spectacular on the screen, and I was quickly drawn into a story where it was the year 2070 and I was a resident of Vault 101, a post-apocalyptic fallout shelter and....suddenly the screen froze. I waited and waited, then tried to shut the program down. No response. I turned off the computer, then restarted it and...nothing. Power on, but a blank screen and no boot.

I spent the next four hours on the phone with Dell Technical Support, a lot of it on hold, and agreed to pay $49.95 for a diagnosis from a technician. This involved my learning more about how to disassemble a laptop than I ever wanted to know, as piece by piece I removed possible problem-causers, including the memory cards, hard drive and optical disk. Nothing did the trick. Finally the technician said the culprit had to be my video card, so now my only option was to ship the machine to Dell to be repaired. He switched me to the Repair Department, which had to process the order for an Official Return Box I needed. After 15 minutes on hold, there was an announcement that the Repair Department was now closed for the night and to try back tomorrow.

I spent today trying to find third-party help. I've been using the laptop exclusively since Saratoga and not backing things up (I know, I know), so was getting panicky about possibly losing four months of files and data. I was quoted prices of anywhere from $300 to $600 to attempt to rescue my data, along with warnings that it sounded like my laptop was "fried" and the data might be lost. Finally I ran across an ad for a local one-man shop, a guy named Mitch who told me to relax and bring my laptop over to his basement. He took the hard drive out of the laptop, put it in an case with a USB cable attached to it, and sent me home to copy any files I needed on to the old desktop I reconnected and am now using. It worked perfectly and tomorrow he'll start working on repairing the laptop.

So long story short, that's why there's no Sunday column this week and that's why I didn't play the little $29k carry at Aqueduct today, where the results looked juicy enough (parlay was $64k) to double-carry into Saturday, but there was one winner at $92,444. A pity, especially because Aqueduct's Saturday card looks like about the best one so far at the meet, with three allowance races, four maiden-specials and the G3 Discovery. I think I'm still too singed from compuhell to attack that $251k carry at Hollywood later tonight, but if I rally I might take a look. Hmm, still two hours until the pick-6 starts.

Oh, and I'm giving up on PC gaming and getting an Xbox or a Playstation at the mall this weekend.

Posted by Steven Crist on Nov 21, 2008 at 8:59:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (29)

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November 18, 2008

Considering Curlin

I keep sitting down to write something about Curlin but there are still so many moving parts to his story that's it's difficult to know precisely where he stands and what to say.

He's as retired as a horse who's not officially retired can be. Jess Jackson, who owns 80 percent of him, put out an oddly-timed press release Saturday night saying that the colt would be retired to stud next year, as expected, but Jackson also deliberately rasied the tantalizing possibility of one final start before that. But where? Jackson has ruled out the Japan Cup Dirt because of quarantine issues and, through trainer Steve Asmussen, also nixed the Clark Handicap at Churchill Downs Nov. 29 due to its mere Grade 2 status and $400,000 purse. The only remaining Grade 1 race for him on the calendar is the $300k Cigar Mile at Aqueduct the same day, but nominations closed Nov. 15 and Curlin was not among them.

It seems likelier he'll be paraded for the fans on Clark Day and then sent to a Kentucky breeding farm than that he'll face the starter again.

Meanwhile, Jackson's representatives were in a Frankfort, Ky. courtroom Monday making an unusual argument on behalf of a horse owner -- that his prize runner is worth less than people may think. Jackson is trying to buy out the remaining 20 percent of Curlin and thinks the fair value is $4 million, as opposed to the at least $6 milliion the share was valued at this summer and perhaps as much as $10 million at the end of last year.

Funny how those valuations change depending on whether you're buying or selling. It was only a few months ago that the owners of Big Brown, a far less accomplished racehorse and one with an arguably less attractive pedigree, was being widely labelled as a stallion worth $50 million. Big Brown, like the other horses of the last decade who won two-thirds of the Triple Crown and not much else -- Charismatic, Funny Cide, Afleet Alex, Smarty Jones -- is unlikely ever to be voted into the Hall of Fame. Curlin is a first-ballot cinch for 2014.

Curlin broke Cigar's record for earnings by an American-based horse, he won a Breeders' Cup Classic, two Jockey Club Gold Cups,a Dubai World Cup, a Preakness and at least one Horse of the Year title (two if justice prevails in January.) Yet without a Triple Crown bid, or a lengthy unbeaten streak like Cigar's, Curlin never quite captured the public imagination. That may say as much about racing's diminished profile as it does about Curlin or sports fans, but I don't think it's fair to say "Racing Failed to Promote Curlin" as one website headline alleges. The New York Racing Association poured unprecedented single-horse promotional efforts into Curlin's appearances in the Woodward and Jockey Club Gold Cup, but there just wasn't a strong enough hook to move the attendance or coverage needles.

Curlin undertook as ambitious a campaign as a 4-year-old can these days -- an ad-hoc quintet of the World Cup, Foster, Woodward, Gold Cup, and Classic -- but that's just not an organized or recognized series that resonates beyond the sport's existing fans. Maybe there's no way to make a top older horse a household name, and I'm unconvinced that this is a particularly pressing problem for racing or that solving it would significantly buoy the game.

Sportswriters spend a lot of time lamenting the early retirement of racehorses and blaming racing's ills on this phenomenon. Sure, it's disappointing for us existing fans, but how exactly did Curlin's staying in training as a 4-year-old attract new fans or raise the sport's profile?

Posted by Steven Crist on Nov 18, 2008 at 6:16:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (51)

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November 15, 2008

Stuyvesant Day

3:00 pm: Got off to a decent start but then hit a snag just now in the third leg of today's Aqueduct pick-6, which had a one-day $29k carry from Friday's slopfest into today's:

The usual "B" column is titled "B+" above because my main ticket was an all A's and B's one, not that it's alive any more.

The toteboard solved my problem in the first leg, a six-horse field of 2-year-old maidens that numbered three firsters and three who had run. The best by far of the latter trio was the Baffert trainee Mayor Marv, who has some ability but was disappointing in both of his previous well-bet starts. My approach was that if any of the firsters took serious money, I would lean away from the favorite,and one did exactly that -- Monk's Creek from Kiatran McLaughlin, who was bombed in the race 3-4 double to a quarter the price of the Zito and Imperio firsters. So I made Monk's Creek an A, Mayor Marv a B, and used the rest of them as C's. Monk's Creek, who closed at 19-10, led into the stretch, then 11-10 Mayor Marv ran right up to him and looked like a sure winner, but fortunately for me Mayor Marv just refused to go by.

My miscalculation in the 6th, the third leg, was that Rollers would either outrun fellow front-runner Accredit or the two would run each other into the ground and set the table for Pictural. Instead, Accredit won the duel and drew off as the 3-1 second choice but only a C with me. Pictural never got a call while Rollers faded badly from his early efforts. I guess the good news is that I'm alive at all after three losing favorites, but the winners were all second choices and I'm just 2x4x1 the rest of the way with a very shaky single in the finale. I obviously didn't have a solid opinion in the featured G3 Stuyvesant (race 8), since I used four of the six entrants remaining after scratches as A's.

3:20 pm: Four races, four second choices, as 2.30-1 Cool Tales outsplashed 10-1 Rushing Stag with 2-1 favorite Cheetah Trail a dull fifth.

While we're killing time until the Stuyvesant, here are some entertaining pp's to peruse that I pulled down while riting a Sunday column about some statebred stars who began their careers with long undefeated streaks:

Download HallowedDreams.pdf

Download HappyTicket.pdf

Download PeppersPride.pdf

Download TinCupChalice.pdf

3:50 pm:  Dry Martini went last to the first to win the Stuyvesant as the 4-1 third choice with 2-1 favorite Solar Flare last in a field of six. Dry Martini looked like he was turning into a serious older horse two summers ago when he won the Cornhusker, but this was his first victory since then following a long absence and three trainer changes.

That leaves me singled to the favorite for a $7,668 payoff on an $880 investment. The good news: I'm getting almost 8-1 on a 5-2 shot. The bad news: I would never bet $880 to win on Proud Ruler. And it's annoying that I didn't like Accredit more because the payouts to the other logical contenders in the finale are all in the $10k-to-$20k range. Five of the eight are covered; double-carry with the 1, 3 or 11.

4:13 pm: The finale went off in thick fog, but not thick enough that I couldn't see Proud Ruler running an unthreatening third most of the way around as Masala, slammed to 5-2, was easily best in his second start, transitioning from a turf sprint to a slop mile. Nice payoff of $14,379 for five second choices and a third choice.

Commenter jlove asked about how I would hedge going into the final leg. In this case, I didn't. It's a lot easier to take some equity out of your position if you're alive to a few of them, and even more so if the only ones who can beat you are double-digit odds. No such opportunity here.

The rain is starting up again here; I wouldn't spend too much time handicapping tomorrow's two scheduled grass races until it's announced what surface they'll be on. 

Posted by Steven Crist on Nov 15, 2008 at 3:02:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

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November 12, 2008

Tickets

Not to dwell on Sunday's good fortune, but since several of you asked how the A-B-C play in the last post translated to 10 tickets and a $1,026 investment, perhaps my shorthand's been a little too short. Here's how it worked out -- you can scroll down to the previous post if you want to see the A-B-C breakdown for each race.

 

The A-B-C method requires that you get home one of the following three configurations:

--6 A's (ticket #1 above); or

--5 A's and 1 B or C (tickets #2-7); or

--4 A's and 2 B's (tickets #8-10.)

In the array above, I've boldfaced the "deviations" from the main ticket, and highlighted in yellow the winning tickets.

In practice, you can usually cut down on the number of tickets you put in by combining some of them. This play is not a particularly good example of that, but even here you could (and I did) combine tickets 1&2 by going "1,4,5,8" in the first leg, followed by the five A's, for a $216 ticket that combined the separate $54 ticket #1 and $162 ticket #2.

Consos still confuse people and I usually have to write out the tickets in this fashion to figure out how many I had -- 11 in this case, Here's how it works: On ticket #2, I got three consos, for the first five winners plus losing #'s 9,10 and 13 in the last leg; on ticket #7, I got one conso, for loser #1 in the first leg followed by five winners; and on the winning 6/6 #9 ticket, I got seven more consos, one for each losing horse on the ticket (#'s 5 and 8 in leg 1, #'s 1 and 2 in leg 2, #'s 3 and 7 in leg 5, and #5 in leg 6.)

Hope that clears things up. There's also, ahem, a book about all of this.

--That $21, 741 carryover from Saturday night in the Meadowlands pick-4 drew a robust $91,816 pool on the Monday afternoon card. (The previous Monday, the pool was only $35,200.) So even after 15 percent takeout of $13,722, they paid out $99,835 on Monday betting of $91,816.

I didn't play it particularly well, leaning too heavily on third-leg favorite Stevil, but managed to get 6-5 on my money when it paid $703.10 for each $1. Without the carryover money, it would have paid $550.

I had half an hour to kill when the sequence was over and the only thing NYRA Rewards was still taking at that point was Portland Meadows, so in a moment of pure degeneracy I downloaded the PM pp's and made my first-ever parimutuel wager on Oregon racing. There were some familiar names from my summer Emerald Downs pick-4 playing, but there were also horses coming out of races at tracks with three-letter abbreviations I'd never seen before -- Brn? Prv? Til?

I put together a little 2x4x6 caveman pick-3 play. Bingo -- but alas it came back only $33.90 for each $48 invested.

Posted by Steven Crist on Nov 12, 2008 at 2:10:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (17)

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November 9, 2008

One Lucky Weasel

So who was the one lucky weasel who hit the pick-6 at Aqueduct today for $56k and deprived us all of a carryover into Wednesday? He's come forward to identify himself, and here's his account of how it happened:

"I usually don't even play the pick-6 without a carryover, but I've been on a roll lately and today's Aqueduct card seemed tailor-made for how I like to play. It was New York Stallion Stakes Day and the sequence included five stakes races, all with a heavy favorite, three of whom I thought were legit and two who I wanted to play against. So I played an A-B-C array where I singled Tall Poppi (4th), Underserviced (6th) and Classic Pack(7th), pretty much requiring that two of the three of them had to win, while using three A's in the two other stakes, where I wasn't sold on Bella Atrice or Spanky Fischbein as short-priced favorites. Here's how my 10-ticket, $1,026 play broke down:

"Once Tall Poppi lost at 3-5 to 10-1 Looking at Her in the first leg, I had to go 5 A's or 4 A's and one B the rest of the way. Once Underserviced and Classic Pack both won, I was alive 3x5 into the last two legs. When Mor Chances won the 8th, I was pleasantly shocked to see that mine were the only live tickets into the finale. The payoff was $56,246 with any of my five horses and a carryover with the other four. I didn't have Storm Harbor, who led until upper stretch, but my quintet included all three who ran by him.

"The parlay was 'only' $20,540 and the payoff was nearly three times as good, even with a winning (by a desperate nose) 1-2 shot. Nothing was longer than a fourth betting choice but Underserviced was the only winning favorite. I guess the keys were beating Bella Atrice at 8-5 and Spanky Fischbein at 6-5, and thinking Classic Pack, not 3-2 Logic Way, was the stickout in the 7th. Also, since there was no carryover, I probably was one of the few people putting $1k or more into an $89,488 pool."

If the narrative voice above sounds familiar...okay, busted, the weasel was yours truly. 

After failing to connect on a five-digit pick-six all year, I've now had three in the last 15 days. I believe this is largely random, a reflection of the roller-coaster ride of chasing high-risk/high-reward wagers. Maybe having a temporarily fat account balance led me to play a little bigger and looser today than I normally would on a non-carry card, and if I'd whittled the play down to $600 I easily could have whittled my way out of it.

But I also can't help noting that the three I've hit have had one thing in common: No dreaded turf sprints.

I know it's more fun to read about near-misses and bad beats but don't worry, I'm sure we'll be back to that in no time.

---Sorry about no Aqueduct carryover into Wednesday, but there's an unusual carry we can chase tomorrow at The Meadowlands. Somehow, no one hit the pick-4 Saturday night, when the 6th-through-9th race winners paid $21.60, $9.40, $7.80 and $26.20, so there's a $21,741 pick-four carryover into Monday's afternoon card. The sequence, which starts at 2:45 pm ET, is entirely on dirt, with two six-furlong sprints and two mile-and-70 routes. With a takeout of only 15 percent and a Monday afternoon pool likely to draw well under $100k, the $21k carryover makes it a rare positive-expectation pick-4 pool.

Posted by Steven Crist on Nov 9, 2008 at 8:17:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (33)

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November 6, 2008

Double-Carry Thursday

Off to a decent if chalky start in the $152k Aqueduct double-carry, with a first-leg single and 6-1 A getting me through the first third of the sequence:

My position's slightly better than it looks because I put all three B's in the last three legs on the same ticket, so I'm good with either a 4A, 3A/1B, 3A/1C, 2A/2B or a 1A/3B the rest of the way.

I thought the trickiest race was the one with the smallest field, the five-horse featured 8th. It was tempting to single Songster, who would have been 2-5 against these in his prime, but he hasn't been out in a year and a half after a brief and failed stud career. Grand Champion is equally questionable, returning from a long layoff last time out with a stinker at 3-5 in the Maryland Million Sprint.

The upcoming 6th is the only race that was left on the grass and I just couldn't make a case for anyone but the three top-fig favorites, but the rain-softened course adds a wild card to the mix.

3:55 pm: Things broke about as well as I could have asked for to get me alive to 5 of the 7 runners in the finale. Here come the will-pays (my five in bold):

1-$13,395

2-carryover

3-$13,751

5-$31,409

6-$376,908

7-$376,908

9-$34,264

Who's the #7 I'm alive to for $376K? It's Jaimie's Gem, 0-for-20 and off since June but...his career-best fig did come on a muddy track and if Afleet Aya (#1) and Dove Nest (#5) duel each other into defeat and the race falls apart....

Guess I have to save with #6 Cat Radio (if #2 wins, there's a $376k carry and five consos at around $800 each is consolation enough,) but Cat Radio's only 6-1 at the moment.

4:15 pm: There was a fraction of a second when Jaimie's Gem launched a five-wide bid at the four leaders and I allowed myself to dream of $376k....but she was done a second later and the race chalked out. Afleet Aya took back today and it worked out well for her as she ran down Firsttodance, with Dove Nest third and Marian B fourth. I'll take the $13k....no wait, the payout somehow went down about $1500 to $12,395, I guess because Afleet Aya was the narrow post-time favorite and a few tickets scratched into her. Still, a good day at the office.

First person to point out I could have hit it for $72 by just playing the all-A ticket, instead of spending another $1620 on backups, is a rotten egg.

PS--I just flipped over to TVG, where they're running a somewhat misleading notice on the screen under a post parade from Hollywood: "Due to a decision by the TOC [Thoroughbred Owners of California], you will not be able to wager from home on this race if you live outside of California."

Not exactly. I live in New York and I can wager on the Hollywood races from home through my NYRA Rewards account. It's TVG and other non-racetrack ADW's that you can't use.

Posted by Steven Crist on Nov 6, 2008 at 2:31:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (34)

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November 5, 2008

The Morning After

I disappeared for a few days to have some titanium posts implanted in my jawbone, and emerged from a prescription-opiate haze today to find that voters across the country made some historic Election Day decisions,approving slot machines in Maryland and banning greyhound racing in Massachusetts.

The slots vote will revitalize Maryland racing in the short term, allocating $140 million annually to purses and capital expensitures at the state's tracks while  stemming the flight of Maryland customers to racinos in neighboring states. The passage of the slots measure should be a shot in the arm for Magna Entertainment, which announced today it will seek a slots license for Laurel Race Course.

The Massachusetts greyhound ban is extremely troubling on several counts. The greyhound ban failed narrowly when it was on the ballot eight years ago but passed 56-to-44 percent this time around, despite industry improvements that should have scuttled it entirely. The industry is highly regulated, has a comprehensive injury-reporting system and an adoption program that places virtually all runners, but animal-rights activists prevailed with a well-financed campaign of misinformation. The vote will force Rayhnham-Taunton and Wonderland to stop racing by the end of next year, by which time the triumphant anti-racing zealots may well be turning their attention to banning horse racing as well.

--Meanwhile, there's a $47,821 carryover at Aqueduct today, the third carryover in the first five days of racing at The Big A. Juvenile turf races have accounted for a lot of the big prices, such as Sunday's 4th, where a four-way photo ended with a 39-1 edging a 74-1 with a 3-5 favorite running fourth, burying bridgejumpers and producing show payoffs of $46.20, $125.00 and $12.20. Today's card is deep and tricky and I'll pass and hope for a double-carry into Thursday.

--There was a lot of good 2-year-old dirt racing at Aqueduct and Churchill Downs over the weekend. Breakwater Edison and Hello Broadway got gaudy Beyers of 98 and 95 running 1-2 in the Nashua, and the filly Sara Louise got a 90 winning the Pocahontas at Churchill, six points better than Capt. Candyman Can's victory in the Iroquois on the same card. Break Water Edison, a good second in the Saratoga Special before being thrashed by Vineyard Haven with rail draws in both the Hopeful and Champagne, heads for Florida while Hello Broadway looks like the favorite for the Remsen Nov. 29.

--Update 2:25 pm: It's 1-10 we're looking at a doube-carry into Thursday at Aqueduct after Jacqueline Davis got her first career winner aboard 64-1 Blue Hill Bay in leg 2. Not that there were all that many live tickets after 14-1 Wanda's Double scored one race earlier. Davis is the 21-year-old daughter of retired jockey Robbie Davis.

--Update 3:45 pm: It's official: Nobody's alive, and there's a $152,918 carry into Thursday's card. Races 4 and 6 (legs 1 and 3) are scheduled for the turf, but there's a lot of rain in the forecast.

Posted by Steven Crist on Nov 5, 2008 at 1:03:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (19)

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