JC / Railbird

Betting Archive

Favorites Dominate Pick 6s

Horseplayers hit the pick six at Belmont, Churchill, and Hollywood, which were all offering sizable carryover pots on Wednesday, but favorites dominated the sequence at each track. At Hollywood, the longest price was $9.40 on Charisma Matters in the sixth, and the payout $5,193. Belmont players were saved from an even smaller return when 3-1 Our Top Cat was disqualified and placed second, behind 19-1 Karakorum Thunder, in the day’s finale. Disqualifications are always controversial, and this one was no exception, but Left at the Gate makes a pretty good case that it was justified. Belmont paid $14,026. Churchill players did the best, with a payout of $41,722, largely thanks to longshot Unforgotten in the sixth, who paid $38 to win.

Posted in Betting on June 21, 2007

Hollywood Pick 6

You have to feel sorry for whoever it was holding the lone live pick six ticket going into the ninth race at Hollywood on Sunday. That was one bad beat, losing the chance to take down the entire pool when Candygram finished a head behind Warren’s Kitten. But not too sorry, because now there’s a giant two-day pick six carryover of $850,466 at the track for the rest of us to take a shot at. Let’s take a look at the sequence …
Race 3: 1 1/16m, turf, starter allowance, 3YOs and up. Casual Thunder makes his second start off a layoff, finished third against similar last month … Lisa Lewis sends out Duty Roster, a deep closer stretching out from six furlongs … Rival Islands seemed to like the surface and distance changes he got in his last, where he finished ahead of Casual Thunder by 1 1/2 lengths.
Race 4: 5f, synth, maiden claiming, 2YO fillies. Christopher Paasch, who does pretty well with first timers, sends out Steel Kitten. She’s by Pine Bluff, who bequeaths some class but only scores with around 8% of his firsters … King City Kitty, by freshman sire Gotham City, has shown some speed in the morning and has a solid workout record … Skipper Mike finished second in her debut at the same level and gets blinkers, but has had no works in three weeks … Clever Lady is the most experienced of the bunch and drops from the maiden special weight level.
Race 5: 1m, turf, allowance N1X, 3YOs. Robbos Courage was scratched from Sunday’s Laz Barrera for this softer spot. Finished by less than a length to Euroglide in his last and is making a second start off a layoff. May be the speed in what looks like a paceless race … Bernasconi makes his second US start for trainer Pat Gallagher. Finished third in his last, which was won by Silent Soul (second in the Will Rogers to Wordly). Probably has the most upside … Unusual Suspect looks a cut below, but he’s another making a second start off a layoff and figures to like the distance and surface.
Race 6: 1 1/16m, synth, maiden claiming, 3YOs and up. Bob Baffert sends out Lotta Gamble, who’s making his third career start and dropping from $75,000 to $32,000 here. Flashed a smidge of speed in his last. Could improve … Headcoach is another taking a class drop after disappointing as the favorite in his last start.
Race 7: 6f, synth, allowance N1X, 3YOs and up. Idiot Proof makes his third start off a layoff. Finished fifth in the San Pedro on April 8 after setting the pace, which he’ll likely do here as well. He’ll be tough to beat … Saintly Son goes out for Jeff Mullins, gets a jockey switch to Richard Migliore … Pick Vic will take money off his big Beyer maiden win.
Race 8: 6f, claiming, 4YOs and up, state-bred fillies and mares. O Bee Naki drops to $10,000 from $20,000 after proving herself uncompetitive at the higher level lately. She did win a starter allowance at the distance last November though … Jimmie Pong and Sexy Operator will likely figure in the early pace but I wouldn’t look for either at the end … Star Quality, claimed for $25,000 in February, seems to have found her level at a lower price. She came in second in her last, her first in the money finish in five starts.
—
Wednesday’s pick six pool climbed past $4 million, without my help. I was looking for a way to play until the early afternoon, when I just had to admit my options were a conservative $32 ticket or a big $576 ticket, and I didn’t feel that great about either one. I added the pick six to my repertoire early this year, after circling around the wager for a while. My bankroll isn’t huge, but when I looked at my wagering records last year, it became pretty clear that I do best with wins, exactas, and multi-race exotics. Playing an occasional pick six actually made sense. But I’m rigorous about the plays — I like to there to be no more than one race I’m going into deeply because it looks chaotic and I prefer one solid single. I’ve had a little luck with the approach, and on Wednesday, it saved me some money when I had to concede that there just wasn’t a good play for me. If I’d gone with the $32 ticket, I’d have hit 3-for-6. With the $576, 4-for-6. Ouch.

Posted in Betting on May 22, 2007

Shut Out

– Fleetheart wins, pays $4.80. I make nothing. My online betting service is an AmericaTab outlet and I’m shut out of Southern California and New York, the two circuits I play with any seriousness, thanks to the TrackNet-ADW mess, until — like a lot of other players — I go through the bother of opening and funding a second acount. So, all I could do last night was admire how the four-year-old filly dueled for the early lead and then rebuffed a game Lochinvar’s Gold in the stretch to win by half a length, and console myself with the thought that I really didn’t want to play a 7-5 shot, even one who looked as much like a sure thing as she did.
– The champ is back! In his first work since winning the Dubai World Cup, Invasor breezed four furlongs at Belmont on Wednesday morning (NYRA). Invasor is scheduled to start next in the Suburban on June 30.

Posted in Betting on May 10, 2007

Polytrack Unfair, Punters Claim

Trainers, owners, and jockeys have lots of praise for Polytrack, but British horseplayers are less than happy with race results on the synthetic surface:

“The reputation of Polytrack is tremendously high with racing professionals,” says Mordin, “and you can see why — it reduces abandonments and increases betting turnover — but it erodes the main difference between horserace betting and all other forms of gambling, which is that you can hope to make a profit through the use of skill. Races are harder to predict and are unquestionably more competitive. When you’re betting on a horse, you hope that it has a significant edge. Polytrack denies you that.”

Seems that since Polytrack was installed at the first British racecourse four years ago, the percentage of favorites at that track winning races has dropped from 36% to 30% and that of horses with odds greater than 10-1 winning has increased from 19% to 23%, which apparently has reduced wagering “to the level of a lottery, almost.” It’s that “almost” that kills the complaint. I haven’t played Turfway, which is the only American track with the surface, but my understanding of Polytrack is that it eliminates track biases, allowing horses with different running styles to win. That’s the kind of change that would seem to make handicapping and betting a lot more interesting — which is exactly what the numbers cited above suggests, as does the 82.5% increase in handle that Turfway has seen since January 1 — if horseplayers are willing to change their approaches to handicapping.

Anyone who plays California regularly will have to adjust to synthetics starting in 2008. The state racing board passed a motion a few weeks ago mandating the state’s racetracks install Polytrack or another synthetic surface by the end of 2007, which has Andrew Beyer fretting about “uniformity”:

If the Polytrack advocates prevail, and all racetracks are basically the same, the game will lose many of its subtleties …

Beyer is specifically concerned that California tracks, “the only place in the racing world where horses regularly speed a half-mile in :44 flat or faster and keep running,” will lose their distinctive speed-favoring qualities. Patrick of Pulling Hair and Betting Horses posted a pretty good response to Beyer’s worry: “The surface is fair … that means good speed will still kill in racing, and cheap speed will set up for stalkers, and ludicrous speed will be used on ships in Spaceballs and set up for closers.”

More: Jennie Rees reports that all running styles are faring well on the surface, with speedy front-runners still winning a good percentage of races:

Turfway has been charting the running styles of winners since Jan. 1. Elliston said statistics show races being won by 42.6 percent front-runners (horses never farther back than second or a length off the lead), 22.7 percent stalkers (never farther back than fourth or four lengths), 10.1 percent midpack horses (never farther back than sixth or seven lengths) and 24.6 percent deep closers (back of sixth and at least eight lengths back early).

Posted in Betting on February 28, 2006