Perhaps it\'s the benefit of hosting the Saratoga Weekend Seminars and having the pleasure of feeding the TG crew, but Monday I was able to nail the Hall of Fame feature (TD Vance, $35, EX $200+, Tri $3000+) off the figs... Wednesday, after a busy day at the Barbecue, I literally glanced for less than a minute at the DMR 5th before coming away with a 2-3-7 exacta box which promptly paid $131 with $22 Anzari on top.
In both cases, patterns on the winners and runners up were nearly jumping off the pages. Vance\'s eligibility for laurels in the HOF on Monday was obvious enough, but became glaring with Motion choosing to give Kabel a \'thank you\' ride and payday in a US stake (when house pilot Dominguez could have had the mount). As it was, Dominguez ended up on the place horse when Bailey got KO\'d earlier in the day.
I had the rare opportunity to spend two weeks around Julian and recieve his sage counsel which has helped re-focus my wagering approach. I had to share these two successful punts with the board, as they strictly were the result of regular review of TG and the growing ability to spot likely top contenders.
Hope to meet more of you this weekend at my Carolina Barbecue. And thanks to Jerry, Bill, Julian and the attendees for already making the Seminars an instant success and fine addition to the \'action\' around the \'Cue...
Steve
First of all, I have to stress again how great Steve has been to us, and how great the food is. Second, even if you don\'t make it in time for the full card discussions, at least one of us (Alan this week) will be hanging around the stand on and off throughout the day. The whole thing takes place on the side of the stand away from the track (facing Union Ave.), at the tables closest to the stand.
I\'ll be up there Alabama weekend doing the discussion with Bill Spillane. Assuming I can get up in time. If I don\'t remember everybody\'s name, don\'t get mad at me.
TGJB,
2 questions.
1. I\'ll be up there the last weekend (Fri-Sun). Will you still be holding the seminars at that time? I\'d like to attend one (but I might be disguised because I don\'t want anyone from this board hitting me). :)
2. I didn\'t handicap the Amsterdam and didn\'t see the TG sheets in the redboard room. I take it the consensus on Vicarage was that he was a bounce candidate. If my assumption is correct, was % of the time was considered a reasonable estimate for a bounce vs. a pair up in his case.
CH--
1--I\'ll be up there, I don\'t know yet whether we\'ll be doing the groups Labor Day-- depends on how many let us know they will be there.
2-- Huh?
TGJB,
2. A few people said that in the seminar last weekend it was suggested that Vicarage was good horse to key against in the Amsterdam. If that\'s true, I\'m trying to get at the rationale and details.
Vicarage had reacted badly to all his previous tops, and his intervening pattern was getting worse. We compare tops to tops (in that regard he was good, his last was better than his previous tops), but also bad efforts to bad efforts, and time between good efforts in the cycles. His last cycle was not good, and took a long time, and he had less time than usual off this top-- all of which meant that he was almost certain to react badly. On top of which, he had a post and running style that pretty much guaranteed ground loss-- with the prospective trip, he had only one race in his life that even made him a strong contender.
This is the third question like this recently (the others were about SFTF in the Whitney and Nick\'s bomb in the 3yo grass stake), and in general, I want to encourage it. When it\'s a horse we have expressed an opinion about, in the analysis, ROTW, or discussion group, we\'re more than happy to explain, regardless of whether we came out looking good or bad-- I\'ll just delete it if we looked bad. Joke.
If we\'ve already taken a position, it\'s not redboarding. By us, anyhow.
TGJB,
That\'s what I was looking for.
If possible, was there any sort of estimate on the probability that he would pair up. A very rough guesstimate is fine. I don\'t mind a redboard percentage if you didn\'t give one pre-race.
Thanks.
Vicarage estimates, using the same breakouts we use with the Thoro-Patterns:
New Top 3%
Pair (meaning within a point plus or minus of the previous top) 17%
Off race 40%
X 40%
Given he was spotting major weight to several contenders and the prospective ground loss, a reasonable guess is that the first two categories (20%) would be maybe 50/50 to get him in the top two, making him 10% overall to be in the exacta.
As I said at the discussion group, if you sit down and figure it out you will see that a 3-1 shot is on about half the exacta tickets. If you can toss one, you have a huge edge. If you can toss a horse shorter than that, well...
TGJB, I\'m planning to be up there that weekend. Hope to see you all there to learn some more.
Regards,
NC Tony