Regardless of how many tee shirts, hats, scents of manure, or anything else you give away. Autographs racing celebrities sign, Stakes races you card or big $ purses you distribute, your product is still garabage if the Racing Surface is Garbage.
After having been know for years as having one of the most ridiculous and unfair dirt racing surfaces in all of America, with noses stuck firmly up in the air, flicked pinky fingered for the 4:00PM tea, the Keeneland hierarchy has decided with typical \"We\'ll Show You\" arrogance to double the betters misery by screwing up a turf racing surface beyond belief.
If anyone thought \"Bitchin Bobby Frankel\" was having a bad underwear day when he came on NBC\'s Breeders Cup preview and was complaining about the how bad the Turf Course was last week, well he wasn\'t. If anyone listened he was doing people a favor and telling you don\'t try and handicap anything here. Almost every race has some flying down the middle of the course finisher who gets up and wins or nearly misses because anyone FIVE paths or less is totally worn out by the time they reach the sixteenth pole. Seriously admit your stupid and put the dogs up fifteen feet out. At least things will be a little more balanced.
But then those of us who wager know you will not, it is much easier to call a local shill at the paper and have him write some more puff telling the locals how great you are. Meanwhile business as usually, so leroy start fixing another pot of tea, this one was a little too brisk.
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/sports/colleges/university_of_kentucky/12915439.htm
What do you get when you combine a horse w/N.Y. connections that wins a race at major Kent. track..and a horse w/KY. connections that comes in 2nd and lodges claim of foul? one ugly DIS(qualification)!!
footnotes to be found on other board.
PARTYpokerON!
\"Seriously admit your stupid and put the dogs up fifteen feet out. \"
I don\'t know why they don\'t do this. They do it at other tracks when the turf gets worn out or uneven.
High Roller I stole this one from the other string because this is where it fits.
>if the turf rail is boggy who\'s to say that a horse like gorella or the europeans wouldn\'t LOVE IT, thereby negating the supposed bias?
I will challenge you to a race at a mile for $1,000 where you run on deep powdered sand and I get to run on a asphalt paved running track. And even if you work as lifeguard or play beach volleyball for a living you don\'t have an advantage. OK?
As far these guys stopping and thinking about put up an inner dog rail its difficult to do when the daily work regimen consists of:
1)Noon catered escargot and chef prepared lunch
2)One PM steam bath and then body massage
3)Two PM nap
4)Four PM Tea
5)Five thirty chaufer driven ride home
With a stress filled day like this who can bother with improving the Racing Surfaces.
The next week Kee put up railson the turf course 15-20 feet out. Quit your complaining. No one said you had to bet the KEE races did they? Frankel also won on Sunday with Intercontinental so he adjusted. Why didn\'t you? Guess you love the 5-6 horse feilds NYRA and Oaktree put up each day? Have at it.
By the way, Both Saratoga and Delmar have big give away days as well as local papers writing feel good stories about how wonderful life is at their special place. NYRA has other assortment of issues to deal with. Also having been to all three places I can assure you you do not have to tip the waiter a $10 or $20 just to get in, or the attendant to get a good parking place or good table or seat at Keeneland or a teller that might scam you. You may get a totally incompetent one that smiles at you and is as nice as your Grandmother at Kee. No one place is a panacea. But the prices have been huge at the Kee meet so far. Isn\'t that what we are looking for? To each his own.
NC Tony
NC Tony,
I don\'t know if \"big prices\" is what we are all looking for. I think we are looking for big prices on horses that have some logical reason to win. When the courses are either really biased or in poor shape, like the Keenland turf course, it makes for erratic racing. The people who like that are the people who go to the track and play phone numbers and birthdays.
Keenland is gorgeous and the atmosphere is great. But track maintenance has NOT done a good job with the turf course. That really isn\'t debatable. Many of the horsemen are saying it, not just a few angry posters on this board.
The odd thing is that it doesn\'t seem that there has been enough horrible weather in the area to justify the awful condition of the turf course.
Anyway, you are right, we have the option not to bet there. I am exercising that option. The game is hard enough without stuff like quicksand on the inside part of the turf course.
One of my trainers told me that he breezed a horse a few days before the Keeneland meet started this fall and the rider told him the course had been watered way too much. Then it rained. That\'s why the course got so screwed up.
I cannot remember horses kicking up as much crud and the course breaking up so much the way it did during the first week of the meet.
They may need a new turf course for next season.
Polytrack will replace the main track, too, based on what I hear.
I would take this a step further and say that winning at this game has very little to do with \"big prices\" and everything to do with value. Nc Tony, I respect you a great deal so I\'m not really directing this at you, but too many horesplayers think that value = big price automatically. There is a nice amount of 2-1 shots who look like 4/5 shots and are tremendous bets every week. Of course I would rather cash all of my bets on 15/1 shots who figure 3/5 in my mind, but this is 2005 and those edges rarely exist anymore, you just have to take the value where you can, whether the overlay is 2-1 or 20-1. Yes you are more likely to find value in a big field which is one of the reasons I stay away from So Cal and NY during their stretches of short fields (this being one of those stretches).
But at Keeneland just because there are big fields and big prices, does not mean anybody really has an edge. I have not bet Keeneland heavily in a few years, and cannot say that I miss it. It is very difficult to find value there I don\'t care what the average win price has been. Value is a function of both a horse\'s odds AND his true chances of winning. Keeneland is famous for having an 8-1 horse win like he is 3-5 yet appears to be no better than 8-1 on paper. Regardless of what magic some hucksters try to peddle, that is all we can go by is \"paper\", whether it be sheets, pace figures, trainer stats whatever. All we have is paper and a brain to process it. At Keeneland the best \"paper\" and the best brain in the world still might not be good enough. Trying to determine who will have the lead/rail three strides out of the gate is neither fun, nor interesting, nor profitable in my opinion, the same goes for trying to guess which horse will make its rally in the 5 path in the stretch on turf. I stopped trying to figure out why the dirt/turf courses are the way are and attempting to exploit them a while ago. It\'s easier just to wait 3 weeks or bet somewhere else.
Enough negativity for me, the \'Cup runneth over in two weeks.
-Bull
Go back and look at both turf races from yesterday. Same thing again. The winner of the last ran five wide all the way around the track. Horses who run on the rail for the first six furlongs start backpedaling, horses who dive for the rail turning for home get an announcers call and then begin to flatten out.
I have been to those other tracks you mentioned also. The crowd, the people, the help at Keeneland are second to none. Unfortunately Track Mgmt has always had the attitude that when you come inside Keeneland and squat on our commode, it never stinks.
Guess what it does, just like it does everywhere else.
I wager(ed) on Keeneland from over 1,200 miles away so I don\'t get to taste the burgoo, lay my DRF on the flat hedge around the rider up paddock, come early and stay late. After the last race on Saturday I have made my last bet there this meet.
The Breeders Cup is coming, Churchill opens soon then SA and a \"new\" Gulfstream. So there is plenty to look forward to. Stronach may talk a little too much but he is an agent of change. Keeneland Mgmt may want to dial his number and solicit some of his advice.
With the incompetent condition of both racing surfaces this meet they could sure use it.
The winner of yesterday\'s last, by dq, had the best tg number & I see this morning was the analysis play. The difference, as I see it, was the 7/2 would have been 5/2 in NY. Along similar lines, the sheets/analysis play in the 8th would have been 3-1 in NY instead of 5-1, & the 2nd place finisher in the 7th, the horse I thought was the best exotics key of the day, would have been closer to 6-1 in NY rather than his final Kee odds of 11-1. Check the redboard & tell me where I\'m wrong. The last on Sat is an even more puzzling example of how unfair the turf course is on weekends, as I\'m pretty sure it was won by a 2-1 sheets semi-stickout. All of which is not to say that the inside is the place to be when they take the temporary turf rail down on Sat & Sun. I won\'t disagree that Kee has its share of pretentious snobs in the boxes & clubhouse, but I would be hard pressed to say that the pct is any higher than it is at Sar. Actually, I wish there were more at both venues, as with few exceptions, they\'re the kind of players I want to gamble against. The Kee track super, however, is exactly the opposite of that. A Ky \"hardboot\", his only concern is the safety of the horses & riders. Last, but not least for me, is that it\'s one of the very few tracks left that does not seem like a daycare center for the elderly. It\'s just one man\'s opinion, obviously, but miss this meet & you\'re missing out on what I think are the best betting opportunities in the country right now.
Amen
NC Tony
In my mind Big Prices or value plays (I used them synonomously in this case)is what I look for and can find at Kee but seem to no longer find at NYRA tracks. Yes larger feilds does contribute to this somewhat. I also attribute the better value found at Kee vs NY to astute sheets players in NY and not nearly as many playing at Kee. Just to clarify some.
FYI ..the Superfecta\'s, Tri\'s and Pick 4\'s have been out of this world large this meet.
And yes the turf couse played horribly opening weekend as my conversation with the jockeys alluded to last week. And yes they do seem to have a speed bias on the main track.
If your playing Kee you need to adjust. There are many other tracks to place your wagers on. I just find that KEE has many value betting opportunities that you are not getting elsewhere these days.
FYI...They had the large soaking rains in KY (similar to what hit NY/NJ) just before the meet opened.
But you are right the real value comes when the betting pools get larger on Breeders cup day.
NC Tony
Mall I guess beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Some people think Paris Hilton is HOT, I see a high maintenance Medusa. Or better yet as the Eagles once sang, \"The daughter of the Devil himself.\"
You wrote,
>The Kee track super, however, is exactly the opposite of that. A Ky \"hardboot\", his only concern is the safety of the horses & riders.
Could you imagine Tiger Woods playing from the first tee at Augusta National in the first round of the Masters and readying to play his second shot only to find he is hitting to temporary greens.
That is what the trainers, riders and players are dealing with at Keeneland this meet.
NC Tony:
You are making NYRA sound awful chalky. There were 102 races run at Belmont so far in October. The average win mutuel was $14.77. At Keeneland, after 76 races, the average win mutuel was $17.96.
With all due respect, my friend, I think you are taking the fact that you may have developed a comfort zone at certain tracks (here Kee) and then stating that there is more value at such tracks. That statement is overly general and just a bit subjective. When you knew from omphaloskepticism, I thought you may have been educated by the Jesuits, but now I wonder.
What I will agree with is that at a short meet such as the Keeneland meets (and the way the Spa was when there were 28 racing days) with horses coming from many different venues, with large fields, with most horses only getting 1 crack at the meet, there is the potential for chaos, or what you might call value.
You were similarly enamored with Colonial Downs in Spring/Summer, and I think for the same reasons.
Of course Mall if I was looking at Paris from the view ex-boyfriend Rick Throman(?) had I may have an entirely different opinion of her.
Having cashed more than your share of large mutual tickets at this Keeneland Meet (like you always do) is I\'m sure what is shaping the view you are taking.
I guess it is all of case of perspective. Am I not correct?
Richiebee,
Yes I am or was educated by the Jesuits up off of Fordham Road in the Bronx.
Second, how did you compile your data? ( i am not questioning it\'s accuracy but rather would like to gain access) Do you have it downloaded or did you do it manually? Could you also share the avg P3/P4 Exacta and Super payouts for same time frame for those tracks? NYRA has big P6 pools while Kee has huge Super pools due to the $0.10 super with lots of speculative money. I am playing in those pools.
Yes I do believe that \"chaos\" or short meets like Colonial or Kee and even SAR due tend to present more betting or value opportunities than due longer meets such as Monmouth for example. I tend to have a higher affinity for Stakes races and Turf racing. This year NYRA has had it fair share of very short feilds in stakes races with a fairly high percentage of winning favorites in those races. Value is in the eye of the bettor. Everyone has their own strenghts and weaknesses.
I grew up in NY and cut my teeth at NYRA and NJ tracks. Monmouth while I love the place, has truly become a non play for me. I don\'t get to play everyday but follow it nightly. TIVO all NYRA races and KEE Races. I go to SAR every year and have a great time win or lose. So I don\'t want this to come off dissing the NYRA sceene, it\'s just that it no longer is what it used to be. Since I\'ve moved away I have broadened my persective. NYRA still is the best quality circuit April through November.
All I am trying to do is to point out there are wagering alternatives for those who might be looking for something different and don\'t want to be caught in the same rut. I think it\'s good for your betting skills to do so, especially come Breeders Cup.
NC Tony
NCT,
\"And yes the turf couse played horribly opening weekend as my conversation with the jockeys alluded to last week. And yes they do seem to have a speed bias on the main track. \"
I don\'t play many races outside the NYRA tracks other than stakes, but I love the idea of having biases complicating the PPs and the betting. It gives me a piece of information to work with that\'s not fully reflected on the board. Even when people are looking for things like these, it is a skill onto itself to recognize when there\'s really a bias and when what appears to be a bias is just a series of random events.
Even though Keenland is not a track I know much about, I am compiling a list of every horse that raced on the inside on that turf course since the track opened (no easy task working with charts and the head on shot quality on my computer). I\'ll be at Belmont sometime this week looking at videos of Keenland for hours.
I can\'t see how there aren\'t going to be some great values coming out of this period.
CH
Now thats a very good way to approach this. Take a Negative and perhaps turn it into a positive.
NC Tony
NCT:
The win mutuel information came from what Jethro Bodine used to call \"ciphering\". I used a calculator and the results from DRF. I think it is obvious that P3/P4/Super payoffs will be directly related to field size, and that is an area where NYRA usually will not stack up well against other circuits.
It is interesting to me that the 10 cent super came to be after Crist wrote an article extolling the virtue of the bet in DRF. OK, Steve, how about now making a big push for $1 Pick Sixes? I won\'t hold my breath.
I worked on the backstretch at Monmouth for 3 years, 84 - 86. During those 3 years I can honestly say I probably didn\'t miss a day of racing.
My favorite track will be opening four days after the BC... if NYRA has any money left.
You are right to a certain extent,no doubt, but I never miss & rarely have much bad to say about Sar, & this yr was the 1st one in 3 or 4 that I ended up on the plus side at the end. Imo, the gambling at CD is usually even better than it is this fall at Kee because of all the overflow claiming races. If you get that kind of race right, & there are usually many different approaches, you get paid off. The flip side, of course, is that the chance of pitching a shutout, which I did for the best card of the meet Fri, is much greater. I\'ve seen & appreciated more than my fair share of the great ones over the yrs, but playing this game the way I think it should be played, & the only way I\'m interested in playing it in any event, requires big, competitive fields. That is what I think Kee has been offering this fall, along with what I also think, notwithstanding Mr Chance\'s opinion to the contrary, is as close to drug free racing as there has been anywhere in quite some time. In addition to the way Lori Wydick is riding,the real stories this meet so far have been how the horses of some of the suspected drug trainers can\'t seem to finish the way their horses usually do, & how poorly many of the \"expert\" handicappers are doing, now that recognizing a supertrainer\'s name in the program is no longer enough. Sort of reminds me of what happened to a lot of stock market \"experts\" at the end of a the last bull market.
Well put Mall and continued good luck there. The uneven racing surfaces have me pulling back and channeling my resources elsewhere.
Mall hope things are working out well for you and yours in the Bluegrass. If anyone has never been to Keeneland they should go it is a beautiful place. The area is full of good people. Speaking of which say hello to the group. This Board has never been the same since some of them moved on.