Strange occurrence at DMR in the last race on PC day. Lots of value in the race with #12, Pictular being a good horse to key in exactas -- decent pattern and #s similar to the favorite. 20:1 ML and drifting up throughout. As the horses were loading he was 26:1. He broke on top and sat 3rd down the backstretch. As they showed the #s of the top 4 horses he was 16:1 -- his final odds. There was nothing funny in the P3/P4 or P6 pools, where he was easily 25:1 or higher so curious as to how he dropped so dramatically. It was about $5,000 of last second money that went in on him.
As for the synthetics -- it has really changed handicapping for So Cal tracks for me. Horses are actually running patterns now and it looks like they are able to come back more frequently. Those huge move-ups are rarer (maybe it is the crackdown on drugs as well) and horses seem to bounce less frequently and less severely off new tops. It\'s almost like handicapping Calder now (though not quite).