Good discussion, I struggle with these constant dilemmas as well.  Seems to me that the so-called \"hot\" money (FTS that are low that DON\'t have good stats) is more effective at some tracks than others.  At CD for example I pay special attention to the board in the races riddled w/FTS.  A couple of weeks ago I noticed a 6YO gelding FTS in a grass race at CD.  It looked to be completely overmatched, but at 15 mins. to post he was 9-1.  I used him in tri\'s & pick 3\'s and he drifted up to 34-1 and won the race.  I think an important thing to remember is that a good deal of the \"barn\" money on any horse is bet early.  My friends & I call it \"beer money\", the grooms & handlers are betting their beer money on the horses they know are live.  I pay much more attention to what a horse opens than any last minute floods of money, which more often than not come from uninformed simulcast players.

Marc b

Another thing I\'ve found handy: I play off-track quite a bit and watch the races on TVG or online.  Some of the wagering services have developed fairly sophisticated systems, on Winticket.com for example I can run reports of bets/wins/ROI for a given track or a given bet type.  I\'m sure youbet.com has something similar.
marc

There was an interesting article recently in DRF which had Steven Crist taking on the question of whether a player should focus on multi-race gimmicks (DD, P3, P4) or single race gimmicks (Ex, Tri, Super).  His conclusion was basically that it depends on your style of play, which I\'m sure is true enough.  However, in thinking about this a bit more, it strikes me that many serious players I know concentrate on the multi-race gimmicks, while whenever I look around the track or notice what people are betting next to me the more amateur-type players seem to be playing only the single-race gimmicks.  Think about it, is the casual player going to go through the trouble of handicapping 3 or 4 races at a time, getting changes, structuring a bet, etc...?  Personally I love the pick 3\'s and pick 4\'s, but for the reasons above it seems to me there is more of an edge available in the exacta, tri and super.  Curious as to how other TG users feel about this dilemma.

marc

In this week\'s ROTW analysis: \"Too Scarlet is a nice NY bred who lucked into a stake win on Belmont Day when a spill wiped out half the field\".  Maybe we were watching different races, but once she got through on the inside (which, I admit, was fortunate) spill or no spill they were never going to get her.

I have used both TG and Rags over the years, but lean toward TG for one simple reason: I do better with them.  Just returned from a beautiful weekend in NY completely paid for (including scalped Producers tix) by Judge\'s Case.  Keep up the good work boys.