Learned to play at McGregor. This was back in the early 80\'s, though. Back then it was an actual links style course, no water, some sort of heinous rough extending out 100-150 yards off the tees. It wasn\'t much fun playing out of that straw, so I learned to hit the ball off the tee pretty quickly. (Unfortunately, I never learned to putt.) They had the State Amateur there in 1982, I believe. Heard they\'ve built a lot of housing all around it, so it may have lost some of its former charm, but if it\'s anything like it used to be it\'s probably worth playing.  

I\'d be a little leery of Ghana, what with coming in off a huge new top and short rest.

TGJB,

Re-read your betting guidelines. You don\'t mention trifecta wagering. Was just wondering if you play tris, and if so, what makes you want to pull the trigger.

Also wondering what folks think of the \"exacta as place bet\" wager. In my early days I would bet back up a win bet with a place bet if my pick was 6-1 or better and it was a race where I felt like I couldn\'t narrow down the field to a point where I could use one or two horses in an exacta with my win bet, but a friend suggested backwheeling the horse in exacta instead. I started doing this and my results show that I almost always make out better going this route, possibly because I bet mostly turf races with big fields. My only qualm is that I feel like by backwheeling I\'m wasting a few dollars on non-contenders, but on occasion one of those non-contenders has run me over and I\'ve essentially lucked into a nice saver exacta.

Yes, I live on the East Coast...typical provincial thinking on my part...

As far as not betting enough on early races you like, almost everyone I know (including myself) does this. I can\'t speak for anyone else but for me it\'s some sort of self-preservation instinct kicking in, if I step out on an early race and lose it is very tough for me to resist the urge to chase as the day wears on. Some of my all-time worst days have come on \"big days\" like the Breeder\'s Cup where I really liked a race or two early, stepped out, got beat, panicked, and then went on tilt.

Just a thought, everyone\'s got their own ways, but you mention night-time studying, I\'ve found early morning to be much more productive, I get through twice as many races in two hours in the morning as I would in three hours at night.

From the NRoHP website...

\"Under Federal law, owners of private property listed in the National Register are free to maintain, manage, or dispose of their property as they choose provided that there is no Federal involvement. \"

As the Magna flack quoted in the bloodhorse article says in so many words, listing on the Nat\'l Register will not stop Stronach from doing whatever the hell he pleases with Santa Anita. Just as he will do whatever the hell he pleases with Saratoga should it fall into his grubby little paws. The key is stopping him from acquiring the NY franchise; if he does, the Saratoga Race Course many of us know and love dies. Guaranteed.  

Another post-mortem...

We (few friends pooled together $625 and played tris and supers) threw out BGC\'s Kee race and had him in all underneath slots under SNS, APW, and the winner...alas, Steppenwolfer blew up all our tix. I thought he was ridiculously underlaid. Every know-nothing-about-racing/Derby\'s-my-one-bet-of-the-year person I talked to last week said the same thing, oh, that Steppenwolfer closed at a mile and an eighth he\'s gonna love the extra distance...to me he was the classic sucker, MOTO, Joe Public horse, on offer at about one third of what his true odds were. Thought he\'d be nowhere. As always in this race, you can be close to completely right, to the big score, only to blow it with one mistake.

On a karmic note...my seven year old son is a huge Edgar Prado fan, and he wants to be a jockey when he grow up...with a 6\'4\" father and a 5\'10\" mother, his prospects are dim, he\'s already as tall as some of these guys. Anyway, my son hangs around outside the jockey\'s room at Saratoga getting autographs and generally trying to converse with these guys, and the one guy who ever pays any attention to him is Prado. We got Prado to send an autographed picture for my son\'s birthday and he was more into that than any of the other presents. All last week he kept talking about Prado winning the Derby. When he did it, my son acted like HE hit the super. And then I had to listen to my wife tell me over and over how between our son\'s love of Prado, the plane crash survivors in the stands, etc., etc., that Barbaro was, as she put it, \"the karma play of the century.\" I guess we could have put $400 of our pool money to win, but that\'s not how we roll...one of these years we\'re gonna get one of these things, I swear...

Hansel, version 2006...Sweetnorthernsaint? Just an idea.

Was BD\'s trip THAT bad??? I know it wasn\'t ideal, but am I supposed to give him extra points because for once he didn\'t get his Charmin-soft lone-f six horse field trip? I thought the best horses were the ones who could win under adverse circumstances, but that\'s just me.

Red-board of the weekend...English Channel at 7/2, what\'s wrong with that, I oughtta have my head examined, played $60 of gimmicks with my own money, Milk It Mick blew me up in that one, but geez, 30 times $9, that\'s what we call bread-n-butta. Sometimes it\'s hard for me to employ normal, basic wagering strategy on days like this...especially in a house full of people, while drinking heavily...

The horses I was most off on...Sharp Humor, thought he\'d run well, and given he ran Barbaro to half a length and was four times the price, thought he was big value. Has he finished the race yet? AP Warrior as one of my three key-on-tops? Ouch. That\'s just embarassing...

Been watching the Derby for 20 years now, and I thought Barbaro was the most impressive winner I\'ve seen in those two decades. I thought the field was decent and well-matched and he won under a hand ride while finishing up in around :24. Hope he\'s The One, think it would be good for the game...

Just asking for opinions from Sinister fans - does Baffert\'s quote in yesterday\'s NY Post Derby Dozen to the effect that the BG \"took a lot\" out of SM concern you at all? I have no firm opinion on the horse\'s chances as of yet, I have been burned in years past falling in love with horses in March and April (Vicar most shamefully), and have been burned buying into pace set-ups two weeks before the race (War Emblem). But I have to admit Baffert\'s comment gave me pause.

As I may have previously stated, I was sort of hoping the Blue Grass result, and its effect on the graded earnings standings, would force Pletcher to run Sunriver in the Lexington. If he ran a new top in the Florida Derby and he paired that in the Lexington (admittedly that\'s a lot of ifs) his line would look interesting, to my relatively inexperienced eyes, a bit similiar to War Emblem\'s. On paper, three weeks out, this has the potential to be one of those pace meltdown Derbies, which would help. Agree that he looks interesting.  

Private purchase involving Baffert, wins Derby prep in huge performance, public writes it off as a fraud, deja vu all over again?

Meadowlands harness Thursday night, race 2. 19-1 winner. 11-1 shot 2nd, show spot goes to 58-1 piece. 1/9 shot - yes, one-to-nine shot - outta the money. Exacta comes back $80 for $2, tri $360 for a buck. You have to applaud that kind of chutzpah, no? They JUST busted a bunch of people down there for race-fixing. Yeah. I got your bust right here, pal.

Get an excited email from a friend yesterday. He likes Storm Treasure for the gimmicks in the Blue Grass. He calls me ten minutes before the race today, wants to know if I liked the horse at all. He talks me into believing the thing can run in there. I play him in tri\'s. My friend plays him underneath the faves in exactas. At the last second he calls back into Brisbet and puts him underneath Sinister Minister. Plus $10 to place. My tris go nowhere, because they all involve Zito.

This was an overreaction to Sun King - Sun King!! For Chrissakes, is there no justice in the world!! - beating me the race before. At the eight pole I was counting my money on Kazoo. Yes he looked gassed but when you need a guy to drag your horse kicking and screaming through a final furlong he wants no part of, you can do a lot worse than Migliore for my money. After we got run over I figured, why try to fight city hall, obviously there\'s no stopping Nicky at this point. The worst part is I didn\'t even like the horse.

Went over to OTB yesterday, mostly just to have a few beers and to forget about a lousy week. After a few pints of Bass Ale I decide to make one play. Mott horse in GP 9th looks like a cinch, she\'s real short but I liked a couple of prices to run underneath. Keyed Mott over the #6 for a $20 exacta (got hammered late, went from $54 to $41 last couple of minutes) and $2 tri keying Mott over the 6 and a couple others. The Mott horse airs, my exacta horse is in the mix for 2nd but then fades...long story longer, I catch the tri, or so I think, until I look at my ticket and see I got one that has the 6 keyed on top. Either I called it out wrong or he punched it wrong, but I should have checked. Then they put up the unofficial order and they got the 4 in third, which makes me feel better...until they correct the mistake and take out the 4 and put up the 6. $334 tri, not life altering but a nice little bankroll churner for a guy like me.

Lawyer Ron didn\'t look all that rateable today, to me. He rated for part of one race, so I\'m figuring him part of the up-front crowd in the Derby, and it looks like that\'s going to be quite a crowd. LR, SNS, Barbaro, BD, SM, other I\'m probably forgetting. Thinking you want something from the back. A couple of those types that look OK at this point might be Point Determined and Sunriver. The Blue Grass results, and their effect on the graded earnings list, may force the latter into running in the Lexington next week. Pletcher didn\'t really sound like he wants to run him again, but it might be the best thing for him. But who knows. Since my moon appears to be in piss-on-the-seat mode in all facets of life at the moment, it\'s probably best to disregard my current Derby thoughts.

I asked Dan Illman of the DRF (he\'s started a blog on their site) whether the Beyer needed to be looked at again. His reply:

\"Dan I: After some tweaking, the Bob and John Wood Memorial Beyer came in at a 99.  You make an interesting point regarding the Wood being the only 2-turn race of the day, and that may have made it a bit difficult to come up with a Beyer.  Then again, a 99 seems pretty fair.  Bob and John received a 97 when 2 1/2 lengths behind A.P Warrior in the San Felipe, and A P Warrior earned a 100 when almost 5 behind Brother Derek in the SA Derby.  So, yes, the Beyer needed to be revisited, and 99 sounds pretty fair.\"

Do you deserve to be respected when you run Deeds Not Words in the Derby, just to say you were there?

He dominated with personality, all right. The force of his personality pretty much sealed his deal. Maybe I don\'t know my ass from a hole in the ground, especially here three sheets to the wind in the middle of the night, trying (unsuccessfully, of course) to drink away a death in the family, but my mind\'s eye sees D Wayne Lukas as just another in the long line of Great American Salesmen.

He won a lot of races, but how many hundreds of millions of dollars of horseflesh did he have to run through the meat grinder to get those wins? Sacrifical lambs such as Union City start to run through the mind, like some sort of perverse racing version of the last scene from my favorite seventh-grade book, \"Good Bye, Mr. Chips.\"

How many other trainers could have done as much, if not more, if they\'d had the same talent pool to work with?

Of course, that\'s a moot point. They didn\'t have the same talent pool to work with. Lukas got that talent, and he got the glory, because he was and perhaps, still is, a master salesman. Since the early 1980\'s he\'s been selling an idea to people with more money than they know what to do with, and he\'s found enough takers to keep himself in the clover and in the limelight.

But me, I\'m not buying the idea that he\'s the equine version of Palmer or Ali.  

Hayward and co. seem intent on going to the mat on this one. Bruno and others have seemed just as adamant that the state owns the tracks; perhaps they were bluffing. But if they\'re both hell-bent, this could get tied up in litigation forever. How does the bid process work if the ownership question is in court? Who\'d want to bid with, as Tom Durkin might say, a protracted legal duel going on?

As I was reading this, a friend of mine called. Due to a last-minute meeting cancellation, he had some extra time, so he went down to yesterday\'s hearing for a couple of hours. He said two things stuck out: the lack of knowledge about racing among the committee members, and the fact that none of the committee members or speakers seemed to display much awareness of the fact that gambling is what drives the sport. People don\'t go to the track to get high-quality coffee, or for a sale on jeans, do they?
Of course, we the horseplayers don\'t have a seat at the table where the decision will be made. And I don\'t see that ever happening. Organize horseplayers? The very nature of the game, where we\'re all playing against each other, seems antithetical to the process of any kind of political organizing. A wagering boycott until players get some say? Beyond unlikely. So the whole process will play out with no input from the people who make the game go, and the decision made by people ignorant of the issues. Great.
A couple of other random second-hand observations from the hearing:
My buddy missed Frankie\'s moving, wowing PowerPoint show, but he did say that several Saratoga area business people and politicians, including the mayor of Saratoga, spoke against Frankie\'s \"vision\" for Saratoga.
Surprisingly, to me at least, Stronach suggested having a separate franchise for the slots. I had thought that the reason he lusted after the franchise was due to his desire to get his hands on the revenue stream from the cash cows.
Speaking of which, what\'s to stop the state from deciding one day to change current wagering law and disconnect the tracks from the VLTs? Where does that leave the tracks then? They act like VLTs are the salvation, yet that magic carpet could conceivably be pulled out from under them at some point in the future.
Ugh. Not a lot to be optimistic about on the racing front these days.

New! From the 2006 Webster\'s Dictionary...

Magnalomania n. 1. A mental disorder characterized by delusions of grandeur, specifically related to the mismanagement of racing facilities and racing product, and the inability to perceive that making billions selling sprockets does not give one the power to revitalize racing by eliminating ability to actually view races, and revamping race tracks with shoppes, cafes, and locations for concerts by washed-up rock bands; also characterized by overweening desire to desecrate racing shrines such as Saratoga Race Course. (adj., magnalomaniac).