Post BC Thoughts

[jimbo66]

Curious as to what key themes resonate with others after the last two days of betting.  A couple things come to mind for me:

1.  Certain trainers had truly disgraceful performances.  Hard to imagine any trainer doing worse than Baffert did over the two days.  Not a single horse he had ran close to decent, not just in the BC races, even on the undercards.  (Sorry, Exec Privilege ran sub-par, despite finishing 2nd.)  For Game on Dude to not even show up at any point in the race was just ridiculous.   Ditto his horses in the BC Juvenile, the BC Sprint, etc.etc.  Another trainer that was awful, and pointed out by TGJB in the seminar, was Kiaran Mclaughlin.  Granted, he didn\'t have as many horses as Baffert, but he runs Questing, who refuses to run a step, then follows it up with Emcee, who quits after a half, on a big speed favoring track.  Pletcher was not as bad as the top two, but pretty ugly performances by Dreaming of Julia and Kaui Kate.  (offset by a gutty, albeit slow, win by Shanghai Bobby).  There is another thread here with supposition about why these trainers couldn\'t get horses to run, so I won\'t go into that again, but it is one thing to lose, but it is a completely different thing to have horses with great form, fast figures not run a step at any point in a race.  Very hard to swallow.

2.  Alright, point 1 was my \"bitter\" point, but on the opposite end of the spectrum, I can\'t help but feel great for the low profile connections who had great days.  Charlie Lopresti with Wise Dan who is just some kind of horse.  He absolutely trounced that top class field of milers, in an extremely fast time (yes, I know the turf was hard, but the win seemed effortless).  Also, Brian Hernandez holding off Mike Smith in the Classic with Fort Larned.  Having no \"skin in the game\" with my bets toast by the far turn, I found myself rooting home Hernandez rather than see Mike Smith winning.  

3.  I run the risk of getting P-Dubbed with this post, but Mike Smith remains a mystery to me.  Other than Desmormeaux, I can\'t think of another jockey that has a wider gamut of disparity with the quality of his rides.  He wins the Ladies Classic by getting the best horse (who has no sign of early speed) on the lead, over a speedy track, when he realizes that the Kiaran horse didn\'t leave and he has a chance to grab the top.  Great move.  The race was basically over.  Also, a pretty damn good ride on Mucho Macho Man, getting a great stalking position from the far outside post, in a race with a few other riders looking for that position.  But then, he gives what I think may be one of the dumbest rides I have ever seen on Atigun.  WTF was he thinking?  Granted, I am bit biased, as I have an out of work friend who was live to a pick-5 paying 11k for 50 cents with Atigun, but really, he takes a plodder and decides to attack a fast pace when they are going 1 3/4 miles?  Just horrific.  

4.  The thing I try to get out of these events most is handicapping lessons.  Not sure what I learned this year.  As for my own wagering, I am going to significantly downgrade clocker data in these types of events going forward.  Interesting stuff for 1st time starters and layoff horses, but not so relevant maybe for these top class horses.  Some of the tidbits from a very good clocker that I factored into my own wagering:  Game on Dude working better than any horse they had seen.  Smiling Tiger didn\'t belong in the race.  Trinniberg not working well.  Nonios working lights out.  Fed Biz working extremely well.  Mizdirection no good off the layoff.  Power Broker sharp as a razor.  Capital Account sitting on a big race.  There is always the risk of information overload in these events and balancing figures, with workouts, with trainer tendencies, medication issues, etc. is tough to do.  

Any other thoughts out there on lessons learned?

[TGJB]

Jimbo-- re ride disparity, for me it\'s Johnny V. Drives me nuts.

Re workout guys-- yes, Harrington had a bad weekend. Welsch was much better.

[justwin]

Excellent points Jim. I too found the same with Smith this weekend. In retrospect the best way to play the Breeders Cup seems to be the pick 3 or 4. There are so many good horses that I found my key running 2nd, 3rd & 4th all weekend. Sometimes including the winner and hitting the exacta. Had a good Friday by crushing the Royal Delta/My Miss Aurelia exacta. My Miss Aurelia was my key and would have had a great day if she won but came out ok. Saturday was my downfall, never making the speed bias adjustment and having all my keys coming 3rd & 4th. the Turf was a killer for me having keyed St. Nick and having the 2nd, 3rd & 4th finishers in the tri but not including Little Mike. Had a huge bet on the Wise Dan/Obviously exacta with Obviously my key. Very Frustrating Saturday as I was close all day and nothing to show for it. Again, the pick 3\'s & 4\'s seem to be the best way to play the Breeders Cup with the deep fields. Big Thanks to Jerry & his team for putting out a great product especially under the circumstances. Also, I have a house on the barrier island in NJ, if anyone else does and is able to get down there please e-mail me.
George

[covelj70]

Justwin,

What island is your house on?

I have a house on the beach that miraculously survived albeit with some damage

The town is evacuated and is shut down to people for 6 months while they rebuild the infrastructure but I can refer you to some good websites that have pictures of some of the towns

Hope everyone is safe.

I made it out to the breeders cup. My horse ran very poorly but I had a very good weekend at the windows thanks to Jerry and crew. I thought the numbers were extraordinarily valuable this weekend. Thanks to Jerry and crew for the amazing effort to get all of the data up.

For everyone in ny and nj, good luck. I am flying my family out to the west coast and am going to keep them all out here until things settle down out east.

[covelj70]

As a follow up to jimbo\'s post, the one thing I have learned over the years in the breeders cups is to take it easy in the early races to get a gauge of the trends from the early races and then go heavier later in the cards

I learned this the hard way from the mandella breeders cup but it has served me well at Santa Anita in the synthetic era when euros and wide sweeping moves became apparent and then again yesterday

Baffert was a joke all weekend so I completely tossed game on dude (which the sheets said to do anyway) and that led to a very big score in the classic

I also played Chad brown heavy all weekend after his first few ran so well.

[P-Dub]

Great post Jimbo.

I saw the ride on Atigun, and wondered what on earth was he doing. No defending that move, you will not get \"P-Dubbed\".  You are right on point, he can give incredible rides and others that are just baffling.

As you said, I always look for handicapping points the day after. What types of horses won (patterns, numbers, west/east/Euros etc.), what types of bets were successful (For me, what am I good at??), is workout information useful and how much weight do you give it.

What did I learn??

- Its Handicapping 101, but you have to let the tote board guide you. I\'ll never understand why some hammer favorite/2nd or 3rd choice exactas. I don\'t care how good they look. Especially in these races. There were 2 strong favorites that figured to run well, Groupie Doll and Wise Dan. Keying them in horizontals was better than trying to hammer an underlaid exacta. I jumped on Tapizar and Trinniberg because I couldn\'t pass up those odds. Competitive horses in their fields at odds 4/5x the other contenders. JB mentioned the contest where his buddy bet Fort Larned. Another horse that floated up to 9/1 and on numbers hard to pass at that price.

- As stated by justwin and as I mentioned in another post, IMO the Pick3/4 are by far the best wagers. And if your bankroll allows, the P5/6 too. There is so much dead money in the pools once a favorite or 2 loses, that the payouts are just tremendous. Many different structures, but using TG many of them were very hittable.

- Be prepared. Handicap early, get your serial bets structured before the day begins. Identify your contenders and on race day, watch the tote.

I worked Thursday night and didn\'t do much prep work. Hit 2 nice winners, but my horizontals suffered. Structuring a bet 5 minutes to post doesn\'t work for me. I vowed Friday night to prep better. Did much better on P3 wagers.  Identified main contenders and let the tote guide me to a pair of nice winners.

- Don\'t toss the fastest horse from a horizontal wager unless you have a really good reason. Some are awful and have no chance at winning, others have reasons to play against at short odds but can still win. I tossed Beholder from my P4 Friday and it cost me the Late P4. Horses can bounce and still win, especially when their fastest is so much faster than the others.  They may make lousy win bets, but they can keep your horizontals alive. I learned the hard way and it cost me $885.

- I\'m sure there are workout reports that are good, but in general its just more info to process. For me, the TG data is enough. The tote is the final arbiter, and I\'ll let the odds dictate my play in conjunction with the data.

These are some of the things that I experienced, Jimbo appreciate your thoughts.

[justwin]

Covel,
The barrier island. I am in Ocean Beach. About halfway between Seaside & Point Pleasant.
George

[TreadHead]

This was posted on Twitter by Trackus today, thought it was interesting:

Trakus ‏@TrakusRacing

Of top 2 finishers in the 9 BC dirt races this year, 50% cov\'d shortest or 2nd-shortest trip, 77% in bottom half of ground trav\'d each race

[miff]

TreadHead Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> This was posted on Twitter by Trackus today,
> thought it was interesting:
>
> Trakus ‏@TrakusRacing
>
> Of top 2 finishers in the 9 BC dirt races this
> year, 50% cov\'d shortest or 2nd-shortest trip, 77%
> in bottom half of ground trav\'d each race

Thread,

Confirms the presence of a live rail and speed bias.

Mike

[FrankD.]

No doubt about it Mike and I know you could not have been surprised by it.  Even the casual & many public handicappers made mention of speed and ground loss in routes all week leading up to Friday.

[miff]

Reportedly three 2yr olds bled during the two days, perhaps that could have been avoided by allowing lasix.Sadler critical of Dr.Rick Arthur who stated no two year olds \"visibly bled\" Is he kidding? No endoscopy?

Given the overall reduction in the 2yr old entry box, you have to wonder if the BC will continue to insist on the no lasix rule.Majority of owners and trainers against the ban but the elitists seem to have the people in power in their corner.

If \"they\" ever ban lasix all the way, as they wish, prepare to find a new hobby or get used to botique type meets.


Mike