Translating Handicapping into Betting - Tiers for Derby

[SoCalMan2]

In terms of figuring out what type of effort contenders should fire, it seems to me like the horses this year break themselves down into tiers. Here is an example of how I see the tiers --

Tier 1

Upstart
Materiality
American Pharoah
Frosted

Tier 2

Carpe Diem
Firing Line
Tencendur

Tier 3

Dortmund
El Kabeir
Itsaknockout

Tier 4

Mubtaahij
International Star
Far Right
Danzig Moon
Bolo

The way i could see betting is making a trifecta ticket that is tier 1 WITH tier 1 and 2 WITH tier 1, 2, and 3.  I think for $1 that will cost $192.  While a person may well disagree with who I include in my tiers, my real question is whether this would be a sensible way to bet it?  I have a choice of 4 horses that can win, 6 who can finish second (taking into consider I really have 7 but one of them needs to win), and 8 for third (really 10, but I need two of them on the top part of the ticket)....from a translating a handicapping feeling into a bet, is this a wise way to spend $192 if I feel this way?  If I do the exacta the same way, it costs $24 for $1.  The $1 super would end up costing about $2300 (that seems hard to stomach).  While I have a lot of handicapping opinions, I am very much struggling with how to translate those into a bet for this race.  I feel very confident the winner needs to come from my tier 1 -- should I forget about the rest and just bet those to win in the right measure?  The big problem is that while i feel confident about where horses will be if they fire and do not run into trouble.....that means 1 or 2 out of a tier should be there, but by the same test a similar amount will not be there.....but I do not feel I can say who the ones that will fire will be and who the ones who wont will be.

[mjellish]

If it were to finish AP, Carpe, Dortmund you will hit but not make much.  Why not add a #1 super that includes that Tri with ALL on the bottom for $17.  Also, since you are not using your Tier 4 horses at all, don\'t see the point of them.  I would also, perhaps add another Tri set that has AP keyed on top only since if it goes that way the Tri probably pays less than if UP, MAT or FROST win.

[SoCalMan2]

mjellish Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If it were to finish AP, Carpe, Dortmund you will
> hit but not make much.  Why not add a #1 super
> that includes that Tri with ALL on the bottom for
> $17.  Also, since you are not using your Tier 4
> horses at all, don\'t see the point of them.  I
> would also, perhaps add another Tri set that has
> AP keyed on top only since if it goes that way the
> Tri probably pays less than if UP, MAT or FROST
> win.

Thank you.  Just for clarification, the only point of the tier 4 horses is that if I were to venture into the Super, those are the ones that I would want to acknowledge that could clunk up into 4th.

[SoCalMan2]

SoCalMan2 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> mjellish Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > If it were to finish AP, Carpe, Dortmund you
> will
> > hit but not make much.  Why not add a #1 super
> > that includes that Tri with ALL on the bottom
> for
> > $17.  Also, since you are not using your Tier 4
> > horses at all, don\'t see the point of them.  I
> > would also, perhaps add another Tri set that
> has
> > AP keyed on top only since if it goes that way
> the
> > Tri probably pays less than if UP, MAT or FROST
> > win.
>
> Thank you.  Just for clarification, the only point
> of the tier 4 horses is that if I were to venture
> into the Super, those are the ones that I would
> want to acknowledge that could clunk up into 4th.


I mean clunk up into 4th if enough of the higher level horses do not fire or run into too much trouble

[HP]

I am terrible at \"translating into betting\" but to me it only makes sense to use this many horses if you don\'t like the favorites and that is not the case here, at least for you.  I know everyone wants to hit the Derby but in some ways you have to treat it like just another race.  Is it bettable or not?  Do you have a real conviction?  

As a guy named Jerry Brown once taught me - \"what do you like about the race?\"  I\'m not sure you are answering that question here.

[ajkreider]

Yeah, but it\'s not just another race.  Cashing for $400 on a one dollar is never a bad day, but when you can handicap your way to a five digit payday . . . some risks are in order.

As De Niro says in Heat, \"It\'s worth the stretch\".

[HP]

If you think a $192 one dollar tri ticket is going to get you five figures I would agree.  I would never try to talk someone out of something.  For me I need a little more focus.

[SoCalMan2]

HP Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I am terrible at \"translating into betting\" but to
> me it only makes sense to use this many horses if
> you don\'t like the favorites and that is not the
> case here, at least for you.  I know everyone
> wants to hit the Derby but in some ways you have
> to treat it like just another race.  Is it
> bettable or not?  Do you have a real conviction?
>
>
> As a guy named Jerry Brown once taught me - \"what
> do you like about the race?\"  I\'m not sure you are
> answering that question here.

Well, what I like about the race is that there are 20 horses, I think 2/3 of the field doesn\'t have a chance of hitting the exacta, and of the third that can.....a bunch of them are a nice price, but some of them are not.

Taking that, plus some of the earlier comments - I see my bets going two ways......basically an if AP wins path and a non AP at top of ticket path.  In the first path, I single AP in the first position and then go with trifectas and supers using my tiers and hope to get good prices underneath (and I have good candidates for that)....then a non-AP to win path, which would have the three other possible winners I see on top, and then tiers underneath.  In the second path, the exacta will be a worthwhile play since my other three are likely to be Materiality, Frosted, and Upstart.  Still very primitive and still a lot to work out.  I think Jellish\'s advice is good....go with what I like, and then if the chalk runs at top of ticket, get price protection by buying extra exotics that way that get leverage underneath.  If, at the end of the day, the top 4 choices run top 4.....what are you going to do?

[jack72906]

I did something similar to what you are talking about last year. Typically not the best race to bet because of the difficulty of the puzzle, but the pools are so big...why not?

Not wanting to bet a lot on the race I put together a pool of money with a couple friends and ending up betting around $500 total on the race. The only horse I was sure I was using was Commanding Curve. Up and down and in everything. When it looked like the track was playing towards horses on the front end I decided to to use Chrome heavy. All of my tickets were based around Chrome and Commanding Curve. It was a BIG day.

Here\'s how I bet it:

$1 Super
Chrome/4 horses/8 horses/11 horses.

$3 Tri
Chrome/3 horses/ALL

$12 Exacta Box
Chrome with 4 others

$1 Tri
3 Horses/Chrome/ALL

Maybe you could do something similar with AP as your key in the 1-3 slots in trifectas and then maybe a small Super with some bombs underneath.

Good Luck

[FrankD.]

Congrats!!!

You just crushed the T-Graph red board record 51 weeks after the race.

[jack72906]

Thanks Frank!

...now mix yourself a \"high ball\" and go back to watching the Weather Channel

[smalltimer]

I held my breath for a second cause I wasn\'t sure who you were replying to.  LOL

[PapaChach]

It\'s a difficult translation, isn\'t it? And one that I have more often than not mistranslated into the sad gibberish of a high pile of losing tickets. Even the years that saw me turn a solid opinion into some sort of profit left me gnashing my teeth at the money over the money I left on the table.

It\'s the white whale of races for me. Foolish as it is to think it, let alone say out loud, what I shoot at is a whale\'s score with one-twentieth of the whale\'s outlay. My mentor, the late and deeply missed Sam, invariably tried to hose down my grandiosity with the thought that the 25 claimer at Aquedump held a lot more promise for the small fish than did the twenty horse stampede at Churchill. Though he was probably right, the stampede is a lot more fun, isn\'t it? Or as the most eloquent man to ever walk through Troy, NY once said, \"to produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.\"

Pardon the flowery digression, but there is an actual point, I think, and it\'s something along the lines of, given that this is not the usual 25 claimer, neither the horses nor the payouts ordinary, and given that I will be spending way more time and money on this race than I will on the usual 25 claimer, I have approach the race differently. First off, have to read myself before I can read the horses.

Where\'s my head at these days? How much can I afford to comfortably blow? Am I running a syndicate full of amateurs or am I playing on my own? What kind of bets can I live with if I miss? How can I turn the yearly dips into pools of a once-a-year size into a once-in-a-lifetime score?

Even when I\'m managing one of those small syndicates I\'ve got at most $1,500 at my disposal. Tiers are too pricey for me; I\'m looking to leverage one opinion, maybe two, that, if correct, leaves me live into multiple scenarios, especially ones that I do not see as likely, since these are the ones that have blown me up. (Like when a 71-1 shot I liked, back when just two sophomore preps was seen as a negative, ran 2nd to a horse that left me telling my father at our Derby party that I was quitting gambling and picking up going to Mass again. He would have been thrilled if it broke that way, but of course neither of those things happened.)

I\'m looking for a big price I can key in the top three or four spots, even if I\'m relatively unconvinced of his chances at the top spot. A 30-1 shot in third amidst the logical ones this year, even if two are them are Baffert in the neighborhood of 3-1 each, that will still pay out nice.

I can\'t afford to cover every plausible scenario, let alone the plausibly implausible ones. I don\'t have much of a margin for error, I gotta take a stand and work around it. It\'s frustrating when you just miss (easier mentally to just completely whiff on the race), but given the way the gimmicks pay in this race, as a small player, I basically have to get it right once in my life to come out on top.

And if I never get it right, well, it\'ll still be a good time.

[Tavasco]

I for one am entertained by your flowery digressions. Somehow someway as I read your post a strange image crept into my mind and I suppose I must share it to get rid of it.

Here\'s my image gleaned from your post. 1. A hunter standing in an open field firing away at some smallish birds on the wing with with a 30-0-6 rifle. 2. One field down is another hunter she\'s on one side of the glade blazing away at a stag on the other side of the glade some 150 yards away with a 410 shotgun.

I have never hunted game in my life and doubt I ever will. So now that you have a strategy, you need your Key horse. Good Luck! Then Good Luck.

[Tavasco]

On the subject of implausibility. 7th race Sha Tin, a 1900/1.30 trifecta keyed in large part by the 2/1 favorite running second and an implausible horse running third. Implausible only if one looked at only the last two races. Only ten in that field. Myopia is an international affliction.

Next race of slow international rats for 2.5M purse @ 1+1/4. The crowd likes Criterion @ 3/2 can\'t play him at that even though he looked Dortmund like winning his last. Even Red Cadeaux is in there @ 10/1 and 9 years old. What an amazing horse. A 28 million dollar win pool.

What a race! The local Blazing Speed wins from off the contested pace. A four horse photo for second, with the Japanese invader Staphanos second and Criterion holds for third. This time $1,000/1.30 Tri. Only 12 horses the top two with odds in the teens. Designs On Rome (who got smoked @ Meydan in its last) was in the photo.

Just pointing out how unfamiliar U.S. players are with large fields and huge pools like the Kentucky Derby. Not the same game as weekdays at Aqu or SA. A Derby finish involving several and a photo not so far fetched.