This is another B Team Syndicate 4-of-6 Pick Six blog posting.
If you feel as if you've seen this movie before and you want to jump ship at this point, have at it (traitors). There's more to this story, however, and so if you stick around the movie follows a different script even if it ends up - essentially - the same way. Think of this as yet one more sequel from your favorite film franchise. Only in this series, the Dark Side of the Force always seems to keep winning.
This timeless, heart warming, tear-jerking, epic tale of a boy and his Father, but not his big brother (somebody has to work!), set in the newest racino in the Buckeye State began two months ago, in January. Perusing the online version of America's Turf Authority Since 1894 - the Daily Racing Form - I noted that, for the first time ever, Churchill Downs was offering its own Kentucky Derby Future Wager pool(s). Derby future pools have long been the exclusive domain of Las Vegas and Atlantic City casino sportsbooks. More surprising to me was that the first of four Churchill Downs Derby future pools had opened and closed in November of 2013. This, I missed. A horse that I wagered on as a component of various exotic wagers (exacta, trifecta) in last year's Breeders' Cup Juvenile is a colt named Mexikoma, son of a Belmont Stakes winner (2004, Birdstone) and grandson of a Kentucky Derby winner (1996, Grindstone), great-grandson of a Derby & Breeders' Cup Classic winner (1990 both times, Unbridled)... trust me, I could go on. In reading the DRF report further, I was informed that when Pool #1 of the Churchill Downs Derby future pool closed in November, Mexikoma was at odds of 40-1. Pool #2 (each Churchill future pool is open for 3 days) was to be offered during the first week of February. Seizing what I thought was my opportunity, I arranged an outing with The Old Master of the Turf to the newly opened Miami Valley Gaming, better understood as the new racino in scenic Monroe, Ohio, just a turned-double play from Joe Morgan Honda. By this time, The Old Master had been frequenting MVG with some regularity and found himself to be very impressed with the physical plant, but I had yet to pay a visit myself. Two days before Pool #2 opened, Churchill announced the 23 individual wagering choices (with a 24th being "Field," or all of the remaining nominations. This year, there were 413 total nominations for the Kentucky Derby. You can see why they try to limit each pool to a more manageable number of betting choices. Each successive pool introduces some previously unavailable choices).
Mexikoma was not offered among the individual betting choices in Pool #2.
Hoping to have the opportunity to place a Derby future bet on Mexikoma when Pool #3 opened, I phoned The Old Master and we rearranged our planned visit to MVG for Thursday, February 27th, the opening day for Pool #3.
Bear in mind, this is all happening during a period when very few of the 2014 Derby hopefuls are actually racing (and certainly none of the top contenders). They're wintering in sunny climes. Of course, all but some 395 of the Derby-nominated horses will make it all the way to the First Saturday in May. Most will not qualify under the new Derby Points requirements, a few will be sidelined by injury. But what's gambling if you don't take an occasional shot in the dark. The key is to not put too much money into it, unless you have exceptionally deep pockets.
February 25th rolled around and Churchill Downs announced the offerings for Pool #3. No Mexikoma. Again.
However, a different opportunity arose. Call it "A New Hope." A happenstance glance at the Equibase.com "Carryover Corner" revealed that on Thursday, February 27th, there were to be three - count 'em, three - sizable Pick Six-style carryovers at three of the major North American racetracks currently holding a live racing meet; Santa Anita, Gulfstream Park, and Fair Grounds.
My internal handicapping radar beeped, beeped again more loudly and then exploded. I may not have the opportunity to place a future bet on Mexikoma, but sure as shootin' I was going to marshal the considerable forces of The B Team Syndicate and take a whack at three concurrent, massive-carryover Pick Sixes!
I rendezvoused with The Old Master at 10-hundred hours on Thursday the 27th, picking him up in the Jeep Main Battle Tank and we immediately made tracks for... Performance Honda. Mr B wanted to make an appointment for service. They have phones for that sort of thing, but, well, you know. After an interminable length of time idling at the dealership, Mr B resumed his seat riding shotgun and we immediately made tracks for... Bob Evans. Over a stack of hotcakes we disagreed over MLB's efforts to eliminate home plate collisions, cheerfully discussed the well-deserved Hall of Fame honor recently bestowed upon Heavy Artillery lodestar Mel Edwards, and noted the retirement of Miami/Michigan equipment manager legend Jon Falk. Bill paid, we immediately made tracks for... OK, skipping ahead, we eventually arrived - circuitously - at Miami Valley Gaming. My first impression; Very nice. We entered via the casino portion of the facility and it is just as nicely appointed as the regional Indiana casinos, if perhaps a cut below the local standard-bearer Horseshoe Casino in downtown Cincinnati. We meandered amid the slot machines on our way to the simulcast room which is situated between the casino and the racetrack grandstand. Along the way, I sighted the various food/refreshment offerings; The 1803 Bar, a buffet, a coffee/desert shop and the Trifecta Grill. Nearing the race book, The Old Master directed me to find a table for the two of us, as well as an undetermined assortment of his cosa nostra of old-school horse player pals, while he would purchase our Daily Racing Forms. The MVG simulcast room is small, drab, harshly lit and aside from the multitude of flat screen monitors and betting machines, utterly nondescript. Think 1950s Soviet-era politburo design sensibilities and you've got it. Below, I took a surreptitious photo:
The Old Master of the Turf highlighted by the red box (above).
Afterward, as a measure of our experience in the MVG race book, we decided to make our triumphant return to venerable old Turfway Park for the Kentucky Derby. There's no place like home!
When The Old Master appeared with our forms, I spied an oversight, a potential hitch in my giddy up:
In the left hand column of the "AM" edition of the Form, the included tracks listed two of the three tracks for which I was interested in; Gulfstream Park and Fair Grounds but not Santa Anita (presumably included in the "PM" edition of the DRF). Of the three Pick Six carryovers, Santa Anita happened to be the one I was most interested in as it had, significantly, the smallest fields. Curiously, the "AM" edition featured a cover story (above) on the SA Pick Six, but nothing else.
Mildly discouraged, I began handicapping the Gulfstream Pick Six.
On most days at the track, there might be 9, 10 or 11 live races. Long ago I stopped playing Race 1, and I rarely wager on any race (or races) which follow the day's feature race and, thus, end the race card. Typically, I wager on - at most - 7, maybe 8 races on any given day at the races. On the two days of the year for which The B Team Syndicate takes a stab at a Pick Six - Derby Day and Breeders' Cup Saturday - we have all spring to decide upon which horse(s) we include in the final leg of our Derby Day Pick Six and we have all week - thanks to the DRF Breeders' Cup advance edition - to develop our BC Pick Six strategy. On this day, with Lou out earning an honest dollar and The Old Master handicapping the Daily Doubles at multiple tracks, it devolved upon Mr Heavy Artillery to handicap all three Pick Sixes; 18 races, and I had less than two hours to figure it all out. For this reason, and since it was a late-winter, mid-week day of racing [read: a lot of Maidens and "non-winners other than Maiden"], I made the command decision to not throw a truckload of cash at these Pick Sixes. My initial plan, therefore, was to bet the minimum on the Gulfstream Park and Fair Grounds carryovers and maybe use two horses on each leg of the Santa Anita Pick Six. But of course, I didn't have any past performances for Santa Anita.
Midway through my Gulfstream Park handicapping, singling one horse for each race, The Old Master informed me that MVG has a machine that allows you to print, for $2 a piece, race cards (and, ergo, past performances) for individual race tracks. Which, obviously, would necessarily include Santa Anita. I bolted for this "machine." A massive black monolith with a small touchscreen monitor bordering on 8-Bit quality display (again, think Soviet-era politburo design insensibilities), I inserted my two Treasury-inflated greenbacks into "Leonid" - as I dubbed this technological anachronism - and one-half a minute later, I had a piping hot stack Santa Anita race card pages. "Leonid" might be my favorite Sport of Kings innovation this decade.
Having waded hip-deep into the Gulfstream Park Pick Six by this point, I finished handicapping the GP Pick Six before moving onto the SA Pick Six. An hour later, I'd made my way through two-thirds of Pick Six handicapping paradise and, with the clock ticking, I hurriedly scanned the Fair Grounds Pick Six.
At this point, I must make a clarification:
The Fair Grounds Pick Six was not, in fact, a Pick Six. It was a Pick Five. As such, my task was not to handicap 18 races, but 17. An immaterial difference. Also, whereas the Santa Anita Pick Six was a traditional Pick Six, the Gulfstream "Rainbow" Pick Six and Fair Grounds "Black Gold" Pick Five were of the "Jackpot" variety, a recent innovation in the world of Pick Six wagers. Invented, I believe, at Gulfstream Park, the "Jackpot" only pays out 100% of the pool when there is but one, single winning ticket. In the event of multiple winning tickets, something like 30% of the pool is split among the winners and the remaining pool carries over into the next day of live racing. My assumption is that this "Jackpot" variant is to dissuade the big, deep-pocketed syndicates from stealing all the fun (and profit) from the small-time, independent players. After all, where is the financial sense in putting together a 5- or 6-digit syndicate bet on a payout that might only pay $500 or $1000?
I did not have time to handicap the FG "Black Gold" Pick Five, so instead I quickly scanned for horses sired by some of my favorites.
With just a few minutes to spare, I headed for a betting machine. I was relieved to see that MVG employs the same type of betting machines that Turfway uses (the racino in scenic Shelbyville, Indiana has, as of my most recent visit in 2012, betting machines straight from the Spanish Inquisition. The Indiana Downs machines have - or had, as of 2012 - black-and-white Zero-Bit displays and do not - or did not - accept any bills larger than a $20. When making a Pick Six wager, it is most desirable to feed $50s and/or $100s into the machine). I rapidly completed my wagers for Santa Anita and Gulfstream Park, but discovered a slew of scratches at Fair Grounds made a mess of my hastily cobbled-together "Black Gold" Pick Five. One positive was that I also learned via the betting machine the minimum wager on the "Black Gold" was $0.50, as opposed to the usual $2 minimum. I sprinted (OK, sauntered) back to my seat, took another look at the "Black Gold" Pick Five, and took a wild (but inexpensive) shot in the dark. Thus, The B Team Syndicate had - for the first time ever - three concurrent Pick Six-ish wagers on the board:
Thanks to the $0.50 minimum on the FG "Black Gold" Pick Five and the rash of scratches, I tossed in more than my originally-planned one horse per leg, even hitting the "ALL" button for the final leg.
By the time the GP "Rainbow" went off, the pool had climbed from that morning's $199,000 to $2.1 million.
The GP "Rainbow" Pick Six was the first to get underway. As most of my handicapping efforts were focused on Gulfstream, I backed up our syndicate GP Pick Six with straight WIN wagers on the horses I singled. My New Year's resolution this year is to lay off the exotics (excluding the Pick Sixes, naturally) and just play straight WIN or WIN/PLACE bets as a means to increase my quantity of cashed tickets.
From left to right (above), you see my shorthand notation for our B Team Syndicate Pick Six. At right, my $10 straight WIN bet on the #6 which hit. This got our Pick Six off to a successful start and paid me $24. How satisfying it is to key on a single horse at the start of a Pick Six and be correct.
What isn't satisfying is when a jockey forgets how to ride a horse.
For the second leg of the "Rainbow" Pick Six, the jockey for our #6 Mucho Mas Macho gently nudged his mount out of the starting gate, strolled into the first turn, dawdled around the clubhouse turn, fell back into a different time zone down the back stretch - all into an agonizingly slow pace, the kind of pace that distant horses are unlikely to rally victoriously from - and then turned on to full power the jets, making a furious rally that came up just a few lengths short. It has to be seen to be believed. If instead of our horse being 15 lengths back, if he's only 10 lengths back, we win this. Crummy jockey. Also blew up my WIN wager on Mucho Mas Macho.
Race 7 we bounced back with a correct pick on the #7.
My $10 WIN returned to me $31.
Likewise on Race 8 with the #1 horse, the Irish-bred Eternal Ruler:
And $16 on my straight WIN bet.
At this point we were 3-of-4 on our "Rainbow" Pick Six, alive at best for a consolation 5-of-6 payout, and The Old Master and I exited the race book for a bite to eat at the Trifecta Grill. He opted for the Italian sausage and fries, I dove headlong into the double cheeseburger with fries. Good, but not quite as good as the burgers/fries at Turfway. We returned from feeding eating to find that in Race 9, our #5 horse won.
From a wagering standpoint, we've been here before; Having lost one leg of the Pick Six, but still alive for a consolation payout going into the last race. What was different is that we've never been in this position with such an inexpensive ticket, in this case just $4 (a total of only two betting combinations).
Race 10, we singled the #5 Dissension - the third betting choice at post time (at final odds of 5-1). Midway down the homestretch, I thought we had it. I did cash the back half of the only WIN/PLACE wager I made all afternoon:
In the end, there were multiple winning tickets (6-of-6) on the "Rainbow" Pick Six and so it paid $685 with $1.7 million carrying over into the next day of racing. From what I can determine, with my scant experience in wagering on these newfangled "Jackpots," there doesn't appear to have been any form of consolation payout so I think The Old Master and me were dead in the water after Race 6. We just didn't know we were dead. Funny how you can be dead and not know it.
Our effort on the SA Pick Six fared marginally worse, having correctly picked three winners, but also having three second-place finishers (one led down the homestretch before yielding late, another finished second by a nose). The SA Pick Six pool swelled to $928,000 at post time, winning tickets were paid approximately $20,000 and those with consolation payouts got back $250.
Let the record show that of the combined 12 legs of the Gulfstream and Santa Anita Pick Sixes, and using only a scant 19 horses, I handicapped 7 winners and 4 runners-up. All in just 2 hours' time.
My shot-in-the-dark Fair Grounds "Black Gold" Pick Five was more disastrous, successfully hitting just 2 of the 5 races (including the "ALL" final leg). Winning tickets paid $450, the "Jackpot" carryover being $425,000.
The day's worth of Pick Six/Five pools totaled $3.5 million.
On our way out the door, I stopped by the hospitality desk and applied for my MVG players card:
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