For Derby Day I was assigned the task of transporting in the Jeep Main Battle Tank The B Team Syndicate to scenic Shelbyville, Indiana and the Indiana Grand racino. Although that day's race card didn't feature any graded stakes races until 1:30 in the afternoon, The Old Master of the Turf insisted on being in our seats, at our reserved table and munching on the all-day, all-you-can-shovel buffet before post time for the first race. The Race 1 post time was 10:30am. Derby Day for The B Team Syndicate would therefore necessarily be a long day..... even longer if one or more of us were losing.
Spoiler alert; Two of us were losing.
I rolled off The Ranch before 8am on Saturday, hit the Golden Arches for a drive-thru breakfast, and targeted Mr B's top secret bunker located at publicly-undisclosed coordinates for a rendezvous. Ripping southbound down US27 at a blistering velocity approximating the speed limit I briefly dialed in WHAS 840-AM out of Louisville, Kentucky on the Jeep's sat-comm receiver. The WHAS on-air talent were already broadcasting live from Churchill Downs yet at that hour there wasn't any racing-related news of note to report. I then initiated Derby Day Drivetime Plan 002. DDD Plan 002 in that scenario means rocking out. Innumerable neuroscientific studies suggest listening to music assists with focus, concentration and promotes myriad other cognitive abilities. This is why I spent my high school and college years writing research papers while listening to Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here. You might deduce that my "B" average was the result of being distracted by lengthy David Gilmour solos whereas in counterpoint the faculty objected to the hard facts and righteous truth with which I carpet bombed their fragile and faulty Utopian paradigms. Switching from the AM-band to satellite, the radio immediately locked onto the signal from channel 38:
So much for sharpening my cognition. Up with the static and the radio, as Paul Hewson once said. Abby Normal was not exactly the brain Dr Frankenstein was after.
My afternoon of wagering was filled with near misses that drained my bankroll at a rate that would have astonished Frank & Jesse James. I also was foiled - or blindsided - by changes in the Derby Day wagering menu for which I was unprepared. I decided a year or more ago to forgo the incessant, knee-jerk wagering of exactas and trifectas, saving them rather for the sparingly few races in which those strategies were better applied. I'd made my Derby Day selections with the idea of wagering a single horse in each race to Win & Place, using those same Win & Place horses in rolling Pick 3's and the Late Pick 4 (on the day's final four graded stakes races) and - since it's so bloody affordable - playing a ten-cent superfecta box in every race. The ten-cent super box costs the bettor a modest $2.40 yet might pay out $20 or $200. Upon arrival at the racino, I discovered that Churchill Downs was not offering ten-cent supers. Rather, the Twin Spires was offering a minimum one-dollar super which to box would set railbirds back $24. As such, I did not avail myself of that wagering opportunity.
Alarmingly, I did not realize until reviewing the Derby race chart the following morning that the venerable Pick 6 at which The B Team Syndicate took a moderate swing was in fact not a Pick 6 - in the traditional understanding - but rather was a "Pick 6 Jackpot," a scourge that has blighted the horse race wagering landscape in recent years. In the event that there are multiple winning tickets on a Pick 6 Jackpot, those winners split 20% of the pool with the remaining 80% being carried over into the next race day. Only on days in which there is but one single winning ticket on the Pick 6 Jackpot will the pool be paid off to the (sole) winner. In a traditional Pick 6, all winning tickets split the pool in its totality. This is the difference between splitting a pool that pays off each ticket for $50,000 or $500,000 (traditional Pick 6) and splitting a pool that pays each winner - as it did on Derby Day - $900. $900 is not something to sneeze at, in general, but is a meager (and discouraging) pay-off for the handicapping effort applied and the amount of bankroll put at risk. The B Team Syndicate may have played its last Pick 6.
To illustrate how my Derby Day of wagering went, The B Team Syndicate Pick 6 [Jackpot - grrr!] including horses for each individual leg that finished; 7th, 2nd, 4th, 2nd, 3rd and a winner (correctly selecting Nyquist to win the 142nd running of the Kentucky Derby). Time and again, the next-day's published race line for my horses read, "2nd by a head in the stretch" before faltering. My Pick 3's fared marginally (but, alas, not financially) better as I used each of my four planned-for ten-cent superfecta box horses to launch each Pick 3. My best Pick 3 efforts still fell short. Two each were live through the first two legs before being torpedoed, another one with horses that finished 2nd, 5th, 4th and yet another with results that were 2nd, 2nd, 4th.
As for the Derby itself you were reminded, here on the digital pages of Heavy Artillery, of the sage wisdom of The Old Master of the Turf as it regarded Nyquist; "Never bet against a horse that's never been beaten."
The Old Master of the Turf, having popped for our reserved table (a stiff $300. Thanks Dad!) thus started the day in a deep hole and found himself digging deeper and deeper throughout the afternoon. It was a bad sign that The Old Master and I were in agreement on our wagers for most races. The patriarch of The B Team Syndicate cashed but one single ticket on the day. Good thing the jovial company of his two scions buoyed his spirits. His wagering plan of attack consisted of exactas that finished first and third or second and third and trifectas that finished first, third and fourth or first, second and fourth. In this I can empathize. Here's my $1 straight superfecta on the Kentucky Derby:
The horse I picked to win, the #13 Nyquist, won. So far, so good. The horse I selected to run second, the #14 Mohaymen, finished 4th. Not where I wanted him but even so among the first four to finish. The horse I figured to finish fourth, the #5 Gun Runner, ran third. Nearly bang on! However, the #17 Mor Spirit finished tenth (instead of third, where I slotted him). In a 20-horse field, playing a straight superfecta that runs 1st, 4th, 10th and 3rd is... well, I was going to write pretty good but maybe it's just decent. At any rate, Derby Day 2016 was that kind of a day for me and The Old Master. Our handicapping wheels were turning but we were upside down.
Lou, on the other hand, was the big winner on the day. He hit a Pick 3 early in the afternoon and Lou had the winning Derby trifecta at the end of the day.
Thanks to The Old Master, we all had a winning Derby Futures Pool ticket from back in February on Nyquist at 7-1 odds (Nyquist went off the 2-1 favorite at post time in the Derby).
Roll the credits!
