The upside is that I have for the IRS a deep stack of un-cashed tickets with which I may offset any horse race wagering windfall I receive later this year.
The Old Master of the Turf is less inclined these days to travel to Keeneland for the Blue Grass Stakes, or for any race day at Keeneland, and so it has now been a few years since we last took off a day of work on a Saturday to watch in person a key prep race for the Derby. Add to that the exhaustive workload of the busiest-ever January-April at TDS, Inc.... and the start of Reds baseball this season.... and I didn't have the free time to devote to the monitoring of everything related to the Kentucky Derby this year. And so when The Old Master of the Turf met with me for doughnuts and coffee at Timmy Ho's this past Thursday morning it was my first opportunity to look at racing material - in this case race day programs for Friday's Kentucky Oaks and Saturday's Kentucky Derby - and to discuss in depth the subject with anyone.
I blew off work Friday afternoon to watch live coverage of Oaks Day on NBCSN and to handicap. I didn't get my hands on my favored Daily Racing Form so I had to contend with whatever limited data was to be found in the thin Derby Day program. In recent years I have shifted the focus of my wagering to playing the rolling Pick Three, the baby brother to the original Pick Six and the Pick Four (also a relatively recent development in the centuries-old saga of horse race wagering). Of course there would be Win/Place wagers, some Exacta and Trifecta Boxes. With $1-minimum Superfecta Boxes I would do my best to resist the siren song of monster-sized Superfecta payouts requiring IRS involvement before getting paid.
When you roll with The Old Master of the Turf, you arrive at the race track early. EARLY. At Mr B's direction we parked on the casino side of Miami Valley Gaming.
I suppose the casino was actually open for business at 9:30am. After all, the lights were on. The a/c was cranked up. And..... it's a casino. Aren't casinos open 24 hours a day? At any rate, aside from me and The Old Master of the Turf, the casino appeared to be utterly devoid of human life. As was, for that matter, the track side grandstand at MVG where Mr B reserved a table for 8:
The TV monitors which soon would be simulcasting racing from tracks all across the country were at that early hour all dark.
With the spare time I mapped out my wagering strategy. In particular, which horses to include in my modest Pick Six (Races 7-12), the three different Pick Four's (Races 2-5, 5-8 and 9-12) and the rolling Pick Three's (rolling because a new Pick Three starts with every race until near the end of the race card when there are no longer three upcoming races to include).
After the first three races on the Derby Day under card, not one of my nine different wagers proved to be a winner. In the first race I had an Exacta Box that finished 1st & 4th. In the second race a Superfecta Box that finished 1st & 4th & well-up-the-track & M.I.A. In the third race an Exacta Box that wound up 3rd & long.
I turned the program page to Race 4 already $59.00 down, inked my wagers onto the bottom of the program page and went off to place my bets. My Trifecta Box ran 1st & 2nd & not-good-enough but I hit the back end of a modest Win/Place wager.
Eureka!
This slight improvement in fortunes spurred me to three consecutive races in which I had a Win or Win/Place wager on the eventual winner:
There were other losing tickets in these same three races which offset some of my gains, but the net result had me back to within $16.00 of breaking even halfway through the race day and thus giving me the bankroll reserves to attack the remainder of the race card.
You will note in the series of three successive photographs immediately above that my Race 6 winner is represented not by my cashable Win ticket but rather my winning Pick Three. That little beauty cost me $6.00 and returned $43.00. You can see the appeal of wagering on a Pick Three. On Derby Day, the Pick Three's paid:
$47.70
$101.80
$103.15
$43.00 [mine]
$54.35
$126.15
$250.45
$2,917.85
$672.00
$3,274.55
As the day wore on it became more difficult to pick winners. This fact may be discerned from the progression of Pick Three payouts. To hit a sizable Pick Three like the $2,900.00 payout (above) you'd have to pick some long shots like the 39-1 winner in that race. Which I did. On my ticket (Race 8 Pick Three, below) I included the #3 horse which went off at odds of 49-1 and finished second. [I did collect the back half of a Win/Place wager on that 49-1 long shot, named New York Central - the railroad my grandfather worked for. It paid $27.80 for a $2 bet. This proved the be the last of the 8 tickets I cashed on Derby Day.]
I played ten Pick Three's on Derby Day, from races 1 through 10. I cashed just the one, pictured above. The narrow margin that separated me from being down on the day and being up on the day... or driving home in a Brink's Truck... is revealed by the nine losing Pick Three tickets. Here they are:
My Pick Three tickets from Races 1 through 7, excluding the winning Pick Three from Race 4, all.... all.... had two-of-three correct selections [highlighted in orange]. Three of those six losing Pick Three tickets would see my errant selection finish, agonizingly, in second place. A fourth of those six losing Pick Three tickets would see my incorrect selection finish in third place.
Had any one of those 3 second-place horses wound up in the winner's circle (or the third-place horse) I would have walked away from the track even for the day. Had two or three of those hard-charging thoroughbreds been just a few strides more fleet, my narrow margin of misfortune would have turned into a plain old fortune.
Razor-thin. That was the difference in my Derby Day. As the old saying goes, That's horse racing.
Additionally, I played all three Pick Four's and one of them - begun with Race 5 (see below) - was "live" through the first three races (highlighted again in orange) but the ticket ran aground for the final leg.
And while, as a whole, my Pick Four wagers were not quite the equal to my Pick Three's, you will observe my handwritten notes (on the tickets) that my Race 2 Pick Four included a first- and second-place finisher and the Race 9 Pick Four had a winner and two seconds.
My Pick Six started strong but then immediately was sunk:
The Old Master of the Turf acquitted himself well enough to be satisfied with his own efforts:
I call this one "Mr B and the Green Salad of Salvation." And get a load of the random dude wearing a Derby Day sombrero at the next table.
The time between races expands, seemingly exponentially, as the Derby Day race card wears on. This is primarily as a function of accommodating the lengthening lines at Churchill Downs betting windows. In truth, that phenomenon of lengthening lines at betting windows occurs at every simulcast site around the country. What else is a horse player to do with the excess time but check out the other race tracks to see what might be going on elsewhere. Maybe there's a jockey you like at Gulfstream Park and he is about to enter the starting gate riding a long shot. Perhaps Alyssa Ali is reporting live from the paddock at Arlington Park and you find her irresistible. Or the betting favorite in the upcoming race at Belmont Park has bloodlines tracing your favorite race horses/sires:
Ghostzapper? Holy Bull? I couldn't get to the betting window fast enough! The filly Holy Helena won. This Belmont winner was the only non-Churchill Downs wager I placed on Derby Day
Two of Mr B's cosa nostra of old-time horse players joined us at our table. They were fully, I say fully, engaged.
One makes book on his untraceable mobile phone while the other [names withheld to protect the innocent], holding a sheet of wagers as long as a necktie, reacts with some warm feeling toward events unfolding on the turf.
With that, we have now reached that portion of my annual Derby Day recap where - once again - I immodestly remind my loyal subscribers of just how well my handicapping measures up against the best expert analysis that the Daily Racing Form has to offer. First the usual stipulation that this is not a back-handed compliment of the DRF. I think the DRF staff of handicappers, along with Steve Haskin at The Blood-Horse and Randy Moss on NBC, uniformly are very good at what they do. But even when performing at their very best they do not exceed my own ability to handicap a race card. For Derby Day, the DRF assigned just three of their analysts - Byron King, Kenny Peck and Marty McGee - to give their selections for the full Derby Day race card. The race card that day included two minor races after the 144th running of the Derby. I didn't handicap those races, as I never do, because me and The Old Master of the Turf would be well on our way home long before those races went off. Therefore, we evaluate races 1 through 12 (Race 12 was the Kentucky Derby):
The three horses I correctly picked to win, addressed well above, are highlighted here in orange; McCracken, American Gal and Proctor's Ledge in Races 5-7.
Byron King correctly identified one winner on the day (circled in blue ink; Big Gray Rocket in Race 2), Kenny Peck also identified correctly one winner (McCracken, Race 5) and Marty McGee correctly selected three winners (American Gal in Race 5, Proctor's ledge in Race 6 and Yoshida in Race 11).
One of those three DRF analysts - Byron King - selected for the Derby the same horse as did I, Bolt D'Oro. The DRF "Timeform Analysis" also liked my horse:
Steve Haskin from The Blood-Horse ranked Bolt D'Oro 4th for his final "Derby Dozen" column, published Derby week:
Neither of the other two Churchill Downs analysts selected my horse nor the eventual winner, Justify, among their top three preferences. The DRF "Timeform Analysis" lays out the case most of us subscribed to for taking a stand against Justify:
Plus, there was the oldest "curse" in American sports - The Curse of Apollo. Justify being the first horse to win the Derby without having raced as a two-year old in nearly 140 years has less to do with inferred superstar status than it does changes in modern training practices. Once upon a time, horses raced - often - at the age of 2:
Steve Haskin ranked Justify #3, just ahead of Bolt D'Oro on his "Derby Dozen:"
Perhaps the biggest winner on Derby Day was the legacy of Ghostzapper as a sire. If you review the photographs of my three successive Churchill Downs winners, well above, you will see that two of those winners were sired by Ghostzapper as was my lone Belmont wager/winner and the third of my Churchill Downs winners has Ghostzapper as dam sire (the father of the horse's mudder... I mean mother). As for Justify, the winner of the 144th running of the Kentucky Derby:
That's right! Ghostzapper, dam sire.
Here is your final order of finish, in case you lost sight of your mud-drenched Derby horse (as did Mr B):
And your menu of Derby payouts:
Note the $770,000.00 Pick Six carryover. This Thursday. Churchill Downs. I'm just sayin'.
Roll the credits!
