First Saturday in May

No Fin, I did not care for the Derby result, for reasons I've repeatedly mentioned; it is interesting that you apparently do now, after betting against that result at least 24 times that we know of and taking a very short price to do so. As I've said repeatedly here before, one part of those reasons for me not being enthusiastic about it, along with a lot of others who pay some attention and like the sport, include some of the substantive forensic content of what was in the California Horse Racing Board report into their investigation with the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine of the abnormalities of Bob Baffert horses, known as the 'Equine Sudden Death Report', after seven of them in his former 'Barn 61' dropped dead for no apparent reason in a short period of time recently, and they were forced to conduct some necropsies on his dead animals to look into it a bit. Seven dead horses in one barn will tend to do that, no matter how loudly an announcer has been slobbering purple adjectives into a microphone in the afternoon.

Quote: DrawingDead

...I hope he does so in visually impressive fashion, thrilling his fans & providing an opportunity to play "no" more heavily immediately afterward at a more rewarding price.

But I did prefer to see this kind of Preakness race result specifically, visually very stimulating to some (with some help from another overwrought screaming race call) for exactly the reasons I stated six days before.

Quote: FinsRule

No for +125 is a fine bet. But you can make more if you just pick who is going to beat him...

A few other folk thought so too. The original line was out at -185/+155 shortly after the race before getting hammered on one side. Today the line is getting hammered hard again on the 'no' side, and Wm. Hill is all the way down to -130/even as of about 11am PT. Westgate took the line off the board yesterday, and was planning to put it back up sometime today. I don't know about the status of Wynn's line. I didn't want to have to surf a sea of a few hundred thousand knapsack toting little hippy geeks at the last day of a big music festival at the north end of the Strip to try to get there.

Fin, you don't watch races to determine what is happening and why, you are a fan. You don't like to think about them, you prefer to feel about them. That is fine, people watch and play for a variety of different individual reasons, sometimes I do so for some of those reasons also, and a fan is a fine thing to be if you like. But I'm not required to become a fan of this particular one if I don't care to, and I don't.

Horses like living outdoors and running around. They've been doing that since before God gave us speed figures & pari-mutual racebooks & streaming online data feeds. Depending on how the grounds crew handles the surface preparation a 'sloppy-sealed' track is usually highly conducive to front-running speed and disadvantageous to horses coming off the pace taking kick-back, as opposed to a sticky drying out surface which tends to favor the opposite. But it varies, and there was also wind, and the effects of the conditions are open to interpretation.

Beyer has now come out with a figure of 102 for the race. That is once again a middling okay sort of figure for that event, not especially good but not terrible either. Based strictly on taking that number at face value, you could make an ambiguous case potentially pointing either way, and Beyer is out with a column that does just that. But this figure has to be taken as exceptionally unreliable because of the rapid change in circumstances. That isn't to criticize Beyer's figure for it, that's just what he's stuck with in this case. They may as well have been running on two different days, day one for races 1-12, and then running only two races when the 13th & 14th are held on day two, which essentially leaves someone comparing the last two to themselves when trying to compute a variant.

At this point three weeks out from the Belmont I will say this for AP: I think he's a more serious prospect for it than Chrome. But I think my neighbor's ankle-nibbling yip-yap doggie is a more substantial prospect for it than Chrome.

I'm not gonna go after each thing you said. But if you think I just stare at a program and use feelings all day, then you'd be mistaken.

As for the Beyer thing, who the heck knows. I guess they feel like they have to put something out there. If anyone uses it to decide who is going to win the Belmont, that'd be silly.

Quote: FinsRule

-snip-
Why is it hard for horseplayers to give credit to horses for winning? And those who do give credit are usually laughed at or dismissed.

I have mentioned the way horseplayers discount winners and find excuses for losers. It is very common (I do it myself) and an interesting phenomenon.
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Congrats to AP and his team. The rain did not hurt him and he won from the tough 1 post in the Preakness. The race looked a carbon copy of the 2015 Rebel Stakes @ Oaklawn. I am starting to believe he may be able to complete the trifecta. He has the speed/ability to make his own race. I think he is a notch better than the other 3 year olds at the moment. I still believe this 3 year crop is very deep and competitive. I thought his main threat yesterday was Firing Line. He went to his knees right out the gate, raced wide, and was essentially eased on the far turn. I passed on the race (due to weather concerns) and only was alive to a $5 Black Eyed Susan/Preakness double to Firing Line/Divining Rod.

Will I be betting AP in the Belmont? No. Mostly because of the distance, low odds, and the new shooters. I am starting to fancy Materiality a little. I may have backed him in the Preakness if he had entered. He might be the wise guy horse for the Belmont. He had a nice work over the track. Mubtaahij has also trained @ Belmont over the turf course no less (gotta love his trainer). Frosted had a bullet work @ Belmont and deserves a look. Madefromlucky winning the Peter Pan @ 1^1/8 mile (in a solid time) actually flatters AP a bit. AP easily beat him twice @ Oaklawn.

Still plenty of time to see how the Belmont field develops.

Another day, and clearly another shipload of money pouring in on the "no" side of the Triple Crown prop.

Y/N Now - Sun - Excited Sat fan $
Yes: -110 -130 -185
No: -120 +100 +155

'No' is being bet down near the point that constructing a 'Dutch Book' involving proportional wagers on multiple contenders may come close to providing a net potential payout competitive with the TC odds line, even with the higher takeout than the vig on the prop.*

*Though it might be hard for some to figure out a way to proportionately distribute both of their two dollars on anything.

Punter's Paradise, that one.

The lines on the Triple Crown prop have now settled into a stable range and converged among the major Las Vegas books. After several significant line moves from their open at -185/+155 (yes/no) immediately after the Preakness, William Hill is now holding steady at -110/-120, while Wynn is offering it at -110/-110, and Westgate's line is -125/+105. At this time both Wynn and Westgate are stipulating that "American Pharoah must start 2015 Belmont Stakes for action." In my opinion, the possibility of failing due to becoming a non-starter is NOT a trivial element of the matter at all, and the effect of making that into a 'push' should be considered by anyone evaluating relative value in these lines.

Wynn's house-banked fixed-odds non-parimutual future wager line on the Belmont Stakes, current as of about 6:00pm last night (Saturday - 5/23):

• American Pharoah 10/11
• Frosted 9/2
• Materiality 9/2
• Carpe Diem 10/1
• Mubtaahij 18/1
• Madefromlucky 18/1
• Keen Ice 20/1
• War Story 35/1
• Tale of Verve 40/1
• Frammento 40/1
• Conquest Curlinate 45/1

Is distance a concern for AP ????

1.5 miles is a concern for every horse.

I am going with Keen Ice, a plodder who should be able to get the distance. Would love to see AP win the crown but betting against horses attempting to do so is a great wagering opportunity

I'm not going to bet AP simply because the horse runs a real chance of dying from "cardiovascular collapse"during the race......... he is a Baffert horse. It's sickening to see the Baffert EPO horses when their done racing. Remember kids VALUE....hahahahaha

Quote: artvandelay

I'm not going to bet AP simply because the horse runs a real chance of dying from "cardiovascular collapse"during the race......... he is a Baffert horse. It's sickening to see the Baffert EPO horses when their done racing. Remember kids VALUE....hahahahaha

Stick to architecture Mr. Vandelay and leave the equine medicine to the professionals.

Quote: Sabretom2

Stick to architecture Mr. Vandelay and leave the equine medicine to the professionals.

I did rescue the whale that had a Titleist golf ball stuck in blow hole. So I do know a thing or two about large animal care.

Quote: artvandelay

I did rescue the whale that had a Titleist golf ball stuck in blow hole. So I do know a thing or two about large animal care.

I guess Titleist is the #1 ball among sea creatures too?

Well now, young & apparently very healthy uninjured Baffert horses suddenly dropping dead (usually while sleeping or at rest - as is characteristic of complications of certain "informal & unapproved" athletic performance enhancements) and specifically doing so of the very kind of *ahem* highly unusual peculiar cardiac event just mentioned, is certainly not a new or surprising thing or something that requires a lot of esoteric post-graduate academic study to be able to note. It has in fact been very publicly noted and discussed in detail and widely disseminated for public consumption in the published report by the State governing body and their lead investigator, who happens to also be the head of the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, among other things. And to make it really super easy I have even linked to some of that official published information from the State governing body (which mostly tends to view themselves as promoters of their State's badly foundering racing business) previously in this thread. And I would guess that the number of gamblers here who'd ever bother to even look at it probably amounts to some number less than "two."

To each his own, with his own moolah, but I happen to find it pretty strange that anyone would ever think of betting any actual money of their very own on any horse "trained" by one R.A. Baffert without considering his informal "veterinary" practices. One might think that by now even the most casual and impulsive wino racetrack mope would eventually want to take some kind of notice of itty bitty little details like the recent investigation of the seven dead horses and the extraordinary necropsies and examination of toxicology and "treatment" records the State conducted after the stench created by so many suddenly dropping dead in his barn. The words in the readily available quite publicly published results are not so very big that they couldn't be understood by someone with even a public high-school level education. Both the words printed in black type, and the obvious implications that are so very clearly left to the spaces between them.

But no, gamblers be gamblers, fans be fans, with magic golden monkey or without, and there are always plenty of such folk who can't be bothered with trying to think about pesky stuff that makes their furry li'l heads hurt. But one thing there is no real room left for doubt about at all is that the racetrack performance of any animal sent out by Robert A. Baffert on any given day is likely to have little to do with the intrinsic ability of the actual horse. Betting on him while ignoring that fact amounts to nothing different than buying slightly horsey-themed scratch-off tickets. Do so if you like, but know that's what you're doing, and don't ask anyone to help pretend otherwise.

The kinds of owners who are still willing to send stock to him know it, everybody in and around the business with two functional brain cells left to rub together knows it and has for years, and anyone who doesn't choose to know anything about it is simply deciding to be the most clueless sap at the track in any race he's entered. Which is fine, I guess, I have nothing against clueless degenerate gambler saps, if said sap feels that they get their money's worth of entertainment by being that, and so long as they don't think they are entitled to be regarded as anything else but a sap or a shill.

I gather there might be a subtext in that exchange possibly involving one of those weird sock puppet or longstanding emotionally disturbed troll things going on that the WoV forum is pretty much known for attracting and endlessly nurturing above all else. I don't care. On the substantive & topically relevant merits of the matter, it is what it is. In the case of a Bob Baffert horse, it is not the horse. And it is pretty damn reasonable if some do choose to be a bit concerned about what it does to the horse in the process of making his doughnuts.