Seahwkgal wrote:I should kick myself. I had the Trifecta of the fake, pussified Belmont. Didn’t play it because I don’t have an online betting account. I still think Max Player would have loved the 12 furlongs. Oh well, we will NEVER know.
I love how the Honor Code 3 yos are performing. He is the final HUGE AP Indy son at stud.

Couple of pertinent articles in todays online issue from BloodHorse. One about Special Honor (Honor AP) and the other about a current trend in inbreeding in North America. I know the potential mates for my mare that produce the best dosage numbers with highest comparable mating offspring racing results involve quite a bit of inbreeding. My mare is a Prospector bred mare (ped loaded with big names) and I value her highly. She is/was a very talented runner and although of naturally hot temperament has since been a wonderful companion. Her ped is already including some inbreeding from the Northern/Native Dancer lines.
Just thought you might want to check those articles out.

Here ya go Seagal.
R9 at Toga today. 7F D Stake.
#7 Honor Way ML 20-1
The 7 (T/ Baker/Franco aboard) tops ped rankings over the 9/5/2 AND has posted best number at this race condition. 2 and 5 and 9 will be the race faves IMO.
Can you afford NOT to take a W/Plc shot @ 20-1? Doubt the 7 will go off at 20-1 though, despite the assemblage of talent around him. Examples: #2 T/T Amoss and J. Cohen. #5 T/C Brown and J/Castellano. #9 T/ B Mott and J/Ort Jr. #8 T/Cannizo and J/Rosario (horse the top closer).
I rate this a chaos race where anything could happen. #7 is 10/6/7 in 35 starts. It will definitely be a challenge for the 7 to win this, but at 20-1...?
PS: Just to stoke the fire with a dab of conspiracy theory, Franco just won R1 on the 7 horse @ 19-1.
Oh boy. There's more. Franco on the 7 just upset in R6. W @ 6-1.
I'm thinking all this jinxes his chances in the 9th, right?

Right. I jinxed it. Don't know what happened to my 2 longshots (7 and . They're probly still looking for them!
At least I got the W/EX/TRI. Came in 5/9/2/6. I didn't have the 6 to get the sup.
5 W pd 6.00
5/9 EX pd 24.40
5/9/2 .50 TRI pd 14.87

WOOHOO!
Just got my biggest hit since I had the big day at Keeneland. Saratoga R3 hit the super which pd 267.55 for a dime.
I don't play for dimes.

Any thoughts on Baffert getting caught doping(outside of CA, of course )?
I am looking forward to the Shared Belief this Saturday. Honor AP in a 6 horse field. Two Baffert horse looking to get Derby points. I doubt if Honor AP wins. He is screaming for more distance. The distance does not favor him but I am sure he will make a nice run. This is a training race for him. Kinda the way Sheriffs trains.

"Any thoughts on Baffert getting caught doping"
Can't say I'm surprised. I AM surprised they haven't swept it under the rug in appeal process. That they haven't gives me hope there will be continued improvement for the sport.
Shared Belief is at DMR? I rarely play the Cal tracks any more unless SA is scheduled to host BCup.
I'm embroiled at Saratoga. One of my two favorite meets. But it's a tough track to win at consistently. Happy to have recorded my 4th winning day in a row today, although 2 of those days were in the technical decision category, including today. But I'll take it. Toga can be tough sledding. Anyway Saturday is a huge stakes day at Toga with the Whitney, Personal Ensign, Jerkins, and Bowling Green all on the card.
I usually kind of stick to playing one track at a time. Cuts down on the time and work load. Plus every time I try to skip around seems like they eat my lunch and I'm a sore loser!

There is another Honor Code worth watching. Creed.
Awesome name, awesome connections(trained by Shug). 3 starts 2 wins and one place. He loves the slop.
The pedigree on this boy is insanely good. RF 3x3 to Weekend Surprise.
I am thinking he might be running at the Spa at some point.

Just got the card today and haven't opened it, but I think I saw an article in Bloodhorse that there is an Honor Code in the Whitney Saturday. I usually don't open cards until night before race day. My software profiles, but only does it once.
I'll try to stamp the name Creed in my memory banks. Like that'll help...
Another technical decision win today. That makes 5 winning days in a row at Sar. Knowing Toga thatmeans I'm due for a hiccup.
Prime Power was strong today. Quite a few really low priced winners, which is mostly what Prime is good for.

8/1 Saratoga
* Personal Ensign Stakes will have Point of Honor trying to compete with Midnight Bisou.
Tough sledding there.
* Whitney will have Code of Honor trying to deal with Tom's d'Etat and Improbable.

There is no Honor Code running in the Whitney. Code Of Honor is not an offspring of Honor Code even though there is a 2017 Honor Code colt named Code Of Honor who appears to have not raced yet. No matter maybe next year Honor AP, Max Player or Creed will be in the race?
As to this year’s Whitney, I am rooting for Improbable. Out of an AP Indy mare. Mr Buff is a paternal grandson of Indy but a long shot. FWIW, I am very biased towards anything Slew/AP Indy related.
As for the Personal Ensign, I am rooting for Point of Honor who is out of a Bernardini mare. Speaking of Bernardini, he is showing signs of being a really good broodmare sire.

I didn't even look past the name. Fooled me!
Shonuff. Jinxed it at 5 days in a row. Argh. Had it in hand too, but loosened the purse strings in the last two and got fooled in both. Lost a few bucks today. Not much though. In Toga terms I came out in good shape only -$7.
Tomorrow is a big day. Hope I set the table for a nice score somewhere during the day. Only take one!

Seagal, at one point I maintained a database of sireline success filtered by race condition win rate. The race conditions were md/msw and/or dirt sprint, dirt route, turf route, and turf sprint. That gave me my list of ranked/preferred sireline entrants for each race. But I never ignore race shape and energy distribution, or connection figs. I just use sireline for breaking ties etc. Now my softwarwe program does kind of the same thing and so does the profiler, so I quit doing all that manual work with excel.
I spend quite a bit of time late winter every year in equibase or werks creating pedigrees of potential matches for my prize mare every. It's a lot of fun looking at the resulting dosage and what the results have been for similar matches with each sire. So far haven't followed through as I already have more horses than I can afford. But I can't bear to part with any of them!

Done capping first half of the card Seagal.
Personal Ensign is R5.
#1 Abounding Joy Brisset/J Ort
#2 Motion Emotion Baltas/OrtJr
#3 Midnight Bisou Asmussen/Santana
#4 Vexatious Sisterson/Lezcano
#5 Bossy Bride Altras/Alvarado
#6 Point Of Honor Weaver/Castellano
Looking at race shape it looks on paper as though we could have a classic speed duel (2,3,4)gate to wire, and this is 9 frikken furlong race! It looks like the perfect setup for the 6 horse, Point of Honor. Still not convinced anyone can beat Midnight Bisou, but this looks like a huge test. Vexatious looks tough too.
I'm thinking odds on 3 and 6 will be so low this race might not be worth playing.

"Graveyard of Favorites'" strikes again.
9-1Vexation nosed 1/5Bisou at the wire. Inquiry dismissed. Point of Honor third.
Kind of shocked at this, but not really. I passed on playing the race.

There was an Honor Code horse enterted as FTS in R4, but scratched in front of the gate. Name is Futuro.

Boy did I call it! Honor AP wants more distance but ran well. Nice training race for the Derby.
Improbable WON! I should have bet both races today.lol

Yep, you sure shoulda! And follow that by calling it a day while you were ahead. That's what I didn't do and I got steamed for my trouble with a losing day cause I overplayed the last 2 races and lost them both.
I passed on both Whit and Ensign.
But every day you lose just gets you one day closer to the next winning day.

But I got back on the WIN trail today. Kind of a fistfight but I got some of my money back from yesterday. Now I'll take at least a couple days off and get some work done around the place to clear my mind!

I love watching the maiden 2yo races at the Spa. There was a nice 2yo by Jump Start that won going away on Saturday. I always look at their pedigrees and connections. Every time I see a Shug horse owned by the Phipps, I drool over the family tree. They own great female families.

WIth you there. In fact maiden races have been responsible for some of my biggest ever scores! It is often the case the only info available, outside connections (which almost everyone uses as their base for opinion, therby eliminating any sort of edge on that score), is pedigree. So of course pedigree is always on my mind in such cases.

Monday and Tuesday are always my dark days with regard to horse racing (other than holiday or special events). This particular Monday was the darkest of them all. Yesterday evening soon after racing ended I got one of those dreaded phone calls informing me my granddaughter was involved in a multi vehicle crash. She succumbed to her injuries this afternoon. Police suspect a drunk driver in a big truck was the accident instigator.

Last week was a tough one for me. Tried to find things to distract myself but nothing really worked. Will try to get back into the horse racing swing of things this week. Saturday another big stakes day. Saturdays used to be my best, but I've bombed the last 2 I played. Hoping to get tuned in to hit it this week, starting tomorrow.

Ah...good to be in the win column today. Didn't get rich, but added to the bankroll. Hit 2 supers today. Nailed the last race W/EX/Tri/Sup. Same with R6 and R8, but DNP R8.. Would have done some in R7 but did NOT have the 6 horse that took 4th and made it pay 522.95 for the dime super. But W @11.20, EX@153, and Tri@224 ain't anything to sneeze at.

Humbling day. Saratoga chewed me up and spit me out. Had the horses all day...except the cloud droppers. Ate me up. I call these kind of days a bloodbath. Need that big day game to kick back in now.
Whew. Glad that's over. Sure hope I got it cleaned out of my system!

Nice to have another WOOHOO day. It was correction day! As bad as yesterday turned out to be, today was twice as good. Got all my money back and won that much again, so I'm back to thanking Saratoga for being good to me.

Derby coming up in less than a month from now. CD is putting out requirements that any jock who wants to ride a Derby mount must be on site to stay by end of August. That could make a big difference to some of the other track still running. I know the NY colony will have a number of riders involved, including all my faves.

My Derby picks stay the same. I think I will try to play the Tri and super.

Tiz(monster-don’t think anyone can beat him), HAP, Art Collector, Max Player, Enforceable and Caracaro.
I will single Tiz on top and box the rest.

I have allowed myself to fall back into fist fighting the cards at Toga, and lately am coming up on the short end more often than I like. Still have my original meet stake X5 so all things considered I shouldn't complain, but I refuse to give it all back. If I get down to X2 I'll quit em.
Have noticed several Honor Code entries at Toga the last week. I believe at least one got a good win at first asking in the MD races.
I've been cleaning up on EX and tri at GPX lately and not even making a playsheet with all my factors, bias, etc. Just quick capping off my custom screen. Had the same thing going at Tam for a good stretch earlier.

Hey Seagal, do you like puzzle races?
If you can, check out R7 at Toga for tomorrow. Don't forget to apply your pedigree analysis. It's a humdinger. 5.5F sprint Stakes race on the grass with a big field (before scratches). Heavy Pressure of early speed. I may be forced to play more than one combination for this one if the odds warrant.

Derby Day tomorrow. I'll open the card tonight and see what I can see, but I'm doubting it will equal the opportunities the undercard produces. The first 2 days were stellar, and today was a winning day too, although in very modest terms. I don't spend time on the W pool, instead focusing on ex, tri, and or super plays. ex and tri have been barn burning good the first 2 days. I also caught some supers today, although I didn't get started until R6. Hit the super, unfornately that play was canceled due to a late scratch which made the field too small for sup play. So I hit it agin R7! R12 got me a 32.20 winner on top with the ex@ 118.80, the tri@ 58.40. I was disappointed the super only pd 27.93. Thought it would be better with such a nice winner, but 278.30 works (27.93 for a dime). Followed that up the Last Race today with W, ex, and tri, but missed on the 4th place horse so that was that. Last Race on the card is a game I play with myself. Over the past several years I've done so well winning that race I've considered not playing anything else!
Anyway, I'm kind of in tune with dancing with the girl that brought me, so I'll stick with my exotic game until it bags out on me. Derby look predetermined with a 3/5 fave in Tiz the Law. Odds like that don't help the exotic payouts much at all. THe one question is how he handles the 17 hole, from which there has NEVER been a Derby winner!
September, and here we are saying Derby Day. Amazing.

Took a quick look at the Derby. Wowzer, there are LOTS of big numbers on the ML. Trouble with that is thery're worthless if you can't get em home on the board. Big field and looks like it will be an unusually heavy early pressured race for 10F. That can play tricks with ponies without the gas to make that speed stick. All that speed to the outside will have to go early or risk getting hung up in a ton of traffic. That will make it extra hard for them to hang on for the whole way.
Could be interesting. in terms of throwing a few buck at a surprise horse. But I haven't seen one of those I can believe in yet.

I was mildly surprised at the results of the Derby today, more so that a horse beat Tiz The Law that had the same disadvantage to deal with than that the big fave was held to second. But even more surprised at the payouts. I didn't collect on it though because, although I had and played a super with 4 of the top five finishers I did NOT have the 9 anywhere on my radar. His 3rd place finish ruined my game. Had it not been for that I would have collected a nice prize. My super was a 4H box with 2, 16,17,18. My 16 and 2 fell 4th and 5th. That was disappointing.

Monday was the last day of Saratoga for this year, and the last card was pretty much a dud for me. Not sure yet where I take my tack, which is a good thing cause I have so much pre-winter work to get done here on the ranch I need to focus on getting that taken care of.

Got a couple nice stats from Bloodhorse this morning that are encouraging for the sport.
1) Saratoga announced they topped $700M all source handle again for this meet.
2) The Ky Derby was the most watched sporting event since the Super Bowl. Hoping that will translate into more fans and new money to enhance the price on horses I play.

Honor AP, who finished 4th in the Derby despite sustaining an injury during the race, was retired to Lane's end this week. Beautiful horse with a ton of run. Can't wait to do a nick with my mare to see what it looks like.

I'm still covered up with my pre-winter todo work list. But my daily update work last night showed CDX is producing a nice rate of high paying trifectas with my quickcap method. One yesterday was about $1600 for a $5 play.
My quickcap method only utilizes a combination of 2 base factors, which an additional contender rank of combined speed figs over last 4 outs. I can cap a race that way in a matter of not much over 1 minutes.

Still on play downtime. I do my updates every evening after results are in, but having trouble getting stuff done. One of the downsides to life in a spot as rural as I'm in is that material deliveries aren't always on time, which creates delays for all the down the line stuff that has to be done. Don't know when I'll jump back in, maybe not until after election is over, although no way I'm passing on BC weekend.

I'm still on HR play downtime. Moving through my to-do list but running out of time. Our temps here today half what it was yesterday. At long last got some rain last night. Needed that bigtime. Filled the horse tanks but my pond is over 2' down.

BC weekend fast approaching. Upside is while updating results I've begun to score some big hits again, so hoping that continues. Still hit and miss though. Seems like I have to take chances in all of them to get the hits, which takes that ROI downhill.

BC day 1 is next Friday. Early forms are out already. Lots of entries from across the pond. That's a problem for me as I haven't paid much attention to racing outside US this year. Nevertheless I'm stoked. Haven't played hardly anything for the last month+. The good news is I'm almost caught up on my work list! Woohoo! Maybe that will help me play with a free mind. That's what it takes to nail a big hit...and I could really use a BIG hit.

Can't believe it. My favorite event of the year and I missed most of it, only catching the last few races Saturday. Didn't do much and didn't do much good at those. A tad, but not much, surprised Authentic won the Classic. He earned it too. Vied early and came back to keep it. New to see how he tests...

During the past 2 month I have played very few races, but have gotten back in the saddle the past couple days. Did well yesterday, not so well today. But I did pop the top on the treasure chest in Last Race on the card both days. Always nice to end up on a high note, especially since yesterday was capped off with a great Seahawk win!

I'm still on downtime from contributing to the horse racing pools. Got tons of work done, home improvements, ranch chores, etc. I've been tempted though due to test results from keeping my databases updated. Have been scoring well at FGX and Tampa in the ex and tri. plays. Until yesterday. Races yesterday were essentially a bust for me, although I managed a couple nice hits at both those tracks. Test results are not the same as live play though. For one thing tests include all races, whereas in live play I would pass a number, if not most, of races on the card. So caution prevails in favor of taking advantage of tolerable weather to be outside.

STILL on downtime. I think I've very sparingly played twice in the past 3 1/2 months, by FAR the longest layoff for me in over 10 years.
I am daily updating my databases and staying up with results. Just not seeing sufficient data to induce me to put risk on the table.
Besides all that I'm busy with other interests, such as toying with a renewed interest in writing and photography. I haven't attempted a serious writing project for about 40 years! Not to mention Seahawks and college basketball season...

Yesterday's Oaklawn opening day was a doozie for me. 9 race card. When the dust had settles I cashed in 5 of the 9. 3 of those five had my top 3 picks finishing in the top 3 places. R4 alone yielded 18.20 W, 106,20 EX, and 685.60 for the tri. Great day!

Did almost as well today as I did yesterday. This keeps up and I'll end the toe dipping and jump right in!