Monmouth Park kicks off another season on Friday.  It will surely be a thrilling day, packed to the gills with high society types who have gathered to sip cognac and watch the best thoroughbreds the sport has to offer.  Or maybe instead, rattling around the place on a depressing rainy day will be a few thousand old-timers, down-and-outers and hooky-players who want only to know “whouze gonna win da fith?”  My guess is on the latter scenario.  

A few observations ahead of the meet:

-There is too damn much racing nationally, and in New Jersey.  I know the powers than be in racing are aware of this dilemma, and my guess is that the trend over time will be *slowly* toward less racing.  NJ can be a case study for what happens with too much racing — short fields, diluted quality, and low interest.  NJ racing would be materially better with something like a four-day (Thu-Sun) week at Monmouth in the summer and then maybe into October, and put the Meadowlands out of its misery once and for all.  I realize there are constraints to all this (horsemen want racing days, northern NJ politicians don’t want to close Meadowlands, etc.) and it ain’t gonna happen anytime soon, but in theory it sure sounds good.             

-There is no Breeders’ Cup as a backstop if Monmouth has a crappy season.  Last year the track could say ”sure this card full of five-horse claiming fields sucks, but we have the BC in October, biyatch.”  This year it will be “sure this card full of five-horse claiming fields sucks, but …er….ahh….remember we had the BC last year?”  Not quite the same.  Of course my point here assumes that one-mile dirt ovals can talk.   

-It looks like “Hollywood” Herb McCauley is back in town.  That guy is ancient!  I’m dating myself here, but I remember McCauley going up against Julie Krone and the late Chris Antley in the 1980s.  And speaking of old, Joe Bravo is getting a bit long in the tooth as well, and is coming off a thoroughly mediocre Gulfstream winter meet.  I suspect the days of him being top Monmouth jock by 40 wins or some ridiculous margin are over.            

MonmouthParkBlog is proud to announce its Kentucky Derby selection, Monba, finished in the Top 20 of that most prestigious of horse races. It’s true there were only 20 horses in the race, but hey, I like to see the glass as half full.

But seriously, it just goes to show what a crapshoot the Kentucky Derby can be, especially if you’re looking for a price. Just look at some of the names that finished up the track — Colonel John, Pyro, Court Vision, Z Fortune, Cool Coal Man. All nice, G1-caliber horses, but in the Derby, sometimes you just get lost in the shuffle. Or you just suck, like Monba.
Sad, sad story with Eight Belles.

Great day of racing on the Churchill undercard, but I found it tough sledding betting-wise. I liked You and I Forever lots in the 4th, but he could only manage 3rd at 9-2. I had a few shekels on the Game Face-Keep the Peace exacta in the 6th, but I wasn’t overly convinced about that race, my bet was more to stave off boredom (man there is a lot of time between races on Derby Day) than anything else.

My painstakingly crafted Pick 4 tickets for races 7-10 went kablooie before the ink dried when Bayou’s Lassie won the 7th at 12-1 — a price like that is in my wheelhouse, but I wouldn’t have bet that horse with your money, as they say. What made that outcome more painful was that I had tossed the 7-5 favorite, Dreaming of Anna. So I was right about her not winning, but wrong about who would beat her.

I liked Miss Macy Sue in the 8th, not sure if the jockey gave her a bum ride or what but I would have expected her to lay off the pace and come on late rather than get fried early in a four-way speed duel. I thought the 2-1 chalk Sugar Swirl was the biggest bet-against on the card. The 14-1 winner, Intangaroo, was mildly playable in retrospect, but as a California invader she was tough to have a real good read on unless you follow that circuit (I don’t).
Out of Control was one of my better bets of the day in the 9th — I love turf horses who are coming off subtly bad trips where they chase slow paces while wide. He came on late and at one point looked like he would get past Einstein, but he bobbled once or twice late and lost momentum, so no dice. Oh well, c’est la vie.

MonmouthParkBlog.com officially endorses Monba to win this year’s Kentucky Derby.

Before Keeneland installed Polytrack a few years ago, the winner of the prestigious Blue Grass prep would almost certainly be one of the favorites in the Kentucky Derby. Instead, because of unpredictable results on synthetic surfaces, questions have arisen about the legitimacy of results on Polytrack. Hence, many consider Monba (for whom 2 of his 3 wins have been on synthetic) a bit of a Poly specialist, and the horse has been installed at a square 15-1 on the morning line.

I don’t know that Monba is not a Poly specialist, but I think there’s ample reason to believe he can run just as well, or better, on dirt. He did win on the Churchill dirt last fall, and his other dirt race — a last-place finish in the Fountain of Youth at Gulfstream in February — is a complete and utter toss-out, as he had a bad trip, got his leg all cut up, and had to go for throat surgery soon after the race.

His Blue Grass victory is being discounted as flukey by many handicappers, as his 92 Beyer Speed Figure is comparatively low, and big favorite Pyro — a stretch-runnin’ model of consistency previously — never picked up his feet in that race, an inexplicably dismal effort. But I think just because Monba won, doesn’t necessarily mean Poly is his favorite surface — what if he’s not crazy about it either, and moves up on dirt? That’s very much a feasible scenario, in my book, and 15-1 is more than ample compensation for hazarding that speculation.

Other plus factors: Monba has stellar breeding (granted this is the Derby and you can say that about most of these horses, but his female line is as classy as you’ll find), had a decent workout last week, and he gets the services of Ramon A. Dominguez (I’m a bit of a Dominguez freak). Pray for a decent trip and all systems are go, baby.

All that said, there are 20 horses in this race and anything can happen, I’m certainly not dumb enough to bet the farm on Monba to win. I can see myself using him in some multi- and maybe intra-race exotics with a few others, likely including Big Brown (he may well be the real deal), Tale of Ekati (tough post, but looks to be sitting on a big race), Anak Nakal (I don’t see much to like about him, but Brad Thomas likes him, that’s enough for me to throw him in), and Denis of Cork (had no chance in paceless IL Derby).

I tried a Brisnet.com handicapping contest last Saturday, for the first time.  As I understand it, they run five online contests between now and October.  The top 50 finishers from each contest qualify for their final contest in November, and the top 3 finishers from there qualify for the DRF/NTRA contest in Vegas next January.  So the contest is legitimate in that it does qualify people for Vegas, this (and every other) contest player’s ultimate goal.

The Brisnet contest consisted of 8 races, 2 each from Gulfstream, Keeneland, Oaklawn, and Santa Anita.  Contestants select 1 horse (plus 1 alternate) for each race, in advance, and have notional $2 win and place bets on each.

I picked two winners out of eight races: Rebellion in Keeneland’s 8th ($10.20 and $5.40), and Dual Jewels in Oaklawn’s 9th ($14.40 and $6), and I had a second-place finish with Castillo Del Sol ($3 place payoff) in the Oaklawn 6th.  So I turned my $32 of notional bets into a $39 notional bankroll, not a bad 22% return, but I knew it wouldn’t be enough to crack the top 50.           

And I wasn’t even close, as I finished in 729th place.   The winner had $115, including 5 winners, while the 50th-place person had $78.80.  Not surprisingly, most everyone who did well had the biggest-priced winner from the 8 races, Stella Mark ($33.40) at Santa Anita.     

There is a lot to complain about regarding the Brisnet contest: you have to make selections in advance without seeing odds, they choose all the races for you, and the web site seems to have very limited functionality as far as standings, updates, video, etc. while the contest is underway.

But, it is free, and they do funnel people to Vegas, so it’s worth trying.  Given that it is free, there are thousands of participants (I don’t know if they said how many participants were in last week’s), but still, a very good day should get me in the top 50.  That would then give me a 3/250 shot to make Vegas, where I’d have a 1/250 (approximate) chance of winning a half mill. 

Not bloody likely, granted, but stranger scripts have been written.        

MonmouthParkBlog.com had some technical difficulties of late (I’d like to use this as my excuse for not blogging, but laziness, apathy and sloth are the real reasons for that). My comments file got “corrupted” somehow and crashed, so my tech dude had to delete and recreate the comments file, and all previous comments got nuked in the file deletion. So, my apologies to anyone who had comments deleted, please don’t take it personally, but the flip side is the comments section is back up and running.

In the midst of this technical storm I did finally figure out how to install a simple spam guard (Akismet) that seems to be working splendidly. So I think I will be a more motivated blogger now that I don;t have to manually delete 200 comments every day from folks telling me how I can enhance my manhood or get the cheapest Cialis. I swear, if I ever meet a spammer in person, I’m kicking his ass.

Well so much for my grand plan of qualifying for the Simulcast Series Challenge Invitational at Monmouth Park in April.

I tried again this past Saturday, but no luck.  I won’t bore anyone with the gory race-by-race recap, but my only winner was a $25W hit on Barreling Home, who paid $8.40 in the fourth race at Gulfstream.  That got my bankroll up to $155 and put me within spitting distance of the leaderboard,  but that turned out to be my high-water mark, as I proceeded to lose the rest of my bets and finish with a bankroll of $0, tied for last place.  My original bet on Barreling Home was $50W, but I pansied out and changed it to $25…no matter though, as I still would have lost the subsequent races.  Leaderboard bankrolls were comparatively low when I last checked late in the afternoon, I think the top dawg had about $500 and #10 was at about $300.  There were 234 contestants, the most they’ve ever had, so my guess is that at least one person freaked late in the day and got above $1,000. 

So that’s it for this winter series, at least for this unlucky horseplayer.  I do want to qualify for Vegas ‘09 of course, but I don’t want to spend too much in trying to get there.  In recent years I’ve pretty much did Monmouth contests only (I think I did a tourney at the Meadowlands once) — perhaps this year I’ll branch out a little and look into contests in New York, Philadelphia, and Delaware, and also see what they have going online.     

I unsuccessfully reached for handicapping contest glory again this past Saturday at Monmouth Park.  To wit:

Looking at the races ahead of time, Fair Grounds easily had the day’s best racing, so that’s where I focused.  The Gulfstream card was pretty weak for a Saturday, and it weakened even further when rain in South Florida washed GP off the turf.  I didn’t really look at Aqueduct and Tampa.

After careful analysis, I decided that Winning Idea in the Fair Grounds opener was my best play of the day.  I liked her pedigree (sire Hold That Tiger is a solid turf influence, and dam Nasty Affair was a stakes winner), improving Beyers, and post position, among other things.  She was 10-1 in the morning line, which I pegged as a fair price, as a few of her rivals showed substantially better Beyers, but this was a maiden race for three-year-olds, so it was not unreasonable to project (or at least hope for) big improvement.  I think she was lightly regarded because two of her four lifetime races, including the only one where she showed any life, were at Remington Park, which ain’t exactly Saratoga.  I was willing to take a contrary view and speculate that she was improving and had legit bloodlines, so just because she raced at Remington doesn’t mean she’s Remington-caliber.

Now a big worry going into the race was pace – Winning Idea comes from behind, and most likely would need an honest pace upfront.  The #1 Magna Heart and #5 Ghoul looked like they ahd some speed, and there were two others in the race who were stretching out from sprints, so I thought maybe, just maybe, they’d be enough pace in the race.

Winning Idea went off at 23-1, which I thought was a tremendous price.  I’ve come to believe over the years that the higher the price on a horse you like, the less doubts you should have in betting, so it was all systems go.  So I went $30W and $5P –a fairly ballsy bet that represented more than 1/3 of my contest bankroll. 

But I watched in horror as Winning Idea proceeded to get just about the worst possible trip without an actual physical mishap.  There was a dawdling pace up front, fractions were like 24:3 and 50: and change, and Winning Idea was about 3-4 wide, tracking the slow pace in a bunched-up field.  There was just no flow to the race at all…I knew before the race was half done that she had no chance, and sure enough the two horses on the lead early made up the exacta.  Winning Idea ran creditably, just missed third by a nose at 23-1, but that didn’t do me any good.  It was early in the afternoon and I was already back on my heels.

I next bet $10W on Inner Light in the 3rd at Gulfstream.  I wasn’t crazy about it and didn’t really have it flagged beforehand, but I thought the favorite, Saratoga Russell, was being overbet and 7-2 was a nice price on Inner Light, a $650K Mott horse who hadn’t really shown a whole lot but had potential.  Alas, Saratoga Russell went wire-to-wire and won by open lengths, while Inner Light didn’t show squat.  This may have been a bad bet as it was a last-minute decision, but on this day it would turn out not to matter.  With the $10 loss my bankroll was down to $55. 

Next was my only winner on the day, $10W on the 3-1 Graeme Six in the Fair Grounds 6th.  She had gone parking-lot wide in her previous race and still almost won, so I thought 3-1 was a decent price, and I didn’t see how the favored Tres Dream (8-5) was all that stupendous.  Graeme Six got a good, stalking trip and drew clear late, so I win $30 and my bankroll is back up to $85.  Of course, hindsight tells me I should have put my whole bankroll on it rather than just $10!

But unfortunately it was all downhill from there.

My next pari-mutual venture was $20W and $5P on Truelybroadway in the 5th at Fair Grounds.  I liked this horse quite a bit, almost as much as Winning Idea…he was lightly raced and trying turf, and stakes company, for the first time, but I loved the Yes It’s True-Theatrical pedigree, plus surprisingly he drifted up from his 8-1 morning line to about 20-1.  He got an OK trip, a bit wide around the turn (but what can you do really, in an 11-horse field in a turf sprint, only a few horses are going to get top-notch trips) but in a good stalking position, but he just didn’t have the necessary punch when it counted and finished fifth.  My bankroll is down to $60 and I’m starting to feel my contest mortality.

But I still had a puncher’s chance.  I next put $30W on Dix Huit in the Gulfstream 6th.  She was a first-time starter, but the Gone West-Colonial Affair pedigree is stellar for a wet track.  She was meant well too, bet down from a 8-1 morning line to about 6-1, then dropped to 4-1 just before the race went off.  But she was a dud on this day, broke slowly and was just mid-pack all the way around the track.                           

I put my last $30 on French Beret to win in the Fair Grounds Handicap.  The Canadian-bred was stepping up to face some accomplished Grade 1 winners in Better Talk Now and Daytona, but I liked his recent races, thought the added distance would be a plus, and also read some favorable trainer comments about how well he was training.  But it wasn’t to be, as Daytona went all the way on an unchallenged lead.  French Beret had a nice rail trip, but there was no catching the winner.   F me!  I’m busted.

So all-in-all it was a disappointing day but I can’t say I have any real regrets, i.e. I didn’t miss anything big that I liked or have any big heart-wrenching decision that I went the wrong way on.  The closest things to regrets were my $10W bet on Inner Light that I probably shouldn’t have made (but as I said ’twas no big deal, I would have lost the $10 on something else), and a close call in the 5th at Fair Grounds when Natural Speed, who was my second choice after Truelybroadway, almost won at 10-1.  

It just wasn’t my day.     

So I returned from a 2 1/2-month break from racing by participating in Saturday’s handicapping contest at Monmouth Park. I’m hoping to qualify for the big DRF/NTRA contest out in Vegas one of these years, and yesterday was the first pre-qualifier for the Jan. 2009 Big Dance.

It’s a $200 ante, $100 for the entry fee and $100 for your bankroll. Subject to following a few straightforward rules (e.g. win and place bets only, must bet at least 10 races), what you do with your $100 bankroll determines how you do in the contest.

Because I was coming in off the bench relatively cold and didn’t have any real feel for things going in, I figured my best approach was to stick to $25-$30 win bets, rather than target something specific for a bigger $50 or even $100 plunge. As I’ve written before, I think betting the minimum per race generally is a prescription for failure in these contests.

My first bet was $25 to win on Malinalco in the 1st race at Gulfstream. I liked her connections, pedigree, post position, and most recent workout, and I thought 7-2 was reasonable odds. She broke well and showed early speed, but folded up like a cheap tent around the turn and was eased late. Rut ro! This was not a good start.

I wheeled right back with $25 to win on Sacred Realm in the 2nd race. I thought 10-1 was a more than square price for her grass debut given her pedigree, I think highly of jockey Javier Castellano, and trainer Phil Gleaves had won the first race. She got a decent, ground-saving trip, and had some room in the stretch, but she just didn’t have any late punch and finished mid-pack. So my $100 bankroll is down to $50. Oh, man, this is beginning to suck.
In the 4th race I liked Shortcake quite a bit, so I plunked down $30 to win. The race unfolded just as I had hoped, with Castellano sitting off a speed duel. He inhaled the speed around the turn, shook clear in the stretch and held off a late challenge to win by about 3/4 of a length. I’m in business! I won $123 on the race, pushing my bankroll up to $173, good for 17th place (out of 144 contestants).

But alas, my good fortune was short-lived. I liked Double Dinghy Day a bunch at about 9-1 in the 5th race. I thought she was a legitimate closer in a race with plenty of speed, including a few stretching-out sprinters, and coincidentally enough, Castellano was again aboard. I liked my chances halfway through the race, as JJC was managing a trouble-free, ground-saving trip while a couple of hopeless longshots were on the lead, but similar to Sacred Realm three races earlier, she just didn’t have anything to offer in the lane. I did like the winner Ballymore Lady, but not at 2-1, and I did dodge a bullet because my second choice after Double Dinghy Day was Lady Carlock, who closed with a rush and almost won at 13-1. I would have been beside myself if Lady Carlock won.

With my bankroll back down to $123, I bet $10 to place on the chalky Stage Luck in the 8th race at Aqueduct — just a capital-preservation, move-the-chains wager. She looked finished in mid-stretch, but came again with a big rush in the final strides, winning me $9 and boosting ye olde bankroll to $132. I won another safety bet when the 4-5 Irish Blast finished second in the Aqueduct 9th, netting me $5.  (It was especially nice that Irish Blast didn’t win, as some annoying, mouthy guy sitting near me needed him to win to hit the Pick 6.  Schadenfreude baby!) 
The next bet turned out to be my only real regret of the day, and it wasn’t that big of a regret. I liked Bordeaux Bandit in the Gulfstream 7th — loved the pedigree (Vindication brings speed and Mimi’s Golden Girl brings class), and you can’t go wrong with the Zito-Velasquez connections. I could have, would have, should have bet at least $25 or $30, maybe even $50, to win, but Dutrow had a 10-1 morning-line horse who was bet down to about 8-5, and I feared the juice. So I pansied out and only bet $10 to win. Bordeaux Bandit survived a 4-5 way speed duel early on and drew off convincingly, paying $9.80 to win. I took the $39 profit, but not without some lamentation that it should have been three times that. The BB win pushed my bankroll to $176, but unfortunately that turned out to be my high water mark for the day.

I next bet $25 to win on Chihulykee in the Gulfstream 8th. I wasn’t crazy about him but I thought he had a chance to steal the race on the front end. This supposition quickly unraveled when Drilling for Oil went for the lead along with Chihulykee, cooking my horse to a crisp. Bankroll: $151.

Next I plunked down $50 to win on Cozy Mesa, my biggest profit opportunity of the day. I thought she had a good off-the-pace chance, and I loved her 16-1 odds. She ran creditably, making a big move from last to third, but the winner was long gone by the time Cozy Mesa got rolling, she never really did threaten.

So that dropped my bankroll back down to $101 and off the leaderboard. I took one more shot, a $50 win play on Agent Nazworth in the GP finale. I was skeptical about his chances but I thought he had a reasonable shot to win on the front end. Alas, he showed some early foot but couldn’t even get the lead, so this race was over for me about 1 furlong into this 6-furlong race. I cashed out with $51.

It was a decent day overall, as I was bouncing around between 17th and 25th place for much of the afternoon. But frustratingly, I just couldn’t break into the Top 10 despite multiple attempts. I felt like a football team that had 2nd and goal on the 8 yard line and couldn’t score. But, I’ll try again on February 9th.

Yeah yeah, Curlin will be HOY, but everybody else is writing about that.  What do I have to say about this past Friday-Saturday? 

-The “horse size” angle took a beating.  A lot of what I read in the days leading up to the BC was that Midnight Lute, Unbridled Belle and Curlin were gonna be severely compromised because they’re so big and Monmouth Park’s turns are comparatively tight.   I like and respect NJ Handicapper Emeritus Brad Thomas, but geez after reading his interview on DRF.com last week, you’d almost think you should pick the smallest horse in every MTH race rather than the fastest.  Unbridled Belle had a bad trip and finished off the board, but Midnight Lute and Curlin won impressively, proving that horse-size-vs.-track-contours analysis is like every other handicapping angle – sometimes it just don’t work.   

-Monmouth Park did a very decent job hosting the BC.  The weather was mostly miserable and of course the event was marred by a last-minute equine fatality, but the track did well enough with what they could control. 

-But, I do seriously question the price-gouging, and I’m not just complaining because I paid $100 for a plastic seat exposed to the elements.  The way I see it, the track usually charges a couple bucks for parking and for admittance — obviously, making money on bets is the track’s bread and butter, and they want as many people in the facility as possible.  So why charge $35 for parking and $100+ for admittance to BC — just because they can?  They got their money, but rather than win over hearts and minds and spawn new racing fans, the gouging served more to piss off regulars and alienate casual fans, many of whom now consider Monmouth Park a clip joint and figure it’s always expensive to go.              

-My Saturday picks were off the mark, but I did save face with the Maryfield-Nownownow-Corinthian P3 on Friday.  I daresay that brilliant call cements my status as the best handicapper with a blog named monmouthparkblog.com.  

-To poster Dan Herman, I apologize but in my haste to vaporize a crush of spam comments that came in over the weekend, I deleted your Saturday picks.  So I’m not sure if you had any luck or not (I suspect if your picks were losers like mine were, you are grateful that I deleted them).

I’m calling Grand Couturier (10-1 ML) my best idea of the day. Dylan Thomas is a wildcard, I’ve never liked English Channel and I’m not going to start now, Better Talk Now is ancient, and Red Rocks has not been in form this year. So, partly via the process of elimination, I’m landing on GC, whose Euro class and improving Beyers look good to me.

Izarra (6-1) looks solid in the Juvy Fillies.  Edits to add:  Upon further review, I like Tasha’s Miracle (10-1) more than Izarra, and enough to declare her my second-best bet of the day.  Solid female family and a way-wide trip last time out.  I think she’ll be overlooked.
The Distaff and the Turf Mile are the two races ripest for a bomber, in my view. I like Danzon (12-1) and Passage of Time (7-2) in the former heat, and I see myself using Silent Name (30-1), Rebellion (50-1), Trippi’s Storm (8-1) and Host (30-1) in the latter.

I have no table-pounding call in the Classic, though I do tepidly prefer Any Given Saturday (4-1), Lawyer Ron (5-2), and Hard Spun (8-1) over Curlin (may not like Monmouth?), Tiago (is frequently touted to be sitting on a breakthrough race but it never happens), and Street Sense (I just have a hunch he ain’t gonna win — how’s that for empirically rigorous value-added analysis?).