Jun
18
Money All Over the Place
Filed Under Uncategorized
Yes, we all like the horses and pageantry and the thrill of a good stretch run, but take away the gambling aspect of horse racing and already small on-track crowds would be nonexistant. Since the name of the game is money, let’s take a look at what’s happened the last few days at Hollywood Park.
Over $32.5 million in total handle over the last three racing cards ($7.9M on Friday night, $13M on Saturday, and $11.6M on Sunday). Pick Six pools of $216,000, $462,000 and $329,00. And combined Pick 4 pools (early and late, which usually more than doubles the early one) of around three quarters of a million dollars on the weekends and $650,000 on Friday night.
And what about the payoffs? One winning Pick 6 ticket on Friday night for $120,000; 3 tickets on Saturday for $85,000; and no winners on Sunday for a carryover of more than $183,000 heading into the Wednesday card. In the Pick 4, all six of them over the past three days paid over than $1,000. Despite smaller field sizes in races 1-4, the early Pick 4 paid better than its more popular counterpart on both Saturday and Sunday. Despite just 27 horses in Saturday’s sequence, the early P4 paid $2,234; and on Sunday 31 entrants produced a payoff of $5,974. It seems that a case can be made that beating favorites in shorter fields can produce larger payoffs since most gamblers have zeroed in on the logical contenders, especially in small fields.
The Jeff Mullins barn went crazy with five winners over the three days to move up to second in the trainers standings, only trailing leading man Doug O’Neill by five. Where have we seen this script before? These two have battled it out at many recent meets but O’Neill has too much horsepower to not win the title at a long meet like this one. Mullins will likely have a higher win percentage, but O’Neill is hurt in that department because he is often times running two horses in the same race.
On Sunday: Scottsbluff again showed his fondness for the HP turf course by taking a restricted stakes in the 1st…DESERT CODE took a very lackluster Affirmed. Small field, slow time—the local 3-year-old colts leave a lot to be desired…two winners for Joe Talamo, who remains 10 behind leading jock Michael Baze…Owner Jerry Jamgotchian, a thorn in the side of CHRB officials, must have gotten a good laugh when his INGRID THE GAMBLER won the last. A less-than-subtle poke at CHRB Executive Director Ingrid Fermin…and what about the call of the 6th race when announcer Vic Stauffer told us that QUEST VENTURE had been “caught” at the top of stretch? That was right before ‘VENTURE re-broke to win by nearly four lengths in a sizzling 1:39.3. Mr. Anticipation strikes again.
On Saturday: STORMIN AWAY won the inaugural 1 3/4-miles Round Table on turf but runner-up SPRING HOUSE ran the best race. ‘HOUSE ran off with Michael Baze going into the first turn, opened up a daylight lead, then got run down late…’AWAY was one of three Mullins winners on the card…two wins each by Victor Espinoza and Talamo. Why Racing Is So Dumb Department: With an outstanding card from Churchill Downs (six stakes races including the Grade I Stephen Foster and Grade II Fleur De Lis), many local fans and simulcast players were interested in watching (let alone playing…that’s a blog for another day. You now need three online accounts if you want to play any track in the country). But with Churchill’s and Hollywood Park’s races basically running on top of each other, it was not possible to watch many of both tracks’ races in their entirety. This is so aggravating and yet so easily avoidable, but racing just can’t get it together. Why can’t one of these A-B-C-D organizations step up and mandate staggered post times for the major tracks, so that we can actually watch (and wager) without flipping back and forth to watch parts of races from different tracks? It seems so simple.
On Friday: Riding doubles for Isaias Enriquez and M.Baze…Tyler Baze got his first winner since returning from his six-week sabbatical aboard LEGENDARY MUD as red-hot trainer Ron Ellis ran one-two in the 3rd…back-to-back training wins for underrated Richard Matlow as RIDINGWITHTHEKING and MR. KATZ rallied from last to win races 6 and 7.
My Best Bet picks hit four straight days (NOOTKA ISLAND $18.80, MR. BIG $6.40, MR. KATZ $17.60 and ENTER ANON $5.20). The streak ended on Sunday when TOUR DA BRONX ran second.
One of the enjoyable parts of my day is listening to Stockton track announcer Frank Mirahmadi call the last race. He does an impersonation (list includes Ed Burgart, Marv Albert, Michael Wrona, Rodney Dangerfield, etc.) that is spot-on and often times hilarious. Yesterday he did the late, great Harry Henson, who I had the pleasure of listening to a thousand times growing up near Del Mar. Brought back a lot of great memories.
To View Free Samples of Friday, Saturday and Sunday Premium Plays, click on the links below: Premium Plays for June 15Â Â Â Â Â Â Premium Plays for June 16Â Â Â Â Â Â Premium Plays for June 17
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