First Post: Friday, January 2, 2015

Eat ’em up

Now into the year 2015. Please do everyone a favor and say ‘twenty-fifteen’ and not ‘two-thousand-fifteen’.

After all, we don’t refer to the year that the Normans conquered England as ‘one-thousand sixty-six’!

So, kindly remember that this year is ‘twenty-fifteen’. Tyvm.

Now, whether you add ‘A.D.’ or ’C.E.’ after it, it’s like this: Faux News, A.D.; MSNBCCCP, C.E. Right?

Free ones: Rundown…

Aqueduct 2, 5, 6, 7, 8
Gulfstream Park Proper 3, 6, 8, 10
Santa Anita 4, 6, 8

Pay-side: Today…

Fair Grounds 5, 7
Golden Gate 4, 6, 7
Hawthorne 1, 4, 6, 10
Laurel 6, 7
Tampa 3, 5, 6, 8, 9
Turfway 5, 8, 9

Today’s Stakes Pageantry: Two stakes at either end of the East Coast, but no real good feel for either. Regretsz!

Yesterday’s Activity: Here’s one of ’em situations in which the race fave hardly looks worth the price, especially when compared with the crazy longshots in the field.

Race 8 at Santa Anita, the feature, and your fave was 6-5. How did he stack up? Not the way a worthy 6-5 should, certainly not.

First off, the Betting Line dynamic in the race was hyper-competitive. The top three contenders could account for only 54 percent of the win-probabilities in the 10-horse field. The top pick was at Fair Odds of 4-1, the second-pick, who was also the 6-5 race-fave, was at Fair Odds of 4½-1, and the third pick was at Fair Odds of 5-1. Those three were the only three in the field to get Fair Odds on the Betting Line.

With the 6-5 public choice sandwiched in the middle, you would not be wrong to suppose — well in advance of the race, without any sort of regard for the outcome — that the 6-5 fave looked pretty similar to the one horse on top of it on the Betting Line and the one horse below it, too. It looked like this:

9 Wedding Blush 4/1
8 Rainha Da Bateria 9/2
4 Lutine Belle 5/1

Now, what if you also knew the LifeLiner Speed Column Analysis on the 6-5 fave was only 77, fourth-best in the field and not really up to our minimum 80 qualifying score? As long as the LifeLiner Speed Column Analysis on the the other two was sufficient — and by definition better than that of the 6-5 fave — wouldn’t the 6-5 on the fave seem a little rich? Here’s what the LifeLiner looked like:

9 Wedding Blush 84
8 Rainha Da Bateria 77
4 Lutine Belle 94

Given this set of evaluators, how is Rainha Da Bateria at 6-5, favored over two comparable — nae, two pretty much superior — horses? Why isn’t Wedding Blush or Lutine Belle better-fancied than ’Rainha?

Who knows? At the end of the wagering, Wedding Blush went off at 13-1 and Lutine Belle got away at 19-1. Lutine Belle was the winner, paying $41.80 up top. The fave was not among the first five finishers.

Sometimes it works out this way. Even when it doesn’t, the decision-making seems straightforward: if the race is wide-open and the fave starts looking no better than — or, better yet — even worse than some of the others in the field, it’s probably going to be better to ride the long price and take the chance. After all, it’s not like you’re going to have to beat Zenyatta or Frankel or Cigar or Holy Bull.

WMF Report:

Early
Tampa 6f

Nocturnal Submission: Sifting through the wreckage…

Thank you. Best wishes. Goodbye. So long now.