Our hot streak at Bay Meadows continued today. We picked the COLD Trifecta in the 5th race. Ironically, our top 3 picks were all first time starters on the turf. The winner, Ballet Way, paid $90.60 to win. The COLD Exacta paid $481.40, and the COLD Trifecta paid a WHOPPING $3,306!

Picks/Results at Bay Meadows for March 24th Race 5

We had 122 big hits listed for Saturday, March 23!  Check out the list and click the links for individual Big ‘Uns to see our selections with the full results!

This list includes the Pick 6 at Bay Meadows (the second Pick 6 we picked there in less than a week) and a MONSTER day at Fair Grounds (including the unhit Pick 5 that we picked).

As far as the list goes, the 122 Big ‘Uns are all our hits for the day that paid $75 or more. This means there are a lot of solid Win bets and Exactas that we hit, but aren’t included on that list!

In the past few years, a craze emerged among numerous tracks to convert their natural dirt surfaces to various synthetic composite surfaces. I believe California tracks were forced to convert by the end of 2007. This costly renovation was undertaken at these tracks primarily to yield two benefits: less injuries/fatalities for horses and jockeys and the ability to race in poor weather conditions. Neither benefit seems to have been fully realized or proven worth the cost of the conversion.

Just recently, an article by the Associated Press discussed details of a preliminary study comparing horse fatalities on natural dirt courses versus synthetic surfaces (read the article here). They found that between June 2007 and early 2008, there was an average of 1.95 deaths per 1,000 starts on synthetic surfaces compared to 1.96 deaths per 1,000 on dirt surfaces. This means there is virtually no improvement in safety. The funny part is how later in the article they spin it “synthetically” to say between June 2007 and last fall, there were only 1.19 deaths per 1000 on synthetic surfaces versus 1.79 on dirt. I have no idea how custom picking a favorable small window is at all statistically relevant. This is particularly the case because the synthetic tracks seems to have composition problems causing safety issues in the cold winter weather.

You don’t need to look far to find other false promises by synthetic surface manufacturers.

Santa Anita seemed to have more cancellations this meet than tracks in the Northeast that have to deal with winter storms. These cancellations probably cost the track millions of dollars.

Woodbine converted to Polytrack back in 2006 and had to renovate the $10 million surface back in May, due to a cold winter that caused the wax to ball up. Unhappy track president David Willmot said then that “we paid for a Cadillac and got a Chevrolet.”

Then, we come to Del Mar. The new surface they implemented there showed the greatest deviation in performance from the dirt track. Based on our figures, the average time for a 6 furlong race at Del Mar went from 1:10.74 to 1:12.85. That is more than 10 lengths of difference, which is utterly absurd. Some major horse owners refused to race their champion horses at Del Mar due to the surface change.

Finally, from a handicapper’s standpoint, this is a nightmare. Your years worth of valuable data collected for an established surface at a track becomes less useful.   Even more crazy is the fact there is no standard for a synthetic surface. You have Cushion, Polytrack, and Tapeta. I’m waiting for a track to start using that cheap fake grass carpet from Costco to replace their turf course. This would be the equivalent of having no standard for the baseball bat a hitter can use in baseball. All past statistics would be completely meaningless.

Today at Turfway Park, if you went 3 deep with our picks in races 5-8, you would have collected on a $1,353.60 Pick 3 (Races 5-7), $1,325.00 Pick 3 (Races 5-8) and the UNHIT Pick 4 (race 5-8). They paid $361.80 for 3 of 4, but if you had all 4, you would taken down the entire pool (probably something around $8,000)!

Picks/Results at Turfway Park for March 20th Races 5-8

War Pass is no longer undefeated. Perhaps he lost because of a bad start or because he had a fever earlier in the week. Regardless, the 1-20 “lock” failed to Show (he ran dead last in a 7 horse field). Yes, we also thought War Pass was a “sure thing” (despite the fact the winner Big Truck was also in our top tier).

For those of you who are not familiar with the term, “bridge jumpers” are people who look for horses that are heavy favorites, and then bet the farm on them to Show. The logic behind this is that regardless of the lopsided proportion of money on the heavy favorite to Show, the track is obligated to pay a minimum of $2.10 on a $2 bet (5% return). So, for example, one of these people may put $20,000 on the horse to Show, to get a “definite” $1,000 return when the horse finishes in the money. However, this type of bet is not as “definite” as you may think…

Doing a little research from our extensive database, I discovered that since the end of 2004, there were 35 entries that had win odds of 1-20 (the shortest odds a horse can have) in a race with available Show wagering. Of these 35, only 31 actually finished in the money (88.6%). This equates to an expected LOSS of 5 cents on every $2 wagered. If you extend the search to horses that had win odds of 1-9 or shorter, ironically you have slightly better results (but still not good). Of the 228 matching entries, 204 finished in the money (89.5%) which equates to an expected LOSS of 3 cents on every $2 wagered. These expected returns obviously assume that the bridge jumper has enough funds to wager the same amount even after a loss (which may not always be the case).

In conclusion, simply based on the win odds of a horse, bridge jumping is not the way to go. Of course, there might be cases where you could determine that a horse is over-bet and really shouldn’t be 1-9 or 1-20 (and skip these races). However, War Pass was probably not one of these cases.