If I have one angle I use most when handicapping thoroughbreds it would be trainer stats.  I use the Brisnet Ultimate PP's and the first thing I usually look at is the trainer stat numbers.  Lately I've been handicapping my local track, Presque Isle Downs.  I'm still perplexed by PID - the artificial Tapeta surface sometimes favors speed and at other times favors those closers that come six wide around the turn.  This year it seems that the track has played pretty fair overall so I've been experimenting with the Brisnet numbers.  I add the E2 and LP figures (second early pace and late pace) and go with the resulting highest total.  Sometimes I will add in the final speed fig.  It's been working pretty well.

Anyway, in the third race the other night I had narrowed it down to two horses.  This was the middle leg of a pick three, and I had included these two in my pick three wager.  I hit the first leg and was content to just sit on my ticket in this race.  I was watching the horses come out onto the track and heard the announcer introduce them.  The five horse, Bukah, was trained by Scooter Davis.  Now I know Scooter Davis is a winning trainer at Mountaineer, but I had noted that he was 1 for 25 at PID!  So I immediately tossed the horse.  But I glanced at my PP's and saw something I had missed.  Scooter Davis had just claimed Bukah and he wins 42 percent first off the claim - a super stat!  I looked up at the board and saw odds of 14-1.  Definitely worth a win wager.  Bukah stalked the pace and won by half a length.  The odds had drifted up to 21-1 and the payout was $43.00!!  Don't ignore those trainer stats.

Time to recap 2008.  It was a good year.  Racetrack profits were $666 with poker profits $400.  Also won $250 in the Brisnet Online Handicapping Challenge (entry was free).  I did not play in any local handicapping contests this year.  I did very well betting Saratoga.  My annual stopover at the Turning Stone Casino on the way to Saratoga resulted in just enough blackjack winnings to buy my lunch.  Only played poker online at PokerStars.  Did well playing satellites to get a seat in the weekly Sunday Two Hundred Grand tourney.  Twice I finished in the top two percent to get a nice cash. 

Looking at the percentages below you can see that I had success this year betting pick 3's (which also accounts for the high Santa Anita number).  No surprise that Woodbine Harness takes over as number one track, but thoroughbred winnings still are way ahead of harness winnings.  Note that Presque Isle Downs is my home track but the short fields kept me from betting it much of the time.  I cashed bets at 30 different tracks! 

Harness vs. Thoroughbred

Thoroughbred winnings - 62%

Harness winnings          - 38%

By Track

Woodbine Harness   - 21%

Santa Anita              - 16%

Saratoga                  - 15%

Presque Isle Downs  - 10%

By Bet Type

Pick Three    - 41%

Win              - 31%

Daily Double - 15%

Exacta          - 13%

Those magic words.  Those of us who play online poker love to see them - "Congratulations!  You have reached the final table."  While I usually play single table sit-n-gos, I also play 2-table and 5-table tourneys.  In the 5-table tourneys (45 players), the top seven finishers cash so getting to the final table means you are close to the money.  I occasionally will play bigger tourneys with over 100 players (or with over 1,000 players).  My goal in these is to cash and I can only recall getting to a final table once.  It was a 500-player satellite-to-a-satellite for a WCOOP event. I actually won that one.

Last week I entered a $3.00 HORSE tourney with 232 players.  It always seems that in these long HORSE tourneys there will be one stud hand that kills me.  Usually it will be stud high-lo and I'll start with a 2345 and then get a JQK.  But I was playing cautiously and was having pretty good luck too.  Well those magic words finally appeared and I made it to the final table.  I think I was second or third in chips but by that time the blinds were so big that the money was going back and forth.  I ended up head-to-head.    I was down in chips by 2-1 to a player who wasn't really that good.  "I just need to trap him." I said to myself.  Soon I got the hand I wanted - pockets A's in stud high/lo.  I check-called and let him bet, but he had a 246 so I figured him for low and maybe a straight or flush draw.  But by now I was pot committed and who knows?  Well I couldn't get anything to go with my aces. He had pocket Q's and won it all with Q's and 9's!  I lost about 80 percent of my chip stack and soon finished in second, receiving $97.45 - my biggest cash yet on PokerStars.

I guess when playing poker tourneys there are words I would rather see. "Congratulations!  You have won the tournament."

-COMING SOON - My 2008 recap.

   Sunday nights on PokerStars feature the big weekly tournaments.like the Sunday Million and the Sunday Warm Up with a $200 buy-in.  Then there is the Sunday Hundred Grand which is more my speed. The buy-in is $10 but they run satellites all week for this.  A couple of Sundays ago I played a $1.00 satellite for this tourney.  There were 45 players, the top four go to the Sunday Hundred Grand tourney.  I ended up finishing second so it was on to the big one later in the day at 3:30 PM.

   The game is no limit hold‘em.  Total prize pool for this was $200,000 and there were 20,000 entrants.  First place wins $20,000 and the top 3,000 get paid.  I had real good luck early on as I got pocket A’s twice and Q’s once in the first twenty hands.  Then I was dealt pocket 8’s, caught a full house on the river.  My opponent caught a flush and went all in.  Bingo - $15,000 pot.  Then pocket 8’s again, flopped a FH – $3,000 pot.  Then pocket A’s again!  Another big pot of $4,000.  After 41 minutes of playing I am in 13 th place!  Then at the first break after one hour, I have 21,000 chips and I’m sitting in 34 th place.

   I didn’t fare so well in the second hour.  At the next break I have 12,400 chips and sit in 1848^th place.  There are only 3,044 players left so at least I’ll make the money barring any crazy hand – I might even fold AA!!  The money starts at 3000^th place and is good for $20.00 (1315^th-3000^th).

   I was up at the track last Saturday afternoon to check out the three-year-old Derby prep races.  The champion 2yo from last year, War Pass was a huge favorite to win the Tampa Bay Derby.  I didn't intend to bet the race at all and I fully expected War Pass to romp - it was a pretty weak field.  The only question I had with War Pass was that he had led at every call in every one of his races.  How would he react from off the pace?  But even if some cheap sprinter beat him to lead here, surely he would stalk and prevail.

   With a couple of minutes to post, the TV moniter showed the WPS pools.  Over $600,000 was bet on War Pass to show - definitely the result of one or more big "bridgejumper" bets.  Of course I've seen this before.  If the big favorite runs out of the money, the show prices are huge.  The few times I've bet another horse to show in this situation I've either got back the $2.10 or zip when my horse runs out.

   I went to the window and bet $2.00 to show on my second choice, Big Truck.  Well if you haven't heard, War Pass never saw the lead and finished last!  Big Truck won it and my show bet returned $25.20.  Nice to get back 11-1 to show on a 7-1 winner!

PICK THREE UPDATE:

   Luc Ouellette is my new fave driver at Woodbine.  He brought home two thirds of my winning pick three last week.  I played a 2x1x2 x $1.00 = $4.00 ticket.  The middle horse was Quail Seelster, a Tune's Tip.  But forget what I said in an earlier post about the pick three paying more than the parlay.  The winning odds here were 15-1, 11-1, and 3-1.  The parlay for a dollar would have been $770.40.  My $315.55 payout was less than half of the parlay!!  Oh well, leave it to those Canucks to screw up the mutuels.

Because I have a small betting bankroll, I don't bet trifectas and superfectas but I love the pick three.  It's a great bet for the small player.  As Harvey Pack once said, "bet a little to win a lot, not the other way around."  A small pick three investment can bring a handsome return.  And the P3 almost always pays more than the parlay would.  The reason for this is that there is only one takeout on the P3, but a parlay would have a takeout on each of the three races.

I also like betting the P3 because if you are alive after the first leg you can "sit" on your ticket the next race.  You've got action and you don't have to shell out a single dime.

It's been awhile since I cashed a decent pick three however, but a couple of weeks ago I got lucky at Santa Anita.  I don't play the Calif. tracks very often and I won't go into why I happened to be playing SA that day and how I picked each race, but I hit a pick three that paid $501 for a $1 ticket.  I played a 1/3/1 ticket for a total bet of $3.00.  Odds on the winning horses were 3-1, 9-1, and 6-1.  A $1 parlay would have resulted in a return of slightly more than $300, so it was a nice return.

Fast forward to last Sunday at The Meadowlands.  I hit two pick threes on the card.  The first was 7/5, 6-1, 1-5 with a $1 return of $39 (parlay is approx $25).  My ticket was a 1/4/1 x $1 = $4.00 total bet.  The next was 5-1, 1/5, 5-1 with a $72 return for a buck (parlay is approx $55).  My ticket here was a 4/1/2 x $1 = $8.00 total bet. 

 Of course the more combinations you play, the more you increase your chances of hitting a big payout.  Try hitting the "all" button in one of the legs.  One thing I try not to do is start out a pick three with a big favorite - everyone will have this one on their ticket.  It's better to have a big fave in the second or third leg (see the Meadowlands example above).  Good luck playing the pick three!

It's time to look back and recap 2007.  Very similar to my gambling results of 2006 - lost at the track and won at poker.  I lost $412 betting the horses but won $530 at poker for a whopping profit of $118.   I played poker strictly online at PokerStars.  Other gambling was minimal.  I visited the casino only once to play blackjack and won $15.  Lost a little playing the lottery but won a little in the office football pool.

There were some highlights for 2007.  I nailed the Kentucky Derby, cashing the winning exacta.  I only wish the results had been reversed and Hard Spun had beaten Street Sense.  I would have won much more.  I also had a very good Saratoga meet - my best in years.

It's interesting to note below that thoroughbred winnings beat out harness winnings, the first time that has happened in a few years.  Part of the reason for this was that my main track, The Meadows closed for nearly three months for remodeling.  The "new" Meadows now plays totally different and really favors speed - quite unlike the old track that was very kind to closers.  For this reason (and the fact that they now race days), I no longer play The Meadows.  It still was my number one track in winnings for the year, narrowly beating out Saratoga by a few dollars.

The other big news for 2007 was the opening of a new local racetrack, Presque Isle Downs - less than 10 miles from my house.  PID only raced for 24 days in 2007 and featured the new Tapeta racing surface.  Not knowing how that surface would play, I did more watching than wagering.  It was clear that the track did not favor inside posts or speed.  I will really be concentrating on PID in 2008 as they will be racing 100 days this year.

Looking at the bet type percentages below it was clear that I didn't hit a big pick three all year.  Also it was surprising that win bets accounted for 40 percent of my total!

Harness vs. Thoroughbred

Thoroughbred winnings - 58 %

Harness winnings      - 42 %

By Track

Meadows winnings  - 24 %

Saratoga winnings - 24 %

By Bet type

Win          - 40 %

Exacta       - 28 %

Daily Double - 19 %

Pick Three   - 13 %

The day after Christmas was a vacation day for me so it was off to the local racino in a last ditch effort to get even on the year.  My records showed that I was down nearly $400 in 2007, so I had my work cut out for me as this would be my last day of betting until the new year.  One of my favorite tracks to bet, Woodbine Harness, was having an afternoon card so hopefully I could cash that nice-paying pick three which so far had eluded me in 2007.

I had no luck at all in the first five races, but I was also playing Tampa Bay thoroughbreds and cashed a couple of win bets to keep me close to even.  I had a Tune’s Tip horse-to-watch in race seven at Woodbine – WINDSONG DESTROYER at 8-1 morning line odds, so I keyed him in some pick threes.  I was alive when the 9/5 fave won the sixth but WINDSONG DESTROYER came up empty.  Then in the eighth the #10 wins.  He is my lukewarm pick and I have him in pick 3’s but I don’t even realize that he goes off at 10-1 and of course I don’t have any win $$ on him.  Grrr.  I don’t have the ninth race winner and now there are only two races left.  I like VIJAY BERT in the finale at 7-1 ml odds and coming off a nice qualifier.  I key him in some juicy doubles but the favorite who I hate wins the first half.  So I end up playing three exactas in the finale, keying VIJAY BERT.  My ticket is 8/2,7,9 – all paying $150 plus.  VIJAY BERT is last and fourth over at the three quarter call but tips out and flies down the stretch to win easily at 8-1.  The 12-1 pacesetter, #5 hangs on to beat the fast-closing #7 horse and the exacta returns $273.  Once again, no win ticket either.

So much for get even day.  Next week I’ll have a new bankroll in a new year, and besides, my online PokerStars winnings will more than cover my racetrack losses barring any poker-playing meltdown in the next few days.  A full 2007 recap soon!