Saturday  May 29, 2010

 Resulting Free Plays:

Saturday’s Free Play; Hollywood’s – Race #5…  Bad Boy –a WINNER —  but like many overwhelming form horses they are underwhelming in the win-price.  This was as advertised a decent single in Pick-3 to Pick-6 plays.

Sunday’s Free Play; Hiho Geronimo romped home a nice $9.40 winner.

Thursday’s Free Play; Cayambe was a beautiful OVERLAY winner at 9/1, paying $21.60, fight thehard fight to find value!

Friday’s Free Play; Costa Marta ran great but only managed 2nd.  Anima (te protected one) dropped down to win at 4/5…

Today’s Free Play:

Hollywood’s – Race #8…  Returning 3 years olds (for their 1st race after their 2 year old season) can be a tough judgement decisions that  handicapper’s confront  from January thru June.  Ones that come back early in the calander year are more likely to race very well than ones that return later on; the extra time off  must be an indicator that something went wrong in or after their last start as a 2 year old.  No hard and fast rule exist on this, as with each trainer, you have a different set of circumstances to make your judgement.  My typical inclination is to bet against a returning 2 year old after-April and we are now clearly past April.  Yet in today’s example, I am going against this largely because of the workout pattern and the excellent record ofthe trainer and the type of race-horse we are looking at — A speed-type colt.   Handicapping is certainly as much art as anything else. 

Our Key horse today is Twirling Candy, trained by John Sadler.  Even though Sadler’s record with comebackers is mediocre, he still is a top rated trainer who wins better than 20%, that tells me he understands horses and their particular special needs.  And has the ability to do what is necessary in individual cases, because if handicapping is an art, so is training the horse.   While Sadler isn’t overly inclined to race a horse real hard in the comeback race, I am guessing this horse will be fully ready to run big and fast.  When trainers have horses that are naturally very-fast-early or as I like to call the REAL- HOT, the trainer’s need to have this type of  horse fully fit, otherwise the horse could really hurt themselves because they go so hard right out of the gate.  Their fitnes needs to match the high speeds they attain in the early part of the race.   Twirling Candy is an excellent horse and while he has raced only once lifetime, he is potentially very valuable, and because he run hard early, I suspect Sadler will have him ready to stand the rigors of racing straight-away.  To that end we see two 6 furlong workouts which suggests this is the right judgement….I’ll take the 2/1 and play exactas over Thoms Baines and Willconker with only small reverses…Twirling Candy should be a sinlge in Pick3 3 going from 7 to 9 and 8 to 10.  In the 9th race we will use the FREE bingo square of the doubleton of Tuscan Evening and Forever Together…Good luck…

Friday  May 28, 2010

 Resulting Free Plays:

Saturday’s Free Play; Hollywood’s – Race #5…  Bad Boy –a WINNER —  but like many overwhelming form horses they are underwhelming in the win-price.  This was as advertised a decent single in Pick-3 to Pick-6 plays.

Sunday’s Free Play; Hiho Geronimo romped home a nice $9.40 winner.

Thursday’s Free Play; Cayambe was a beautiful OVERLAY winner at 9/1, paying $21.60, fight thehard fight to find value!

Today’s Free Play:

Hollywood’s – Race #5…  Yesterday’s play was a classic example of finding a winner that you judge to have value.  It’s the 3rd winner in a row I have picked, but it’s the first (of the three) that clearly was a value play.  Truthfully, at 9/1 it was a NO-Brainer.   Tonights play is not as clear, but when you get good at this type of judgement, you will be tapping into the richest type of value play.  It falls under the heading of a “low-priced overlay”.  In this group, the typical play is a horse that should be the favorite, but it’s the 2nd or 3rd choice, for one reason or another.  It could be that their is something a little subtle about your horse or it could be that their is something that is over-rated about the actual favorite.   In real time, your 2nd choice could become the favorite, but simply because it started out as 2nd choice, you can guess that their is some value built into the play by all the people that are simply betting the actuall morining line favorite.  So with that type of logic, you could understand that your horse has a premium in it.  These types of horses are great for your betting strategy, they win more frequently, so they reduce the length of any losing streaks and keep you in the game!  Tonights free play is Costa Marta.  Looking at the form (2nd off a layoff, a good speed effort on the turf ,then move to synthetic, in which turf is the weaker surface for this horse ), and the trainer (Marty Jones is exceptional).  But when you factor in that high rated PPN on the Power Page, you would have to make this horse a natural 8/5 morning line favorite.  The reality is the morning line favorite is Anima at 2/1 and Costa Marta is 2nd choice at 3/1.   So now, even at 3/2 I would consider this horse an overlay…My wager will be to make a win wager here and play some pick-3 through my 4 horses listed on Race Day to ALL for $32.00 in a $1.00 base wager…  Give it a whirl…Good luck…