Someone recently asked me why I would say the Power Page offers several advantages beyond the Projected Power Numbers and the STAR horses we are so well know for.  Wednesday’s card at Aqueduct illustrated perfectly another advantage, the advantage of our “p” and “M” notation.   Since the Power Page was handicapped for a FAST main track, when the track turned up ‘Muddy”, the horses assigned an “m” or an “M” needed to be improved from 1 to 4 points (just as it says on the bottom of the Power Page).   There are two races I want to comment about when thinking about the ADVANTAGE.  Race #1 and Race # 5.    Race #1 was a Turf race that was pulled off the Turf and run on the main track which was labelled “MUDDY”.  In this case, with the PPN’s being assigned for Turf, I would discount the PPN’s as being worth very little in this case.  But the winer – Springcourt sported a mud rating of “M”, that’s a BIG M.   And only 1 of 2 horses with the BIG M rating.  Whta this means is this horse shows races on the Main Track, listed as some sort of WET condition, in which this horse has performed better than I could expect by a WIDE MARGIN!   But there is another implication, especially with Turf horses, that Springcourt and his BIG M had little competition.   It turned out exactly that way….

Race #5, was even more interesting, this was a basic claiming sprint on the main track with Zero Yeild sitting on top of the ratings with a 2.2 advantage over the next horse and Zero Yield sported a “m” which meant his PPN of 70.5 should be increased to at least 71.5 and maybe more.  But what is really cool here is that there were 3 other horses that received a rating of “m”.  The result was that Dear Elizabeth at 27/1 ran second confirming the accuracy of her “m” rating, getting by Skittle N’ Bob who also confirmed his ‘m’ rating…  The exacta paid a whopping $68.00 for 2 bucks and the Trifecta paid a very healthy $481.00 for $2.00.   In this situation you must increase the horses who have an “m” or and “M”, but you are  allowed to demote horse’s PPN who does not have a positive WET  Track notation such as the “m’ or “M”.  Think about it, if I am making a number for a FAST track and the races are to be run on a WET track, then some PPN’s might need to be lowered for the condition.  The Power Page never makes a negative remark on any horse, but as a handicapper/player — you should if you can!!!