Post Race Analysis for Race Day 19 November 2011; The G3 River City Handicap and G1 Hollywood Turf Cup

Blues Street with Albarado, up, comes streaking home in the River City Handicap, a key race in a pleasing day of gambling for me. Thanks to the Louisville Courier-Journal online, the talented Jennie Rees and photograph most likely by Reed Palmer.

I felt really bad yesterday after posting my blog as I think I committed the ultimate sin; it was boring, and worse, preachy. The purpose of The Turk and the Little Turk primarily is to highlight my handicapping methodology developed over a long time. It's not sexy, nor is it overly technical. I would love to talk about taking months with my slide rule and stacks of old race forms while I developed a mathematical view of a horses ability to cover a route of turf and how his time would relate to other horses. Never happened and I wouldn't know where to start. I stress consistent handicapping using a horses ability over his career to determine his chances on any given day. Workouts, Class, Trainer Stats, these are the things that I key on, with a nod to Pace. I ignore two year olds because there just isn't enough imperical data on their past performances for me to make my analysis complete.

My post was boring yesterday, something of a dog, and I'll work harder at that now that I'm calling myself out. What wasn't boring was the results; the Turk took down over $2,000 on wagers of about $150 by just doing what I do best- ignoring the pre race hype, building a base handicap,not getting too hung up on if I have chalk on top, studying the tote board leading to post, and making sound bets, constructed on principles I use week in and week out.

Let's get after this!



When you ignore morning lines and pre race news articles over the course of time you'll notice your handicaps will share many similarities with the tote board and the race day lines; With experience you should be able on a 10 horse field to identify the 3 longest shots as well as the top three, with the middle four up for subjective slotting. What I like about ignoring the pre race morning line is it gives me something to compare my base handicap to and allows me to spot a contrarian position I may have taken. Sometimes it's just a subtle difference like my chalk being the Place or Show horse.

I took some similar views on yesterday's races: I felt strongly about my chalks and was prepared to build bets around them. In both races I used my base handicap and built a matrix bet, keeping my bet exposure low. in my boring post I stressed I was just in skills maintenance mode and didn't plan on going for broke with my bets. Both races I crafted $2 Superfecta Bets for reasonable amounts of money, $30-50 dollars each. In both races I built $10 Exacta bets with singled chalks. I kept things simple but the results were stunning.

We try to put our money where our mouth is at The Turk. 10% of today's winnings went to horse charities that are dear to me. The Turk has donated either cash or solicited online auctions that benefited horse charities to the tune of over $2,000 this year. I only say that because I'm imploring the good people of this sport to take care of our own, the workers on the backstretch and our retired runners. There are some wonderful people out there doing tireless work to save every equine life. Those people inspire me deeply. These are very tough economic times and anything you can spare goes a long way.

OK, I've now been boring, preachy, and I've solicited charitable contributions all in one blog post. I'll shut-up for now.

Good Times. Have fun, Turk Out