COVID, and the aftermath of the COVID lockdowns, zapped my interest in horse racing in 2020, and it's taken me sometime to reevaluate my continued interest in the sport. God knows the sport itself does little to captivate new players, yet alone make any attempt to prevent long time fans from leaving, but I love the game and the athletes involved, aka the thoroughbreds, are my kinda athletes: stoic, quiet and all heart.
Work is the other factor in my blogging. While I've always had a busy job as I've handicapped over the years, nothing like the past two years. I love my job, I love my ability to not only serve a company's needs but also my privilege to but make a good work environment for the staff. Without getting all hokey, we take care of our people and in return they do great and amazing things for us. But, it's time consuming and energy zapping. I think it's taken me the better part of 18 months to adapt to the sort of pacing I have to move at to allow time to blog the horses. My other blog, Satori, and the underlying hobby beneath it of car restoration, suffers equally from a lack of time, but luckily, I place no artificial time constraints on my personal activities. Rome wasn't built in one day and neither with my Romanesque 1973 Alfa Romeo.
What can you expect from the Turk and the Little Turk going forward? My intention is to handicap 2-3 Turf only races in 2023 per month, to resume my bet tracker to show a full year ROI (spoiler alert: keep your day job) and to use my love of Turf and older horses as a mental unwinder. I couldn't care less about the Triple Crown (as a fan yes, handicapper no), I don't care about hype, or tear jerker stories about the connections (ok I'm a sucker for it but it skews my handicapping), I'm only interested in unlocking the riddle of these large field routes over grass.
What do I look for when I handicap? My primary considerations are Class, Current Form, Success (both win and in the money) at the distance, the track and the surface, late or early speed, the Trainer/Jock Combo and "experience" which I loosely define as how the horse has performed at the distance, from various posts, over various turf, and how the horse has performed relative to the competition. There are other factors, but those are the main ones. I try to avoid news articles about the race and money lines and morning lines. Those lines represent another's bias about the race and I don't want any of that to affect my handicap. The tote board is the final factor and the one that is hard for me to blog about because I'm blogging hours and sometimes days before the horses go to post. I'm trying to win a return on my money, not be a horse, trainer or jock fanboy. If the betting public creates underlays or overlays relative to my fair odds, I may address my bet construction slightly different to take advantage of a market condition. IF I deviate from the bet construction I propose in my blog, and I declare victory, I post the wager receipt. That's just good form and etiquette.
Anyways, Let's get after this. I always start with the handicap. I show the horses with the DRF Morning Line, which again I did not look at until I already assigned my letter grades too.
The handicap shows my favorite kind of race: no clear favorite, parity, in short, an opportunity to be contrarian and make some money. That's actually another subject for another day, but making money is pretty relative. My long time readers, at least the ones that are still alive, hopefully recall this to be a blog that was in the money regularly. I'm a better handicapper than a bettor, and they are two very different things. I can tell you pretty well which horses have the best chance at Win Place Show and Exotics, I can sometimes tell you precisely who will win and who has a chance at Place for the exacta, but as I've gotten older I've become a worse bettor. I'm a better bettor when my handicaps are theoretical $2 bets. Anecdotally I believe it's because my bets are more fearless without real money at stake. I have no skin in the game and I'm much more likely to boldly risk failure 7 out of 10 races in order to make my return on investment in the remaining three. When I do risk capital, I'm more risk adverse. I wasn't always like that, but here we are.
I have Cabo Spirit in the Win Spot, but at 9-2 that's hardly iron pipe lock territory. Gelded in June, 3 of 4 at DMR in the money, 7 of 8 lifetime in the money over turf, late speed but also shown tactical speed. I like his local base, his affinity for the turf and his late October Twilight Derby G2 win at this distance at Del Mar.
I won't get into all my likes and dislikes in this handicap blog. What I will say is I think 6 of the 11 horses could Win this race. That's huge. Script, 6th on my tote board, seems poised for a coming out party. Look at his surge in the Let it Ride , 1 mile on this course, on 11 November. New jock, but watch the tote on this modestly bred son of Algorithms. Pletcher shipped Wit here for this, you always have to wonder why a trainer seeks a spot in the conditions book. Prat is up. Lots of Class and Lots of Speed. Late turn of foot? Only three turf starts, one win. Worth watching the tote on him as well.
What am I going to do? My base bet is 1, 3, 2, 9 OVER 1,3,2,9, 8, 10 a $2 bet for $40. This is clearly too much for an exacta for my liking. Most likely I will noodle on this one as the race approaches post time and the betting public show their biases, but most likely I'll evolve to my standard exacta of a singled win and a series of Place horses, something like this: 3 OVER 1,2,9,8,10 a $2 bet for $10.
I think Celestial City will be bet hard so I'd like to see some value in the PLACE spot which means I could take more risk and toss the really heavy bet horses and even get a bit riskier at $10 by adding Evan Harlan or Spycatcher to the mix. My handicap has it's integrity in place, my bet structure is all about possibilities and ROI. Value. Risk.
Have fun friends, Turk Out!
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