Welcome friends to The Turk Blog, where I handicap Turf Races and build exacta bets. That's it, that's all I do. I don't break news articles, I don't get interviews with the connections, no human interest stories, just handicapping (primarily) older horses running (primarily) over a route of grass. Why? It's what I like and after tracking ROI for 10+ years, it's what I'm good at. I handicap in a complete vacuum to outside bias. I don't look at morning lines (until after I've handicapped), I don't read about the races in advance. I study the DRF Formulator Past Performances and Race Charts and I watch recent/relevant video to help make the data more visual. I like older horses because they are more of a known quantity, with plenty of data to analyze. I like big fields and I like to bet against favorites who still lose roughly 60% of the races they run.
Kentucky Downs is my favorite turf track in the United States. It use to be Arlington, but we know how that ended. While its a short meet, I look forward each year to the chaos of large purses/big fields and just the excitement that this track brings.
From the 2024 Meet:
There were 76 races in total.
- Favorites won 25 races, which is about 32.9 percent.
- Favorites finished second 13 times and third 7 times, for 20 additional in-the-money finishes.
- In total, 45 out of 76 favorites finished on the board, which is 59 percent.
- Of those, 3 won, giving odds-on favorites a 50 percent win rate.
For clarification, a favorite is the horse with the lowest odds in a race. It is considered the most likely winner by the betting public. A favorite does not have to be very short-priced. It could be 2-1, 5-2, 3-1, or any other price, as long as no other horse has lower odds.
An odds-on favorite is a special type of favorite whose odds are less than even money, below 1-1. This means you must risk more than you stand to gain. Common odds-on lines are 4-5, 3-5, or 1-5. At 4-5, for example, you would need to bet $5 to win $4, plus your $5 stake back.
In short: all odds-on favorites are favorites, but not all favorites are odds-on. A horse can be the favorite at 2-1 or 3-1 without being odds-on.
Enough of Professor Turk, lets get to degenerate gambler Turk!
While not relevant for handicapping today's race, I find it's always important to watch a race on this course to remind myself of the uniqueness of the track.
29 August 2024; KD Tapit $500K; 1 Mile 70 Yards on Firm Turf
Weather should be dry and turf firm. Track website is substandard for horseplayers, but I think you'll be able to find scratches and changes here.
Tapit 500K; 1 Mile 70 Yards on Turf
I have some charts that I use to help me visualize the Tomlinson numbers for Turf and Dirt as well as Early and Late Pace. I hope you find them useful.
What to do with all of this? You'll see in my Fair Odds Chart it's pretty clear I don't have a clue about this race or these horses. I clearly don't view some of these horses the same way the Morning Line does, which is OK, you have to learn to trust your own skill, even if that means you have to admit you saw it wrong sometimes.
I don't think I'm going to bet tomorrow. I'm going to watch the races and compare my views of my base handicap to the results and see if I can't calibrate myself before the weekend. If I want to bet, I can see a really simple Exacta: $2 Bet 14/5 OVER 14/5 13, 9,3,6,7 for $24.
Trust thyself, handicappers.
And the following is a good overview of the track itself.
Have fun friends, Turk Out!
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