The Nomination Is In: July 3, 2010: The Monmouth Park Late Pick Three including United Nations and Salvatore Mile

The Turk hasn't played Monmouth Park too much over the years. It hasn't nothing to do with the fine citizens of New Jersey, I just always had other options. I've been watching the brave experiment underway this meet at Monmouth and I can't help but think it's the model that many other tracks should be trying to follow. Today's choice was predicated by the quality of racing. I had printed the Belmont Park Late Pick Three Races and while I liked the Grade II Suburban, I wanted nothing to do with betting money on I Want Revenge or Regal Ransom and I may just take a $2WP bet on Haynesfield who is at a nice ML 5-1. Races 10 and 11 didn't interest me much either (N1X 38K 7f on turf and N2L 26K 1 1/16 on turf)so I guess I'm at the shore.

That fine looking Gr./Ro. is Take The Points. I saw Take The Points in the Santa Anita Derby last year and like his stride, but his last six races have been a relevation and he makes his second start off a long trip to Dubai and earns Turk Chalk in today's Grade I United Nations. Munnings and the Duke of Mischief headline a nice but smallish field Salvatore Mile. Rest in Peace Gorgeous George Washington. Let's Go!



As always, start your handicapping with a review of the websites where you will get the key information you need before you wager. The weather looks good today and I expect the Turf will be Firm and Dirt Fast. It's a bit early for scratches and changes but the first race isn't until 5:23 Eastern so check back in.

Race 10 is the Grade I United Nations. It's a very nice 9 horse field with three pace pushers and lead takers (Get Serious/2 & Straight Story/4 & Acclimation/3 and some hard late closers in Winchester and a strong off the pace runner in Take the Points, as well as a wildcard in Chinchon (Ire) , freshly arrived from Graded Stakes action in France.

As I am looking for value in a Pick Three I'm less excited after my handicap then I was before. I see some chalk or close to chalk runners winning legs 1 and 2 and value may come in a big field N3L at 1 1/16 mile on Turf. If this was easy, children would do it (OK, possibly they do with respect to The Little Turk, but you get the idea).

I actually like this as a betting race for a reasonable price Superfecta so I will take no more then the top two for the Pick Three and most likely single this race and the next (just for a low risk, decent reward value bet) but I will build the Superfecta as I laid out above. I'm backing Take the Points or Winchester to win, and I'm really indifferent to which one does win. Winchester, a Clement runner and a son of Theatrical has solid Tomlinsons for both distance and turf and comes in off a very nice firm turf Grade I win at Belmont at 1 1/4 over Gio Ponti. Pretty good credentials for a resume that was second tier before that race. I'm betting he's on the rise and that's why we call this gambling! Take The Points drops back a 1/16 of a mile after finishing fourth in the above mentioned race to Winchester. A very sharp 4f bullet on Turf in :47 confirms he's rounding into form after a taxing trip to Dubai for Trainer Pletcher and jock E. Prado, up again and sporting a 20% win rate with the conditioner.

Of all the front running speed burners, I like Acclimation the best: Running at regular intervals with a G2/G1 and now G1 effort spread across almost equal 5 week rests. 3 wins in last 16 starts but 11 of 16 in the money over the same period and 8 of 12 in the money on turf with 33% win rate. I think it's a bridge too far but never under estimate the loose on the lead angle which I don't see happening with the others here to contest.

I'm only going to go down to my "yellow" rated and that includes a big wildcard in Chinchon (IRE) with Gomez up and Get Serious who I'm thinking will be dropping back instead of going forward by the wire. I might be wrong not backing Jeune-Truc (Brz) for 4th and I'll have to live with that mistake if it happens.

A five horse field greets us in the second leg, the Grade III Salvatore Mile. Munnings is a serious tease: A fireball who fires sometimes and at others seems content for place and show. He ran a real clunker in the slop at Churchill and is now winless on wet dirt, which makes you shake your head at his gaudy 480 Tomlinson for wet surfaces. He's 7 of 7 in the money on fast dirt and you ignore him at your own peril. Gomez gets the mount from usual rider J. Velazquez. Gomez's fortunes seem to fall and rise like the waves on the shore of New Jersey but I digress. A horse I'm VERY guilty of underestimating is the Duke of Mischief. 5 wins in his last 12 starts and his BSF's are anywhere from solid Allowance runner to Grade II star. Only won once in 13starts as the chalk at post time. Trainer Hawkes and E. Coa, up, win 26% of their races together.

Le Gran Cru is a solid runner that is saddled by the Pletcher barn for the first time today. 50% winner over 6 races at 1 mile. He'll go to gate >4-1 and might be a nice defensive win bet.

I'm again thinking I'll single a horse in this leg and I may single Munnings, contrary to what I have in my spreadsheet. I'm fickle when it comes to his regal horseflesh.

Race 12 is intriguing, a 12 horse field running 1 1/16 miles for horses stuck at two wins or less with claiming prices ranging from $25 to $20K. I have a whopping six horses in my top group, far too many but I may just go ahead and bet them all if I single the first two legs which is today's Truck Nutz (c) Iron Pipe Lock of the Week Play. OK, Truck Nutz don't really sponsor me with money, but friends of the Turk know how he respects the entrepreneurial spirit of America. Yeah, it's a holiday weekend and I'm having fun.

So that's my basic plays I'm I'm sticking with it. If i deviate I'll take 2 X 2 in the first two legs and drop down to three picks in race 12, most likely 6-10-12.

Have fun everyone. I'll be back for some Fourth of July hijinks. Turk Out!

The Nomination Is In: June 5, 2010: The Manhattan Handicap Grade I on turf at Belmont Park

I’d like to thank the good folks at Thorofan and the Thoroughbred Bloggers Alliance for inviting me to share my thoughts on today’s race in the Handicappers Corner, The Grade I Manhattan Handicap. The race is the under card to the final leg of the Triple Crown events, The Belmont Stakes, and it will be contested by three year olds and up, carrying assigned weights one and one quarter miles on the Belmont inner turf course.

I’ve read a whole bunch of handicapping books over the years and the one thing I always take away from them, more important then any methodology, is the organizational approach the particular handicapper takes to his craft. Like anything in life, you have to have a plan. I stress consistency to my readers and I strongly urge you to develop the routines you will apply to your own handicapping each race.

My approach is fairly simple, so simple in fact I’m often embarrassed to talk shop with fellow handicappers. Today we are going to frame the event and place it in context, we are going to size up the track condition, the possible weather for 48 hours before and during, we are going to identify any possible scratches and changes, we are going to construct a “base handicap” which is nothing more then assigning a probable order of finish and including and excluding candidates from the top four, and with all that we are going to complete the final two steps, identify what type of betting we will engage in and then build the bet. I apply that approach to every race I handicap and often it is that consistency that allows me to stay ahead of a negative ROI.

The Grade I Manhattan Handicap will go to post at 5:36 Eastern Time and is currently scheduled for 11 runners in the starting gate. Last year’s winner Gio Ponti is in the field as are six other Grade I winners. There are no Fillies or mares entered, as well as no three year olds. The heaviest handicap will be carried by Gio Ponti at 122 pounds while the lightest load will be 114 pounds by Pinckney Hill. The race is on the inner turf course. The turf’s condition is something you must take into account, as while it is listed as Firm right now, a review of the weather makes that questionable. There is a chance of significant rain in the early morning hours of Friday and then a very good chance of rain Saturday morning and into the afternoon. I’m left with little choice but to expect something less the firm and hopefully no worse then soft come race time. Because of the magnitude of the event I won’t plan for the event to be placed on the main track but that is a possibility with turf races you’ll face and you should plan for that possibility.

So we have framed the race conditions, the surface, and the weather. Come post time of the first race go ahead and check for scratches and changes . In these high level Grade I races equipment changes are not very common, nor is jock changes, but scratches can impact the bet strategy and the quicker you see them the better.

With the basics sized up its time to analyze the Past Performances and build a base handicap. I prefer Daily Racing Form Deluxe PP’ but again I am comfortable with them and for consistency sake I know what I am getting.

Belmont Park Race 10: The Grade I Manhattan Handicap; 1 ¼ mile on Turf for 3 YOs and Up.



I view races in terms of stratification layers. Ok Turk, what do you mean? I see divisions of talent in each field and I try to draw a line between the layers of talent. I don’t denote this line until I place the horses in a predictive order of finish and often it seems the line just draws itself. For a Grade I race like The Manhattan, the talent is deep and the divisions of talent are fewer. The best three horses are color coded in Blue. While I view them as essentially equal I’m also not an intellectual baby who won’t take a stand so the Turk is placing chalk on Just As Well, owned and trained by Jonathan Sheppard. The rest of the talent pool at the top includes Court Vision and Gio Ponti.

This is Just As Well’s third effort back after a hard trip to Japan in late November. In his last time out, the Grade II Dixie on Pimlico Turf he closed significant ground in taking Place behind another runner today, Strike a Deal. Just As Well will most likely be the best price of the three horses I placed in the top grouping so I’m looking for value as well as a reasonable chance. Trainer Sheppard (pictured above) wins 27% of the time in Graded Stakes with 67 tries over the past year, second only in this race to Chad Brown who has far fewer attempts. Just as Well would like it a bit firmer but ran a fine Place in the Arlington Millions last year on turf listed as good.

Court Vision’s PP is not one you will see often: This will be his twelfth straight Grade I event. He should be able to handle whatever turf conditions are present, maybe even better then Just As Well and his last race was a strong performance on yielding turf taking Place by a neck. Trainer Rick Dutrow wins 22% of his Turf races and he has R. Albarado up for his sixth time back with the 5 YO son of Gulch.

A huge wildcard in this race is Gio Ponti. This horse is looking for his first win in five tries but he lost by a length to Zenyatta at the Breeders’ Cup and a nose before heading to Dubai and turning up flat. He missed some work but then ran a five furlong :59 3/5ths this past week. At the classic distance on turf that most likely will be soft will require top condition and even Trainer Clement has questioned his condition but not his health. I was half tempted to drop this champion right out of the top four but I think the team deserves the benefit of the doubt, as Clement wins 21% of a staggering number of turf starts and his 24% win rate in 2010 coupled with Ramon Dominguez’s 27% rate in 2010 is a mark of supreme quality. Gio Ponti is 6 of 6 in the money with 4 wins across Belmont Turf and won this race last year with a 106 BSF on yielding turf. Let’s roll the dice and place him in the top four for sure and hopefully top three.

The next layer down for me includes Grand Couturier (GB), Take the Points and Strike A Deal. Grand Couturier has had great success on soft and yielding turf including a Grade II turf event at Belmont late last fall. Trainer Ribaudo reteams the horse with Alan Garcia today. Take the Points will need his best effort today to get any higher then Show but he is more then capable of hitting the ticket. This is also his first race back since Dubai but he has trained regularly and well since late April at Belmont. Strike a Deal comes in off a Grade II win in mid May and is 13 of 19 in the money on Turf and Trainer Goldberg has a gaudy 30% win rate in 2010 and places G. Gomez up today.


My final grouping includes some fine quality horses but this isn’t 9 year old’s playing baseball when everyone gets to first base and we all get trophy’s, you only have so may spots on the ticket and you’ve got to exclude some nice horse flesh and hope it unfolds the way you predict. I see Jet Propulsion flying through 7 furlongs and fading to the back. I like Winchester quite a bit, especially on off turf. Trained also by Clement, the five year old son of Theatrical (Ire) is on a five race progression of slower BSF and will have to reverse that trend. His last three digit Beyer was on yielding Belmont turf last September. 8 year old Interpatation won here on yielding turf last October, his only win in past nine starts. Again, the condition of the turf may loom large in the final results.

So what to make of all of this and what are we betting? I think the sane thing to do is realize two things: Whoever is the post time chalk, most likely Gio Ponti, will enter the gate 2-1 and is very vulnerable and that the uncertainty of the turf has the chance to create some real big payouts if you can construct the wacky results that may come to bear. The first thing you must do before establishing a bet strategy is establish your bet budget. If your budget is less then 40 dollars I’d suggest stringing together some various exacta combinations and some win bets on value horses like Just as Well who was a morning line 10-1. An alternative is the affordable 10 cent Superfecta’s that you can box 4 horses in for $2.40.

With the base handicap built I like to wait until a few races before until I place my bets and sometimes just before post time, but the good folks at Thorofan most likely don’t want to wait that long so let’s get after it.

My base bet will be a $2 trifecta. I am going to place the 6,9 (Just as Well and Court Vision) over 1,6,9 (adding Gio Ponti for Place), over 1,2,5,6,8,9 (adding in for Show Grand Couturier, Take the Points and Strike A Deal) for $32 dollars. Putting Gio Ponti into all three spots bumps the bet to $48 so you have a feel for the parameters. I think $48 is too rich for this bet that loses value if Just As Well doesn’t finish first and if Gio Ponti does finish in the top three but this is gambling after all. I’ll keep it at $32 dollars and use the remaining $8 of my budget to assemble four $2 straight exactas with some of the B group over the A group for value. It’s hard to ignore the results at Belmont on yielding turf that some of these horses had just last year.

Good luck to everyone. I hope you enjoyed reading but discount my picks and instead think about your approach to the races and build consistency in your own handicapping if you wish to really move forward.

Thanks to Geno from Equispace for all the hard work he does marketing this sport. Turk Out!

Post Race Analysis for Race Day February 6, 2010; The Late Pick Three at Gulfstream Park

Some days as a handicapper you are out seeking to strike the gold. Other times, well, you just get tin. A pick three win is a pick three win, and I never turn them away, but today's affair at Gulfstream Park was a walk through the land of obvious. That said, there is still money to be made stringing chalks together into sensible bets and I found a way to double my investment, so let's stop rambling and get after it!

Gulfstream Park: Race 9 - Race 10 - Race 11



I picked the three race series at Gulfstream Park along with a three race series at Santa Anita on Thursday and started noodling on it during coffee breaks Friday afternoon. Looking at it with morning lines and scratches, it seemed to be a challenging collection of races with some nice horses competing in three graded stakes races, one of which being one of the early season highlights for me, The Donn Handicap. Once I started to handicap the races in earnest a completely different picture emerged.

In race 9 a smallish field of six at first glance with one runner, Adiago (GB) there only to provide a rabbit. I thought pre-race that this was a two horse race with Court Vision my expected winner and I thought Take the Points would run very strongly. While on paper Never on Sunday appears to be an imposing force, he was a mess in the paddock and needs a bit more time to adjust. This just wasn't a betting opportunity and I'm glad I didn't throw money at the trifecta and superfecta as I had planned too, as the risk/reward just wasn't there. I don't really have an opinion on the take down of Take the Points. A straight exacta win wouldn't have been possible without the DQ. I was alive in the Pick 3 and I moved on to Race 10 in which I had a single runner.



Race 10 was a thing of beauty for Quality Road. When he reached the top of the stretch, in that short 23 second ish burst to the wire a year's worth of frustrations and unfulfilled promise faded away. This is a horse of the highest caliber and the Older Horse and Horse of the Year campaign has gotten off to a very fast start. Can either Rachael Alexandra or Zenyatta beat Quality Road right now (or at the Breeders' Cup Classic) is the question that is now more interesting to me. A Track record for the beast from Virginia. There was a bunch of very like-abled horses behind Quality Road and I took a stab at a five horse Superfecta that didn't work out but I was alive after the second leg of the Pick Three.



And then in Race 11, the Grade III Suwannee River Handicap my strongest opinion was on Tottie (GB) whom I dropped a rare win bet on early today when I thought he'd be like 8-1 only to find him the bettor's top choice. His win secured my Pick Three which paid a paltry $15. I seemed to have liked Cable more then the bettor's did and wrapping him into an exacta with Tottie proved to be lucrative.

Take The Points and somebody other then Tottie would have made the payout a bit more palatable but it is what it is.



I'm glad to hear that Eightyfiveinafifty was not hurt too badly in the bizarre incident at today's Whirlaway Stakes at the Big A.

Enjoy! Turk Out.