The Nomination Is In: The Hollywood Derby G1 at Del Mar

Welcome Friends to the Turk and the Little Turk blog.  

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!  

The Nomination Is In: The Grade 2 Red Smith at AQA

Welcome friends to The Turk and the Little Turk blog.  I'd like to thank the good people at The Thorofan and the Handicappers Corner for inviting me to share my thoughts with you today.

This is not a race or a track I would generally handicap.  It's not that I'm biased, I just find the variables too many and the motivations of the connections too varied regarding the starting of turf runners in a northern climate track in late November.  You have the tight inner track, the weather, the horses who are building towards next year, the horses who are looking for one last kick at the can, the grizzled vets who are on their way to amassing 50 starts in their careers.  You get it all post Breeders' Cup, late season racing.  All that said, what these types of races are good for to me is isolation:  Almost all the runners are outside of the hype and BS marketing that can skew a horse players opinion of a race, and  very few of them I have played this year.  It allows me in the isolation of just my red gel pen annotated DRF Formulator PPs (an unpaid endorsement)  to study the data and bet purely on what I see on paper and a bit of video.


The NYRA website is one of the more friendly horse player track sites in my opinion.  You'll find scratches and changes and track condition here.  The weather Friday/Saturday is rainy and windy early Friday but then drying up.  I'm going to handicap like the turf is good.   I can't imagine it getting much better or worse but I'll take note of track conditions at end of today.  This is an inner turf race which was unveiled in late 2018 replacing the "all weather" inner track.  The turns are tight and the field is big.   Can't say that helps the trips that can be expected.  The race does not start in the chute.

I don't consider myself a coward, but this field  scares me as a handicapper.  When I was a high volume handicapper, I would have spent very little time on this race and just handicapped the tote board, putting prices on the 3rd or 4th horses on the board the public liked, longer than 6-1.  As a turf race handicapper, there are a few variables here I'd rather not deal with: Trainer motivations for this race at this track, current condition of the runners, the track itself.   As far as motivation, its a $300K G2, so I get it, but these are not the stars of the barn, these are horses that were possibly considered from Breeders' Cup, didn't perform as expected in their final tune-ups, as well as grizzled veterans, and horses that tried dirt with limited success and this is next stop.  Variables.  Variables are what put the betting capital more and more at risk. 

So if you are going to invest time handicapping a race like this,  bet construction has to weigh on your mind pretty early.  Right off the bat I see two Chad Brown horses entered. I've seen this movie too many times and I know how it ends is my first thought, but upon close inspection, neither a iron pipe locks.  Highest Honor from the 1 post has one turf win, has fared poorly in big field/outside post positions last few out.  Balthus is hard to tell at the end of 4 YO campaign where his career is headed.  These two will get bet, deservedly so, but I'm thinking my bet construction is against them.  Can I find a foil?  Soldier Rising isn't exactly a dark horse, but I like him to win enough to single him, anchor my bets to a single and then look for value in my exacta and Tri plays.   Conditioner Clement cuts back just slightly from last time out, a 4th place finish here in G1 Turf Classic.  5-6 in the money in 2022. 12 of 14 in the money lifetime turf, 4 wins in 14 turf starts.  Ortiz is up.  

If I can anchor to Soldier Rising, what do I want in exacta? Of the two Brown horses I'd rather see neither finish in Place, but I might hedge with Balthus if I'm hedging and tote board odds favor the payout, otherwise I like a group of Astronaut, Temple, Mooney Love and Reigning Spirit, tossing Highest Honor. 

Astronaut is a 5 YO Quality Road, workmanlike. 6 of 13 lifetime starts Place or Show.  Conditioner Albertrani 0 for 32 Graded Stakes on rolling one year basis.  Temple ran past 23-1 odds into Place  last time out in the G3 marathon Sycamore at KEE.  4 of 6 starts in the money in 2022 for the gelded  son of Temple City.  Mooney Love is intriguing.  Mott's been looking for the right spot for the 4 YO with one North American win, a $115K N1X at SAR last time out in late July.  Finally Albert Stall's Reigning Spirit  won last start and is training well and could provide some late deep close sizzle.  

I'm guilty of grinding these types of affairs into dust with the handicapping effort I expend, but I'm going to keep this one simple:  I'm really betting against Chad Brown, tossing 4 of the 12, and building an exacta hinged around a singled Win for Soldier Rising.  

$2 Exacta 9 OVER 4-8-6-3 is $8.  Have fun friends, Turk Out! 

The Nomination Is In: The Grade 1 Woodward at AQA

Life Is Good: Bill Denver/Eclipse Sports Wire

 Welcome friends to The Turk and the Little Turk, now in our 15th year of providing racing handicaps and warm hearted banter to people who never asked for it and most definitely didn't pay for it.  I'd like to thank the good people at The Thorofan for indulging me.

Belmont at the Big A.  That's the silliest thing I've heard in a long time.  Today's race is at Aqueduct, I'm not sure why they just couldn't say that.  I'm not sure why Belmont construction couldn't avoid the fall racing season, but that's over my pay grade.  The Woodward.  When I first got into horse racing as an adult this race was at Belmont, but it wasn't until the move to Saratoga did I form lifelong memories of this race.  Usually on the Saturday before Labor Day, it was a perfect opportunity to spend a last bit of summer at Saratoga, away from the stress of the day job:  Rachel Alexandra, Curlin, Mine That Bird (a shadow of himself) and Harve de Grace.  The race hasn't been so good at the end of Saratoga meet and I'm glad it came back to Belmont where it can be positioned as a Breeders' Cup prep, but this edition?  Life is Good and four also rans. This isn't horse racings='s finest to offer.  

What do do with something like this race?  Don't play it.  You're either a horseplayer or you are a fan.  If you are purely fan, do what you like, enjoy the most dominant colt in training currently.  If you're a horse player, box the other four in an exacta or put the four in the win and the field in the place box and hope for something whacky.  

I wish I had more to offer you, but I can't make gold from straw.  If you really want some action, don't bet Life is Good at all.  Perhaps he has a bad step or doesn't seem right, I'm sure the Jockey instructions will be clear to protect the horse regardless of today's race.  Now you got some value.  The reality is longshots most likely Place, not Win.  There isn't much to be gained except an Exacta with Life is Good to Win and Informative or Thomas Shelby to Place, the two horses I think most likely to be lowest odds on the board.  If you must be right, regardless of the betting philosophies against this, single Life Is Good Over Keepmeinmind and/or Law Professor.  

A glorified two turn work for Life is Good.  

Have fun, Turk Out.

The Nomination Is In: The Stephen Foster G2 at Churchill Downs

Welcome friends to The Turk and the Little Turk Blog, now in our 14th year of providing good handicaps and terrible blogging to people who never asked for it, and Happy July 4th Weekend. I'd like to thank the good people at The Thorofan for inviting me to handicap my annual start to summer racing, The Stephen Foster Handicap G2. 

Poor Stephen Foster. He wrote some of the most memorable songs in Americana, including Camptown Races, Old Susanna and My Old Kentucky home, yet he died penniless at age 37 after smashing his head into a chamber pot as he passed out from a high fever. We remember him each year for this race, and his songs are forever ingrained into people of my generation and before me, you know, when kids use to play outside and frolicked in the summer before electronics and social media. 

It's a seven horse field, the weather looks to be wet, and the track conditions at least on Friday were Fast but check here Saturday. Lets get one thing straight: I'm unhappy with Churchill Downs Inc, how they have sabotaged Illinois racing, and their forcing the sale of Arlington International Racetrack. I loved Arlington, I will always love Arlington and I will never forgive the suits at CDI for putting their own interests ahead of everything else. Arlington was a beautiful and modern facility, in a sport that doesn't really have beautiful and modern facilities. Its turf course was the best in North America. I'm done gripping, but this is exhibit A why horse racing is failing and will continue to fail, a lack of a cohesive strategy to grow the sport and track owners placing their interests over the heath of the sport. While I said I don't like seven horse fields, at least this field has some consistency and potentially could make for an interesting outcome. Let's get after it! 

  Haskell Stakes G1: 1 1/8 Miles Fast Dirt. I don't generally look at video more than 3 months old, but the quality of Mandaloun really shines.  

  Alysheba Stakes G2: 1 1/16 Miles Fast Dirt. Watch Mott's VERY Game runner.  

Blame Stakes $198K: 1 1/8 Miles Fast Dirt. Americanrevolution a heavily bet 4th and just looked empty in the stretch.  

Oaklawn Handicap G2: 1 1/8 Miles Fast Dirt. Dallas Stewart Trained Last Samuri , D.Wayne Lukas is his new conditioner.  

 I think it's a bettors race. My instincts tell me that Mandaloun deserves the 2-1 ML. 6 of 10 Lifetime wins, 2 wins at distance, 5 wins in 9 fast dirt starts, 2 of 2 in the money at CD and Brad Cox Trainer, 28% off the layoff, 28% dirt winner and 26% graded stakes wins. I don't like first time returning horses from overseas, but he has been training at increasing distances at CD since late May. 

One play is to single him and play a few value horses in the exacta, something like a 6 - (1, and 7), with Caddo River and Last Samuri providing some sizzle. 

Alternatively, toss Mandaloun and play Olympiad to win with those value runners on the exacta. Mott's the master at bringing horses into good spots, and Olympiad is 4 wins in 4 starts in 2022, 6 wins in 9 Fast Dirt Starts, and a last start win in the Alysheba G2 here at 1 1/16 miles. Olympiad will press the pace. 3 (1,7) exacta.

Finally, you could play 6-3- (2-1-7) a $2 Trifecta for $6. You could play with some combinations of Place and Show, you get the idea. These are fun races to bet. Be patient, focus on the toteboard odds, don't be emotional about the horses themselves. Slot them, Value them, Bet Them, pray they all finish safe. Have fun friends, Turk Out.

The Nomination Is In: The Grade 1 Jenny Wiley at KEE

Hello Friends and Welcome to The Turk and The Little Turk blog, a blog focused primarily on horse racing handicapping since 2008. The Jenny Wiley. Are the the sort of horse player that cares enough about the names of these races to figure out why they are named, or no? I assume if you don't care about the names of the races, you probobly don't care alot about the the names of the horses, refering to them by thier post postions. There is nothing wrong with either approach. I've tried for many years to be a horse racing fan. The sort of fan that cares about the names, the horse's, thier pedigrees, their connections, interesting backstories and strorylines. It hasn't gotten me very far except worried that the downward spiral of this sport may not be arrested. In the 1970's I was a fan of the offbeat: Boxing, Formula 1 and Horse Racing. Why? Sports Illustrated and ABC Wide World of Sports. I'm fascinated at the resurgence of F1, driven by the accessability of the drivers and the circuit through television shows. It helps there is a governing body that cares about the sport holistically. Horse racing, with their small thinkers and fifedoms and refusal to take the erradication of performance enhancing drugs seriously enough, the blind eye to excesssive on track deaths, can't/won't get out of thier own way. All of this, at a fan website, The Thorofan, mind you, was a long winded way to say there has to be a metaphor somewhere in the name of the Jenny Wiley.

Ms. Wiley was captured in 1789 right from her home by Native Americans, three of her childen and her uncle murdered, a fourth child died in the harsh conditions, sold from one tribe to another, finally escaping after having a vision in a dream of what to do. Perhaps their is an escape and revival story for horse racing somewhere. Luckily, today's race is at one of the shrines of horse racing, Keeneland, to the north and west of Ms. Wiley's ordeal. It isn't tracks like KEE that are a problem, but then again, you can't have boutique meets like KEE, SAR, and my favorite, Kentucky Downs, without the year round back track support, ownership, and the fans. The Thorofan is doing thier part. Enough old man rambling, let's get after this! How is it good for horse racing to have two Trainer Chad Brown runners making up 85% of the morning line odds. A six horse field, with Scarabea also entered in Race 5and why wouldn't she go somewhere better than his bloodbath? Anyways, lets take a look at a few races to give these runners some context. The Queen Elizabeth II Cup G1: 1 1/8 Miles on Yielding Turf KEE 16 Oct 2021 The Pucker Up Stakes G3: 1 1/8 Miles Good Turf at Ap 14 August 2021. Yielding, Firm, Good. Shantisara is the real deal. Pegasus World Cup Filly and Mare Turf G3; 1 1/16 Firm Turf GP 29 January 2022 The First Lady G1; 1 Mile Good Turf KEE 9 Oct 2021 So what to do with this? The two favorites will be bet hard, with what I would expect Shantisara being the post time tote board leader. I'm going to take an $2 Place bet for $8 on all the non Chad Brown runners and hope for the Place upset. 8/5/2/1 The turf should be somewhere between Good and Firm and no rain is in current forcast. You can find up to date track conditions here. Have fun friends. Turk out!

The Nomination Is In: The Hollywood Derby G1

Public Sector:  NYRA/Chelsea Durant

Welcome Friends to The Turk and the Little Turk Blog.  For those of you who do not know me, I've been writing horse racing handicaps, primarily Turf Racing, since 2008.  I'd like to thank the good people at The Thorofan for allowing me to share my thoughts with you today.

What a challenge:  A14 horse field, few if any dominant contenders. I generally like to handicap four year old and Up Turf runners for the reason that three year old turf seasons can be so erratic.  Seldom are the horses brought onto the turf first, they generally fail on dirt first before the surface is introduced to them.  This race does have some turf bred runners, some potential, and not a lot else.  It creates a real handicapping challenge and the reality is that I have a 4 in 5 chance of my favorite not winning and a 1 in 5 chance of my chalk, Public Sector, winning.  

Part of my dilemma is Public Sector will be the public betting pool chalk as well, almost undoubtedly at the top of the tote board when they break from the gate.   While I always handicap the race without a bias, the bet construction is almost always pure bias.  The fundamental question: Do I ignore my opinion that Public Sector is the most accomplished and favorite here when I develop the bet construction or not?  Leaving him in the win spot, perhaps even singling him, can be a good bet as there will be confusion in the field and value can fill out the exacta spot.  I should have mentioned that also, I'm almost exclusively an exacta player.  Can I find value singling Public Sector and building a case for value in the Place spot?  Possibly, with such a big field I think it's unlikely Public Sector will be bet down below his morning line odds of 5-2, perhaps 2-1 is the ceiling.  If I want to win at my opportunity cost return on investment of 40% I need to not overcover and be decisive.  Let's take a look at the base handicap and some video and then think about the bet construction a bit more.  

Let's get after it!

The Twilight Derby G2 10/31/21; 1 1/8 Miles Firm Turf SA  

 The Hill Prince Stakes G2 10/23/21; 1 1/8 Miles Firm Turf BEL  

The Del Mar Derby G2 9/4/2021; 1 1/8 Miles Firm Turf DMR

The Hall of Fame G2 8/6/21; 1 Mile Firm Turf SAR  

What to make of all this?  When you are at the track, or even at home streaming the video, you don't have the time it takes to deep dive 14-15 horses between races.  The effort I put into handicapping for a blog entry is more than double the time I would spend studying if I was just playing the card.  The time difference can be described as not following the 80-20 rule.  You have to be able to do 80 of the work in 20 percent of the time.  I do 100% of the work for a Blog because I never know when I'm looking at a really interesting scenario and, people are reading this, they deserve maximum effort.  

With the 80-20 rule I take no more than 10 mins flowing through the field and breaking into four piles: the Toss Pile, and then Win- Win Place- Show-Exotic.  I represent those four colors in my base handicap with BLUE- YELLOW-PURPLE and RED.  I waste no time agonizing over the Toss pile.  there is no time for that.  Can those horses beat you?  Absolutely, but no time for that now.  

As I'm focused on Exacta, I have three general archetypes:  A singled runner and a few horses in Place; a boxed grouping of potential Win-Place candidates; a small group of potential Winners over a group of potential Place.  I've been doing this for a very long time, and I see patterns in these fields and races that fit into the archetypes and I see no reason to reinvent my wheel.  As I said  earlier, I plan on following the rarest of my archetypes, a singled Win candidate.  I say its rare because I want chaos, I want the favorite to lose and typically I bet the favorite to fall right out of the top 2 to create the highest value exacta possible.  With a field this size, with the traffic that will be in place, so much luck goes into the ride that a horse needs everything to fall into place perfectly.  Not to go off tangent, but that was the brilliance of Zenyatta, who was so talented could overcome a bad break or bad trip.  Few horses ever come close to matching Zenyatta in talent.  Very very few.  

Public Sector/6 will be singled.  Chad Brown is so dominant: 23% turf winners with 986 starts, 19% graded stakes in 340 starts, 27% 2nd off 45 -180 day layoff in 195 starts.  Three straight graded stakes turf wins.  A Race high 458 Tomlinson number, 8 of 9 lifetime on Turf in the money.  

So who makes the cut for consideration into the Place Spot?  I have eight potentials: 

• Subconscious/12
• Shifting Sands/8
• Flashiest/7
• Hudson Ridge/5
• Zoffarelli (Ire)/10

and

• Beyond Brilliant/2
• Cathkin Peak (Ire)/3
• Santin/14

I'm not going to do it but to illustrate, a 6 OVER 12-8-7-5-10-2-3-14 $2 exacta bet would cost $16.  I'm not saying you can't win with a bet like that, but you won't win enough to cover the times you'll lose a bet like that.  Let's get to work chopping that bet down to size. Remember, to find value, something about each of these horses you won't like.  It's easy to find reasons not to back a horse, focus on why you should back them.  

Subconscious/12 could easily be in my win column.  Trainer Mandella has a very sharp gelding on his hands with three straight wins, a nice Grade 2 win in the Twilight Derby, and a Del Mar win in August. Will be bet hard and my best case scenario is Tapit's son finishes no better than Show.  

Shifting Sands (GB)/8 is a Chad Brown runner that you have to wonder why he shipped here except to compete.  An equally gaudy 424 Tomlinson number to Public Sector's. Very classy.  A good summer at Saratoga.  First Del Mar outing.  

Flashiest/7 ran well taking place in the Del Mar Derby in September.  Very late and good speed.  The gelding has to navigate traffic and put himself in position for a late break.  The Del Mar outing may cause more public support than we'd like.

Hudson Ridge/5 incredible class, hasn't put it together.  Baffert puts Mike Smith up.  Blinkers off.  Very sharp morning works.  Lots of potential.  

Zoffarelli (Ire)/10 five Places in 9 turf starts.  Talented enough, also has yet to put it all together so far.  

Beyond Brilliant/2 will bring lots of early speed.  4 of 4 in the money over turf with one win here at Del Mar in September.  Stepping up in class from comfort zone of OC N1X, was ok for Show in G2 Twilight Derby.  

Cathkin Peak (Ire)/3 has good late speed, last two races gone off at big prices and was Place and Fourth respectively.  Winless in 4 starts in 2021, 4 Win-Places in 7 turf starts.  Morning Line 6-1, I obviously thought less of the gelded runner.  

Finally, Santin/14 is Morning Line 10-1.  Lightly raced, just 3rd start, with two wins already.  The Godolphin Team shipped for a reason, they are really entering deep end of pool.  Late speed.  

Many of my betting decisions with a group of potential Place finishers this large would be driven by the Tote Board odds.  In the absence of that, I think my initial thoughts are to:

Single Public Sector/6 OVER Shifting Sands (GB)/8, Flashiest/7, Hudson Ridge/5, Zoffarelli (Ire)/10    a $2 Bet for $8.  

Have fun with it friends.  Turk Out!  

The Nomination Is In: The Grade 1 Turf Mile at Keeneland

 

Pixelate: photo by Coady Photography

Welcome Friends to The Turk and the Little Turk blog, now in our thirteenth year of providing horse race handicapping to people who never asked for it.  A special thank you today to The Thorofan for allowing me to prepare this analysis of the Keeneland Turf Mile G1 for you.  

When asked I give very specific answers to questions.  I often get asked, usually by recent additions to my social media feeds, if I am a horse racing fan.  It sometimes is asked out of politeness, sometimes its because the person had a relative (crazy uncle, introverted father) who loved racing and read the Form, sometimes its because the person's family loves to watch the Kentucky Derby.  I don't mind the question even as its usually wrapped in undertones of bemusement, bewilderment, incredulence, etc. I always answer the same way: I am a fan of older horses running over a route of grass.  If they thought I was weird before, the answer does nothing to make them feel better about me as person.  No mind, I love turf racing, I generally like the older horses, and anything 1 mile and up is my idea of racing.  This race checks the boxes for me: Big field, most likely firm turf, no runaway favorite, lots of handle.  Let's get after it!

I generally do a lot of video analysis for a race like this, but quite frankly I didn't feel I needed it after my first pass through the past performances.  I did look at one race, The Bernard Baruch G2 at Saratoga as I wanted to get a look at the 5 YO gelding Tell Your Daddy and how he ran in a small four horse field.  I am shading the Thomas Morley conditioned/Leparoux up runner down as he seems to like SAR and not many other surfaces.  

I looked strongly at Pixalate and Order of Australia (Ire) and came away placing them in that order.  Pixelate comes in off a win at Kentucky Downs in the Grade 3 Mint Million, and I like winners after KD quite a bit.  Training well, 16 of 20 in the money lifetime, 15 of 19 in the money over grass, 7 of 7 in the money at the distance.  Trainer Stidham 22% Graded Stakes, 19% Turf.  Order of Australia (Ire) wins the class battle pretty handily, and at 4 YO is a $1.5 MM earner.  Won at 1 Mile here at KEE at 72-1 odds in last year's Breeders' Cup Mile. Early speed, talented, in the mix.  

After my top group Somelikeithotbrown and Space Traveler (GB) stood out to me.  Somelikeithotbrown has no wins at the distance and he doesn't really have many excuses looking at the running lines.  Did not run well here at KEE in April, over good turf he tired.  Training sharp.  Space Traveler (GB) has a nicelate turn of foot  and he's had two back to back good efforts in Grade 1 competition over excellent turf courses at WO and AP.   

In the last group of four I'm considering, I like Ivar (Brz) and In Love (Brz) and respectful but not sure what I'll do in my bet combinations with Field Pass and Diamond Oops.  Ivar (Brz) has been on the bench since May 1st.  Trainer Lobo is 9% on 32 tries at 61-180 day layoffs.  Training very sharply at TTC.  Ran well at KEE in Breeders' Cup Mile.  Could surprise with late speed into Exacta.    In Love (Brz), a 5 YO gelding, loses a class battle, is a sub $300,000 winner on 12 starts but current form appears sharp winning at KD in September and did win a N1X $62K ALW a year ago at KEE.  You want value?  Sometimes you have to hunt for it.  Field Pass has good credential and ok speed.  Versatile but not dynamic. Just good enough to hang around, not sure he's good enough to consider in Exacta.  Trainer Patrick Biancone has a sneaky interesting Diamond Oops, training sharp, excellent current condition, and an odd placement in the conditions book.  Sometimes trainer choices can tell you a lot.  I'm not thrilled with his tactical speed on paper, but sneaky late speed appeared last time out at KD. Intrigued.

What to do with all of this?  Have fun.  With this many horses, I can't see a horse getting up past 3-1 on the tote board.  I'm most likely going to go hunting for exacta's, my typical play.  I'm not sure what I'll do yet either quite honestly.  If forced to choose I'd look at something like this:  $2 Exacta Bet: 7 OVER 3-4-6-10-11-13 for $12.  I skipped Field Pass.  I don't generally single the winner and adding Order of Australia (Ire) to the win spot and covering Order of Australia (Ire) and Pixalate in the Show spot takes the bet to $24, too pricey.  You get the idea, less cost, more risk.  Remember its better in long run to take some risk than place safe bets race after race.  

Have fun with this friends.  Turk Out!