Surfing Efficiently

Tweet Handride's post about the TBA homepage got me thinking about my surfing habits when looking for horse racing news and tidbits (horse porn as the Space Gal puts it) and I guess it's pretty similar to most folks. I do head to the homepage to read the TBA blogs first, then usually jog around to Paulick, raceday360, equidaily, and then usually to the Albany Law School Racing and Gaming site (registration required) to see any new articles. This usually saves me from going directly to the Thoroughbred Times, Blood-horse or DRF sites to search around for articles or the like. My favorite mainstream bloggers are Steve Crist (DRF), Vic Zast and John Pricci (Horseracing Insider) and Dick Powell (Handicapping Insights), so I am usually searching for their articles. I use DRF for my horse watches and enter any of the free contests whether it's Equibase, DRF, TVG or BrisNet. The TBA homepage is great because of the Free PP's and looking posts from non-TBA bloggers by just cursing over the blogs to see if any are those I like to read. If there are any sites I am missing that are must-reads, please comment and let me know what I'm missing.

Nice to see I'm not the only racing blogger who follows Top Chef. Of course, I'm already out of our handicapping pool (went with my namesake Eugene, who failed terribly), but the Space Gal has Alan's favorite, Stefan, in the pool and is looking good based on the past two weeks. She only has to survive Hosea and Fabio to scoop a nice sized pot.

We watched Jockeys on Friday night and thought it was pretty well done. There is a lot of reality TV watching at the Space Station (hat tip to TDH for that moniker) and this one is on the rotation for sure. Other than the dubbed calls everyone is chiding, the plot was interesting in both episodes. Hopefully they cool it with the spills (now that they hooked the viewers) in future episodes.

A new Public Handicapper contest period started Saturday and we hit 2 of 4 winners (Look up Player - EquiSpace) resulting in profits of $9.60, and currently sitting chilly in 75th place. We picked Diamond Tycoon ($9.00, Leparoux on the turf) and Cowboy Cal ($8.60, Pletcher/Valesquez) and had the other two winners 2nd (Honest Man) and 3rd (Friesen Fire), so we were sniffin it. We finished the Winter of Discontent period in the black ($9.80), so maybe we can build on that.

I also played a quick Equibase (thanks to Facebook friend Craig Walker) free handicapping contest on 8 races at the Fair Grounds and finished with $38.60 good for 116th out of 1,000 or so, with 2 winners and 2 placers. So, overall not a bad handicapping weekend, trying to stay sharp as the big preps enter the picture over the next three months. Playing a little Aqueduct today, an apprentice rider Amanda Casey had a nice win in the 4th on Ed's Princess....

Have a great week.