In Other News....

Tweet The calendar has turned, and the slate has been swept clean. 2011 is here and the racing year 2010 is in the history books....well, other than that little vote to be revealed in a couple weeks in Miami Beach. So what's been cookin' in the Space Station over the holidays, you ask? Well...in other news.....

- You may have noticed that I have a new blog logo in the upper left hand sidebar. I have a couple of acquaintances in the Marketing/PR world, but I didn't want to bother them with my little blog, so I searched around to have someone design me a logo for the blog, among other things. I landed on the 48hourslogo.com website that holds contests for web designers to create logos for a minimum of $79, over a two-day period. You submit your logo specs, what look you have in mind, your price and then you receive designs to judge (my contest had 27 entries). My winning selection was from a designer in the Phillipines that kept working with me as I tweaked his logo through the structured process. I thought it was a very well run site and a great business concept. The website charges 10% on top of the logo price to host the contest. Let me know what you think....

- I joined the NHC Tour and got my arse handed to me in Sunday's online contest which featured races from Aqueduct, Fair Grounds and Santa Anita. But finishing last means the same as finishing 6th (top 5 qualified), so we'll chalk it up to a learning experience.

- Space Gal gave me Satellite Radio (Sirius) for Xmas and I'm loving it. Especially channel 126!

- I attended the US-Canada World Juniors Hockey semifinal last night at HSBC Arena in Buffalo, and sat in the M&T suite (my firm's bankers) and I have to say that it was one of the best environments I've ever been in, prior to a sporting event. It was unbelievably electric and you could sense that the first goal would be a huge factor in setting the tone to the game. The crowd was a sea of red-clad Canadian fanatics who were as boisterous as any fan base I've ever been around. And I've been to Stanley Cup Finals, a World Series and an NCAA Hoop Final. They completely took over the arena, any attempt to get a USA chant going was completely drowned out by the Can-a-da chant to the same rhythm. Not to mention their boys took it to the red, white and blue all night long. After scoring the first goal three minutes into the game, they never looked back. It was an excellent experience, nonetheless.

- I spent some time studying my last three years of wagering (investing) statistics and found that my average wager increased 34%, my number of wagers was almost cut in half and I found myself in the black for the first time in three years. What do I attribute the positive results to? 1) I found that I had success at certain tracks (Gulfstream, Churchill and Saratoga) that I concentrated on; 2) My bet discipline was much better, as I focused on certain races that I felt confident in betting by taking a stand; 3) I didn't bet every race on the card; 4) I focused on Pick 3's and Pick 4's which focused myself on picking winners and; 5) I took long periods of time off to refresh in January, September and December.

- I've decided my wagering resolutions will be to stick with 2010's strategy and to stay away from tracks I don't normally play, other than a big prep race where I have some knowledge of the horses and trainers. I'm also resolved to have a winning Belmont Stakes Day for a change (haha) and avoid the annual bloodbath.

Ok....Gulfstream starts tomorrow...let's get after it...

Tale of Two (or Three) Tracks

Tweet I've read about a million posts on how great the Monmouth fields were this weekend and how it's going to change the racing landscape nationally. I admit (holding hand up in the air) that I played it all weekend based on the hype and the great fields etcetera, etcetera. But the accountant in me decided to dig into the opening weekend numbers to figure out what exactly transpired. For full disclosure I got my assed kicked all weekend, although I sniffed some huge horizontal payoffs with big starts to Pick 3's in Just a Coincidence and Top Two Notch Road only to be done in by horses I just didn't see coming. What's worse is I on Sunday I forecasted the correct singles in Jet Set Vinny and Ibboyee at decent odds, but got crushed at inoportune times in both plays. I think I called it a "bloodbath" at some point. The worst was on Saturday, where I played Congressional Page in the Knight Sky's cyberbucks contest (which ironically I placed second) and "forgot" to include him in my P3 only to be nosed out by him of a $350 P3 score. Oh well, that's why they call it gambling. I had fun nonetheless.

But delving into the numbers to see what happened versus the competition opened my eyes after the fact. At first I wanted to just compare MTH to Hollywood Park as I noted watching the twitterverse (and particularly the frustration of one, Mr. Hritz) that the difference in number of starters and the gate odds of the winner of each race was so small at HOL vs. MTH that it was worth analyzing on the blog. But as I was comparing the chalkfest that was Hollyrock this weekend, I wanted to see how ole' reliable Belmont Park was doing against the Monmouth hype machine......so take a look at this and draw your own conclusions....



Interesting that Belmont wasn't that far off the number of starters (8.4 on Sat), wherein MTH averaged close to 10 over the weekend compared to 7 at HOL. Sunday, not so much as the first four races at BEL only averaged 5 starters. Hollyrock was a disaster where the winner's could barely average 2-1 odds all weekend (open mouth, insert chalk). But when comparing the win odds at Belmont Park (with less starters) they held their own averaging between 6 and 7 to 1 versus 6.7-1 at MTH. It might have seemed like MTH had some big scores over the weekend, but Belmont had four double digit odds winners versus Monmouth's five over the entire weekend with less races. Of course, the proof is in the pudding and MTH had the benefit of opening weekned hype, so we'll see how long folks will play low level claimers running for big purses.

Switching gears, I was at a luncheon in Buffalo today with 500 strong and a big topic with anyone I ran into was the panic that Saratoga won't be open this summer due to NYRA's funding issues due to NYCOTB (the only bookmaker in America that can go bankrupt). Funny how rumors spread.....see ya at the Spa in a few months....