Wednesday Notes

Some thoughts and notes on this Wednesday.

Justin Bieber takes up over 3% of twitters servers. If he was a racetrack, someone would want to increase his signal fee.

Answer: Dropping like flies. Question: What's happening to Zenyatta's competition for the Breeders Cup Classic? We've always given the mare huge props here for doing something many horses do not seem to do - stay fit, happy and last. Good for her. Run the table honey.

In the horse quality means handle file - which all the stats, and we know as bettors means didly squat - the win pool for the $300k Cane Pace was $11,000. The race, won by One More Laugh, was not exactly watched. Conversely, the Gold Cup and Saucer final at little CDP last month garnered a $24k win pool. This happens again and again in racing, and the U of L appears right when they said a doubling of purses only raises handle 6%.

Equibase is the first US company to do something of a grand nature with an Iphone app.

Trackmaster looks at smartphone handicapping. Like most things in racing, if it is new, and we are using something old on it, it is not great. The braintrust in the sport has to create something that makes sense to be used on a smartphone, not the other way around. That's what the internet is built for and a major thing old companies miss, when wanting to be an internet company. There are obvious possibles, which you guys as players know all too well.

If you read the Saratoga handle press release, and you are like me, you get the idea that things were excellent. It's kinda like reading one of those 'stimulus' releases saying that giving $100M to ant farm research was a kick-ass idea. But, They're in the gate, puts it succinctly.

Betfair just launched the biggest ever ad campaign for a gambling company. Some of it looks neat, especially the digital marketing angles, and their new tagline is social, which betfair is, so I believe that is smart. It's hard to get a point across in a TV commercial, but they tried. It's not horrible I guess; what do you think? It does get the value proposition of low takeout (yes folks, betfair pays attention to takeout) and "cut out the middleman" across, to bettors familiar with it. So as a features and benefits ad, it is probably pretty good.




From the ridiculous to the sublime, did anyone see the video of the exploding toy horse? Man, that is too funny. I can't get that mental picture out of my head.

This week - CTC Elim at Mohawk, and we are getting close to the Jug.