Tuesday Notes

Good day everyone.

Mohawk's closing night of the meet is tonight and they're discontinuing the jackpot pick 6, with a mandatory payout. That bet, more or less, flopped. Replacing it is a 15% takeout pick 5 from races one through five, beginning October 1st, when the meet flips over to Woodbine. The Woodbine standardbred menu for non-rebated players is poor, so this bet is welcomed for those looking for a higher payout than the 25% pick 4 offers.

They are not having a mandatory payout for the Super High Five tonight, so beware of that. Amazingly, the Super High Five, with shorter fields and little hope to hold a single ticket chugs along when the pool reaches $200,000. I understand the want for a big payout, I get the fact that rebated players can play this with some sort of contrarian skill, I get that some lottery players throw a few dollars in, but the pool generating $40,000 an evening is still a little confusing.

I often wonder what would happen if bets were protected by trademark, where they can only be offered at the track that creates them. It would be interesting to see the Beulah Fortune 6 in numbers the Gulfstream Pick 6 does. I suspect there would be quite a bit of betting innovation going on from tracks.

Something that's not very confusing: Churchill Downs lost handle again this meet, down 6.6%.

We all know the betting pools are fairly efficient. There's not a ton of meat on the bone. However, for the life of me I can not understand the steam Bayern took in his last two starts. It just felt like a massive overbet, and it turned out to be, but there folks were, hammering this horse, hoping or thinking he regains last year's form. It doesn't happen often (people tend to think it does because of confirmation bias when they're right, and discount the times they're wrong), but when you can toss a horse who is garnering 30% of the pool from the top couple of spots, you're beating the juice.

I think one of the toughest things for horseplayers to do is toss a horse they like, or they've been waiting all card to bet, because the odds are too low. Nowadays we see a lot of horses taking major steam off a bad trip, for example. In harness racing, this is especially noticed with horses who were hopelessly boxed. They will be 8-5, and because the trip is fresh in the mind they are worth 8-5. A lot are not, and players need to pivot and pitch the horse. This is difficult.

Handle should be up decent in September. Del Mar and Saratoga had days this September, and last September was one of the worst this business has seen YOY in some time. First person who says it's because of lingering American Pharoah coattails gets lashed with a wet noodle.

Why is it that every time a decent three year old in harness racing shows up, in some quarters he is suddenly "as good as Somebeachsomewhere"? It's uncanny and, well so far, wrong.

Wakazaschi Hanover beat Freaky Feet Pete on Saturday night. That's the same horse who beat Wiggle It with the same trip in the North America Cup. He's a quality horse, but I think Freaky Feet Pete was a little flat, frankly. I could be wrong, of course. On October 10th Wiggle It and Freaky Feet Pete are supposed to meet at Hoosier and I think I will take a swing on Pete if the odds cooperate.

Anyhoo, hope everyone is having a nice week. Have a great day!