2008 Del Mar Handicapping Challenge Twentieth Day Thursday August 7

We actually missed this-- were too involved with our bread and butter handicapping.

Everything's good though-- no longshot won / we saved $100. Speaking of, we now have 10 unplayed races banked, out of a total of 11 needed.

For all intents and purposes that fulfillment's met & we can play every single remaining race... it will be pretty hard during the contest's next 23 races to not find one single 'safe & undamaging' race to skip: with neither a viable longshot or standout in the money candidate..

This will should put us in good stead for the contest stretch run-- notice how almost all the top contestants have played almost every race-- eventually(within the next 10-12 contest days or so)-- most will not be allowed to play anymore races, while we get to still play @ another extra 10-12.

To boot, as we've already stated, we're not impressed with just about anyone significantly in the plus column:

let's see, there's almost 7 thousand contestants...let's say @ the current top 10%... @ those $700 or better-- the winner will likely NOT come from that group. Why?

There's been maybe ONE true longshot winner fitting 'correct contest strategy'... meaning that of all CAP(or near) mutuel winners, only one was at a high enough level within a few minutes of post time.

ALL the other high-priced winners were in the high teens at best at cutoff time of 4 min. to post. That is the absolute threshold one should adhere to in order to ensure not getting shut out. Yes, at times one is able to select even as the horses are loading in the gate-- but not always.

What all that means is that the current leaders have been playing fairly low-priced selections-- & subsequently lucked out with the odds drifting significantly up by the time the races in question went off.
So, we can continue playing our limit selections-- knowing that if the leaders didn't shoot for those high prices in the beginning-- they certainly won't later on as they try to jockey for position amongst those closely-ranked to them. This will be their downfall-- when the next couple of longshots come in, they won't be anywhere near the top-- and may already be at or near the maximum allowed races limit.

 

See you later....