Being in right place right time/wrong place wrong time

[wiffleball whizz]

Interesting scenario tonight at my job.......our poker room is packed to the rafters cuz were giving away $350000 before we close so all the vultures are who never came are out in full force....

As im getting to the elevator I gotta run back to the desk to get my sour mints in the drawer......as I'm walking over I see one of our regular players waiting to get in a game.....well f*** that he's not gonn be waiting while these new people are getting in so I say hey mike did you see Danny I said come here and say hi(I was really telling him cut the line and I'll get you a seat)

I go downstairs come back he won a $1800 pot and had 4 10s for the $500 giveaway.....it made me feel real happy for him....the players were livid....

Me forgetting those mints made him 2000!!!!

Anybody got any stories like that?

[johnhannibalsmith]

Probably one of my favorite moments on the track... though maybe not exactly following the template...

Turf Paradise had just adopted the late pick four as part of the menu. I had dabbled a little bit, but hadn't yet gotten too into that sort of wager and really hadn't yet seen a card/sequence where it just looked like a must play.

So, one day... I can't remember what the occasion was, but the place was packed. This was back when they actually opened the entire facility and we used to sit up in the cheap seats under the stews and Luke and heckle the jocks as they came back to the scale... in a fiendishly ball-busting sort of way... most of the time.

So the joint is overflow - you're climbing over people to get up and make a bet all day - was probably Breeder's Cup day, but I can't be sure. I was getting sick of climbing over people to get in line and then get shut out anyway, so I start to think about playing the pick four just so I can get a bet in early and kick back with Crazy Johnny and go back to watching and heckling.

First leg is wide open. I circle a few numbers in my complimentary program. Next race is one that I actually really liked because one of our super-trainers at the time (not sure if it was Bennett, Mills, Hill, or who) had a class dropping old champ that I HATED in the race. He was an obvious single for a lot of people I'm sure now, and at that moment I had an epiphany that these were the type of races that made these sort of bets if you were right.

Leg three is the feature - a small stakes or open allowance or something - there were two standouts in the race that got the circles.

The finale: Typical, cheap bottom non-winners since forever.

About nine in the field and a case could be made for most of them. The jock that rode for me more often than not at the time was named on a horse that I had LITERALLY just watched him scratch in the post parade the week before - like five days earlier.

I look at Crazy Johnny's form and he's got a big old bullet work to get off the vet's list and I figure, hot dog, this one must be live if my jock scratched him last week and then took the call right back after the work.

I end up using four I believe, three that made a ton of sense, and the aforementioned recent vet scratch - he was about 12-1 on the line, I think. He wasn't 6-1, but wasn't 20-1 either. An outsider, but some decent races a ways back on his form when he was in a better barn.

So... the sequence rolls on... I get the first leg with one of the better prices - maybe 9-2 or something. Next leg, I tossed the heavy favorite piledriving in claiming price and beat him bigger than shit with the third or fourth favorite, who was still around 8-1 because of the odds-on favorite in the field. Safari So Good, leg three rolls in just like it should, with the two standouts on my ticket making up the quinella.

I'm feeling pretty good. One of my first real stabs at this pick four thing and I'm live with a few horses. Crazy Johnny and I are sitting there guessing what it pays when we look and see the will-pays. I'm hoping for a few hundred and most of those that I'm live to are paying a little better than that.

Nice... but the one I really liked is paying almost four grand! Mind you, I'm a busted racetracker trying to parlay a few bucks every day into enough to eat that night and with any luck, get on a roll and cash out nicely and do something stupid, like claim another horse.

Crazy Johnny comes with one of his patented diatribes along the order of "Got a ticket worth three thousand and change and you have to count on some nickel no-riding ********** on some piece of **** trained by one history's no-trainingest ************ ever to walk the face of the earth!"

With that I look over and notice that the valets are heading back into the room and jocks are about to walk out to the paddock. To hear Johnny tell it, I looked like an Olympic hurdler, leaping chairs, climbing on top of patrons, flying to the stairwell, down one level, clearing the last ten steps with one jump, then sprint to the next level of stairs that lead to the apron, Ferris Bueller style leap to the bottom of those, through the glass doors, outside the paddock, into the paddock - all in under 20 seconds.

I'm a pack a dayer, so you can imagine how I'm gasping as I reach my jock pal in the paddock. I put my arm on his shoulder, he looks up, does a double take... "What the **** are you doing here?"

"Hey, I need this horse. I know you gotta like him if you took the call back after scratching him."

"Like him??!?!?! I about fired (my agent) over this crippled ***********. This ****** takes one bad step in post parade and I'm done.... You bet this horse? You better cancel!"

"No, I'm live in the pick four. I NEED him. It's the pool, I think. I'll give you 25%, a grand if you get this horse home."

About then, the horse strolls up, the trainer is leading him and looks at me like I'm insane for being in the paddock legging his jock up. I get a look from my jock that I recognize from the greedy little prick and I tell the trainer I think that he better put a few bucks on his horse, he really looks good in the paddock today... laf...

At the five-eighths pole, he was about three in front, at the three-eighths pole, about seven in front, and won by about ten in a parade.

Crazy Johnny still tells that story every chance he gets... he can barely get through four sentences before he's laughing too hard to even get to the point where I actually get up to play the ticket. And I have to admit, it still makes me and the jock roll around laughing to this day. It was definitely a "right place, right time" scenario, but damn did I almost kill myself getting to the right place just in time. :D

[wiffleball whizz]

Awesome read!!!!!!!!

I was at the track one night....wasn't going but overshot the exit on the turnpike and said screw it I'm going to the meadowlans instead....hit a tri for 1300....right place right time:...

447 times was gonna go to the bar but went to the track and lost 600....wrong plans wrong time!!! All the time