Friday pick 4 @ FG

[bellsbendboy]

7) PETIT JEAN CREEK drops off the planet and will appreciate the race shape for very powerful connections. No works last thirty days a cause for adding FLYING FALCON who will be clear entering the stretch and is still owned by the breeder in her 33rd race, DEVIN BOUND who has been on the board for 16 of her 19 and gets Robby after an eventful last and I've Been Humbled for Autry who won for this price at Chgurchill before losing late to first time tagged runner in last. A vanilla four deep.

8) Do not trust the dropper although there is no other race and the nine year old has never been sound so taking a stand with WHOLE NINE YARDS. Always a nice horse the Ramsey's laid this one off for about a year, TWICE! Comebacker at the mountain OK before score in Erie. Caught on the pace in nine panel affair in Lexington ( half in :52) this one tried hard til the end. Then caught wide (half in :47) while claimed by sharp conditioner. Three "local" works and a good seat getting first run on the speed with SXB aboard.

9) WON AWESOME DUDE faces mostly sophomores and looks like a racehorse. Blinks on for last and this conditioner tough after Ocala freshening. The pace here is impossible to decipher so we will stretch with Honest Man, Buddha Calling, Fort Apache and Curvature. Five long in a tough one.

10) Looks like MENA TIME has some talent and may beat these in her debut. Gilded Time filly worked very, very well before the sale recording the fastest time for a filly with quarters in :22 flat and :21 and change. Sharp connections got her for eight times the stud fee and she made the gate in her second work. Chestnut filly breezed five panels every Saturday in October before trouncing her work mates the first Saturday in November when asked. Kept on ice at Remington she seems very plausible as a three quarter sister to millionaire Mandys Gold and second, third and fourth dams all won at two! A hard one but the play is 2,8,9,10 / 10 / 3,5,7,8,9 / 6 Play Sunday. BBB

[the little guy]

I'm confused. You think this is a good Pick-4 to play and you are singling a first time starter in the final leg that worked fast in the 2YO sales?

There's a winning strategy.

[The Magenta Donkey]

BBB I only have 4 dollars in my Twinspires account. Which horses in the 7th and 9th should I exclude?

[Dahoss9698]

The ROI has to be lower this year. Has to be. BBB, any idea what you are hitting at since your claims of last year?

[bellsbendboy]

Brutal sequence beat us up, but undaunted we'll attempt to learn from our mistakes and seperate the nearly fifty entered for tomorrow's sequence.

Leg one went to 13-10 favorite I'VE BEEN HUMBLED. This 4yo with a pedigree strongly tilted towards dirt had been marrooned on the poly and grass in Chicago. On those surfaces she is zero for nine; on dirt five for fifteen! Entered as MTO Thursday, in a three other than, she figured tough to down and would sleep in a new stall. She held off our top choice with the others well beaten. We added the clear speed but former long time New Orleans police officer Bernie Flint not one of our favorites and she was short. Our other inclusion Devin Bound, coming off the McClelland claim did not run a jump, more on that trainer forthcoming. A solid 'cappin tenet: When the race is an extra trainers with deep barns have a big edge!

Leg two featured some very bad decision making on our part. We quickly boiled the race down to three contenders and correctly dumped even money favorite GIGLI. The tenet here is to eliminate older horses coming off the shelf. Cappers employ there own philosophy on how old the horse and how long the layoff. For us; seven year olds and thirty days is an automatic exclusion and we seldom bend this "timeless" tenet.

We singled Whole NINE YARDS and this one simply ran out of training. When Assmussen claims he rarely waits four weeks to work back and even with the ship south we should have at least added TAMING THE TIGER ($8.60). As previously mentioned trainer Paul McClelland is an unknown to us and we would welcome any info on him. He carries a high batting average (20%) but his horses here have looked awful. At any rate, this one added fronts in his last and was selectively tagged. Dropping in half for this was somewhat troubling but as we noted, there was not anything else in the book for him.

No real handle on race nine other than the Amoss runner would get a check but not the winners share. Our five deep figured over ninety percent to clear the race but expended valuable capital in the process. Jones gets off the duck with HONEST MAN ($13.60) with a powerful stretch run. The Un B Song big money yearling is now two for two around two bends and looks to have a future. Our top choice WON AWESOME DUDE, the only other entrant with two turn dirt experience ran a decent fourth at 19-1 while absolutely no threat but needed this one and should be tough next out.

If your a horizontal player you must be able to handicap maiden races. Roughly half the horses stabled at all tracks have never won a race. This heat figured WELL BELOW par and we singled the debut runner from a top barn and backed up that selection with solid analysis. Alas, MENA TIME had little time before figuring things out too late and will not be a maiden for long. The day belonged to WHIPPORWILL CREEK ($36.80) giving Jones/Saez back to back scores. The Forest Camp filly bled in her debut then improved a bunch sixty days later with lasix.

A bit about using two year old training sales in handicapping seems appropriate. Owners anxious for a quicker return on their investments have flocked to these sales in recent years. They get the same xrays, vetting, pedigree and confirmation reports but to see these atheletes actually perform is a big bonus. Oddly, trainers are the ones not sold because it can be difficult to get the "speed" out of these youngsters. On MENA TIME in particular our analysis was fine especially when we did not like either the 8-5 or the 3-2. While competent cappers never have too much data using the training sales can be very profitable. The fastest quarter mile by a thoroughbred two year old in a sale workout was by TIZ WONDERFUL; he paid $12 winning his debut by over a dozen lengths. The fastest eighth was nine seconds and change and that colt paid $66 in his debut. Some notable two year old fillies in 2007 that worked VERY well at the sales, broke their maidens in their debut AND are Graded winners or placed; PHANTOM INCOME ($11.60), CLEARLY FOXY ($21.60), IRISH SMOKE ($ 7.40) , SET PLAY ($27.60) CATO MAJOR ($41.60) well you get the picture. The four comes back $4300 for a deuce and we were not close. Play tomorrow.

Aside: THELITTLEGUY We have been over this. I pick a day to play and only abort if the track is compressed. I did not think that this sequence was a particularly good one. As far as your being confused about the finer points of handicapping, some things never seem to change.

Magenta: I often bet very small exactas inside the sequence. When we have a strong opinion it is often conveyed. When our opinion is not as strong our analysis often is lacking.

Dahoss We will earn between a quarter and a third of what we did last year. We have improved a pole but last year was an anomaly. BBB

[the little guy]

Learn from your mistakes? If there's one thing you clearly never do it is that. You have mentioned numerous times what a good book Steve Crist's " Exotic Betting " is, yet your manner of play goes completely counter to everything suggested in that book, and even after repeatedly being shown that you can't win the way you " play " you never alter a thing. Even if you have a good opinion, which is rare, you play in a way that gives you next to no chance to exploit it. The bottom line is that every single " Pick-4 " post of yours is a primer of what not to do. You never play multiple tickets, thus regardless of what you deem each horse's relative chances to be, you weigh each horse the same. This simply cannot be successful over time. You single at random while spreading in other races where you say you feel strongly about one horse. If you played correctly, i.e. multiple tickets, you could single your strong choice in said race and spread where you are stabbing with one. Forget the handicapping, which is frankly random, it is in the putting together of tickets that the successful player seperates himself ( or herself ) from the multitude of losers. As of now, and probably forever as you show no interest in learning from your repeated mistakes, you inhabit the latter category. But, on a positive note you provide a learning experience for those interested in categorically seeing what not to do.

You're right about one thing, and I am glad you pointed this out, the Fair Grounds Pick-4s seem to offer good value. Too bad you don't know how to put yourself in position to take advantage of that. Hopefully others here will.