Tampa Bay
 

Anyone follow Tampa closely? Looking to chat about Tampa and learn about the track. Thanks

Steve, I follow Tampa quite closely would be happy to answer any questions if I can.
Good little track for betting, purses are very poor for horsemen but they still fill a lot of fields up.
Excellent turf course (I concentrate on their turf races)
Leading Jocks are Gallardo, Camacho, Morales and Centeno. There are a few new faces this year Roberto Alvarado looks competitive.
Bennett generally the leading trainer. Mike Stidham always hot at the beginning of the meet. Lots of decent 2nd tier trainers,
Speed is generally favorable in turf and dirt races. It helps to be no more than 5-6 lengths off the pace.
Really read and understand class of races because this is a big factor at Tampa.
In the spring you will see some big name trainers, Pletcher, Brown , Mcgaughey run horses here.
Shippers from Delaware, Indiana, Ellis from some smaller tracks and of course NY and Ky do well,Ohio tracks like Mahoning, Belterra and Thistle are usually an automatic toss for me.
I am not too fond of GPW shippers but have to be aware of GP and live trainers that have a pattern of shipping to Tampa. i.e Georgina Baxter, Saffi Joseph
These are just some general observations to get you started.

Steve I hope to follow closely this year also. If you've never been there, it is a neat little place.

Jahura- I thought the Florida horses seemed to have a little edge on 11/25. There were a few horses that outran their very long odds (see R3, R6). Seemed warm there so wonder if it was a factor and maybe will be early in the meet esp in warm temps.

Al, no, you're right GPW horses won 3 of 9 yesterday. Its just a bit of closed mindedness on my part. Will have to keep an eye on this moving forward early in the meet.
Noticed 2 Laurel and 2 Monmouth Shippers yesterday as well.
Other 2 winners were from Indiana and Prairie Meadows.
Mental note to keep an eye on Jon Arnett who I did not know from the midwest. Won the first yesterday and was able to name Centeno, Camacho and Morales some pretty big names on his horses

Turf racing consistent
 

I follow Tampa racing ..especially the turf races. My uncle taught me a quick turf race handicapping method years ago and it is most successful at Tampa. I don’t know why it just is. Anyway here is the method : take the number of starts for the year and/or combine with previous year if not enough race sample and divide that into how much money the horse won. An example would be if a horse had 10 wins this year totaling 50k then assign that horse a “ 5”. I focus on the top four horses with the highest number. If nothing else try the system someday without betting and see what happens. It’s uncanny how spot on this is.

Trying this today-

TAM6: :9::1::10::3: all between 4-6/1
TAM8: :3::5::9::2: 2/1 8/1 5/1 12/1 :5: and :2: both good price on ML

No bets. Just curious.

I'll start a handicapping thread in selections.


Please post numbers and comments so we can all get a sense of the reasoning of different handicappers

TAM6 :1::4:
TAM8 :6::8:

Interesting Arnett is there instead of going to Sunland I think as he normally does. He is a sharp claiming trainer and does extremely well at PRM.

Trainer Arboritanza with a win at 7-1 and 2d to 3/5 Clement dropper at 65-1 today. That’s it for him but maybe look for Saturday. Trainer hadn’t had a starter since 11/7

This works. It revealed 22-1 and 10-1 winners yesterday using this method. Unfortunately I only had a show bet on each since I am still experimenting with it, but it's a useful add-on to what I was already doing regarding analysis.

I’m a little confused. The 22-1 winner was a 2nd time starter who had never run on grass before. Getting back to the post you quoted the math is off. So are you all just taking the total purse money won, regardless of surface and dividing by total starts?

The 22-1 shot was very playable on pedigree, By Temple City(Dynaformer) out of a stakes winninig mare in England on the grass. The horse had been entered in a race taken off the turf its first and only try at Laurel. This shows they were turf meant any way. Unfortunately I only used it in the second leg of the P4 and couldnt find the winner of the 9th. 3/4 with a 46.00 horse hurts.

I'm a big fan of Tampa Bay Downs. To echo others, the turf races are really where this place shines.

Camacho is a man on fire in Tampa. Has been for 2 years. Tough to ever get a price on him as he's always on well intended horses. Bet him in the opening daily double any day he's got horses and you'll end up with a positive ROI.

Gallardo may not have the %'s but is far and away the best turf rider in Tampa. His timing with deep closers running routes is so much fun to watch. Look out when he rides for Kathleen O'Connell, who runs a super classy barn and is always in contention for trainer of the year. Pablo Morales is right there with Gallardo but hasn't had as many mounts since getting injured (last year?).

Gary Wales rides hard and gets rewarded every once in a while, and usually at a price because he's not getting the best mounts. If he's on a horse that has any previous running lines that would contend, it's worth considering him if you like playing longshots.

I generally play against Pletcher and Joseph shippers. I like Baxter shippers. Clement turfers are always well-intended here (but aren't they anywhere?). Mid-west shippers are doing well this year as has been observed by others.

On stakes days, we have a lot of the classy jocks from Gulfstream come up and they often mop up the undercards and at prices you'd never normally see.

In terms of the formula being discussed previously...I use "earnings per start" as a metric. Earnings per win, by default, is unusable to evaluate a maiden race. This eliminates having to dissect earnings by surface, wins, etc....It's a great way to quickly evaluate the class of a horse, but as DaHoss pointed out, it can be very misleading in races with lightly raced horses (i.e. maiden races, n1L, etc.) I've found it to be most effective in open claiming, optional claiming, handicap, and allowance races with unrestricted age ranges. The last part is the key. I love betting a sneaky seven year old who's won 22 races lifetime running against a bunch of four year olds who just finished all their conditional races. Your mileage will vary.

I'm glad to see the dialogue and attention and will look to play along in the Selections forum.

I feel your pain. I lost a quadruple-digit payout on a P3 one time because I lost on the final leg (the horse I used ran 2nd).
That horse was playable... he came out 3rd in the field using mountainman's method before I even looked at any form on the pps, etc. I put the show bet on him partly because of the form you mentioned, in addition to the class/$ filter.