Life at Aqueduct
 

What a challenge it's been following this meet.
If you make Pace & Speed figs I don't have to tell you how wild it's been.

Some days the fractions, on a FAST track, resemble a 12f race over a yielding turf course.
I've had days where the variant is SLOW 20 or more.

The last week or so of January featured a very bad rail, with winners rallying 4-5 wide around the turn and through the lane.
Lately the rail has been pure gold...credit Trevor McCarthy for winning the last two races yesterday (2/21) at 7-2 and 8-1 odds by getting inside and staying there. Obviously he had to have some horse under him, but he rode them both very nicely.

What I do love is that it pays to pay attention (which is true at any track, and life in general :D) but especially at Aqu this meet.
A good review of charts and replays should yield numerous runners to bet on and bet against when they run again....which is what this game is all about IMO.
I love NY racing!

Interesting you say that about Trevor. His daddy Mike made himself ( and me) a nice living scraping the rail at Finger Lakes. Especially on the slop.



While all the others would drift wide, Mike would be on the wood picking up the pieces. Regardless of how small the hole was. But you could never say a bad word to Mike after he dismounted without getting an earful back.


Good times at the Lakes.


Sorry about the digression. You brought back some memories.

It's been a very solid winter meet at Aqueduct, good betting cards. I give free track bias information for NYRA on my website, handicappingwinners.

Aqueduct can get windy at times. It changes in intensity and sometimes even direction over the course of the day. That will cause some issues with the times, especially fractions. Throw in snow, rain, and freezing and thawing temperatures into the mix and you are going to get some crazy times and biases.

The continued biased racetracks that often present at Aqueduct have made it unplayable for me lately, especially as someone who prefers the early pick 5 as my go to wager. It's disappointing to cut a major track from the options, but going through the PPs & trying to figure out in advance how the track may be playing is too much of an extra variable to deal with.


On the flip side, I have to give credit to Gulfstream & Santa Anita, among others, as I can't remember the last time I watched dirt racing there & felt like certain posts or styles were impossibly up against it.

I used to love taking advantage of biases, but imo there are fewer opportunities now and they have become more complex.

Not only do you have deal with biases when they exist, the maintenance crews often seem sharp enough to add or subtract water during the card to change the track from race to race. So while you looking at a small sample of races trying to determine whether the results of the first few races were just random noise, bad handicapping on your part, or an actual bias, the crew is changing the water content of the surface and changing whatever was going on to begin with.

Then when you do think there actually was a bias, pretty much every reasonably competent handicapper on Twitter is screaming about it. So everyone knows and everyone is compiling a list of the same horses to play back as you. At this point, those kinds of lists may underperform the track take when you add in the occasional mistake you are inevitably going to make.

I think bias is more valuable when you firmly disagree with the social media and track coverage or if you play at a non major track that no one is paying attention to, especially if you multi track and the horses ship.

Having a bastard distance of 9 furlongs, the lone 2-turn distance, doesn't help any. I gave up trying to make figs for Aqu - just not worth the bother. I find PARX and OP and TAM far better choices of tracks top play. I have very little interest in any Aqu races.

OP is the best track I have ever seen for making pace figs.

Re: AQU R7 --
 

Really enjoyed Andy Serling's prerace comments about #4 English Breeze today:

Paraphrasing:
And even though her odds drifted up to 6-1, she finished in front of exactly one horse. :ThmbUp:


-jp

.

David and I talked about the figure making part on this episode of the Pacecast:

I'll also add Feb 19 and 20th, Aqueduct had the biggest swings in track speed I ever remember seeing. After R2 on the 19th, and after R1 on the 20th. They went from super duper slow to just fairly slow, but in terms of Beyer points I guess around 30.

I'm glad to hear someone is listening to my prattles:-)

May as well use this thread to ask - anyone familiar with owner/trainer Lenin Cruz? He made a $25K claim on a horse in the 4th today at AQU, and I had never heard of him before. I watch my fair share of NYRA.

Couldn't find any hint of him in the stats at nyra.com. At another site it seems he's had one horse/starter at the meet?

So on his Twitter @LCRUZ24 profile he describes himself as a "horse trainer and rider" - looks like he may be an exercise rider starting to train his own, since:

The horse, DEEP SEA, owned by Cruz Racing Stable, was trained by Orlando Noda through a win last Oct 30th, after having been claimed by the Noda brothers on Aug 9th, running in their name Sept 5th, and switching to Cruz ownership on Sept 25th. Then Cruz trained him for a 5th place finish in a 10k claimer on Dec 6th. He went to Parx for two wins, first being jumped to a 12.5 claimer on Dec 29th, then a 45K allowance on Jan 18th. The listed trainer for those wins was Jacinto Solis. Then he started yesterday for Cruz, finishing 6th in a 50K claimer at Aqu.

Maybe pocketing the cash from those 3 wins inspired the move to double the size of the stable with the claim of Not That Brady today.

He's Orlando Noda's father in law.

Weather?