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[Robert Fischer]

Field size - At least at my favorite track, the track at which I play most of my bankroll, - 'NYRA', a good portion of the smaller fields are done on purpose.


Not saying that NYRA necessarily in all cases has said "let's build a 6 horse race! *rubs palms together in a Machiavellian caricature* muhahahahaha*, but as far as either building a 6 horse race or 'passing' and carding one less race? - Yes, then they are purposely choosing the 6 horse field. There's become a concession or if not an open concession, - a 'procession' that presents a 6 horse field with a straight face.

There are also enough times that the leading trainers have multiple horses within those 6 horse fields.

An easy example to remember was the Alydar Stakes at Saratoga this summer. What an UGLY race that was on paper. You have this FAKE $100K Blacktype Restricted-Stakes. Supposedly 17 nominations...
And you somehow end up with 2 Pletchers and 2 Browns in a 5 horse field. Were the other nominators idiots? Were they also 80% Brown/Pletcher/SameOwners ? Were they entered in better races? You'd think some more OC type horses would've ventured up in class to face 6 or 7 or 8 insider top trainers in some fake restricted stakes, right? Regardless, then there were five... The race is slightly easier to remember than a post-ambien'd cocktail only because the 5th horse; REALM, (the longest-shot-on-the-board for Tagg/Alvarado) won as a logical contender to reward the Handicappers, while the Public for some reason placed both Browns and both Pletchers on a pedestal. This tiny betting coup (can a small % of the pools that wasn't crushed, but merely covered by the wiseguys even be properly attributed 'coup'?) was the only thing that saved the race from being the forgotten vomit remnants of an intentionally-carded short field.

This ugly specific example aside, there were a lot of races that seemed to be fielded with at the very least - 'input' - from Trainers and Owners and which resulted in inadequate fields of 7,6, or less.

Not only do these garbage insider races pay a favor forward to the trainers and owners who hold such a strong market position, but they also funnel money into the PICK-5 and/or make the PICK-5 more playable. Whether this is a smart idea on the part of NYRA to boost their growing NYRA-BETS LATE PICK-5, and cater to the inputs/needs of their big P5 clientele while at the same time catering to their supertrainers/owners, or whether this was just a coincidence that happened to do so, - either way- , it worked out well for them. Expect to see more of the same, unless they are just random lucky zombies.

If you are a pick-3 player, or a spot player looking for playable races, you may be revolted at some of these 6 horse or 5 horse races, but they align with the incentives of the trainers/owners/p5-players.

Expect to see more of the same.