I assume most people handicap the night before, how much time does one need before the races to get the scratches and enter in the bet?

I get the arguments for having the pk5 early in the day, but I am not sure it is so cut and dry as that. BT makes some excellent points. If you are like me, someone who works five days a week and rarely gets to handicap much of the card before the races start, it will be a challenge for me to have the first five races handicapped to be in position to make the wager. Most days I am in a better position to play multi's on the later races because I have been able to handicap the rest of the card between the early races.

I have a hard time believing it will canibalize the pk6 pool in particular. To me the pk6 player is a completely different animal than the pk5 or pk4 player and I find it hard to believe that putting a pk5 in a race after the pk6 would put much of a dent in the pk6 pool. Sure, the pk4 pool will take somewhat of a hit, but many people will play both pools, especially if you are knocked out in the first leg or if you are going narrower in the pk5 and want to have more coverage with more spread in the pk4.

Then there is the issue of Aqueduct in the winter and sometimes at Belmont where you have small fields in the early races or fields with first time starters or the races they don't want in the pk6 which will get stuck in the pk5 making the bet less attractive.

I think there is higher handle in the later races in NY for two reasons, first you have more people who ignore the earlier races and get involved in the later races because they are typically better betting races and higer quality fields, as JMS says, more stakes races, i.e. quality fields, which attract higher pools. Second, they are getting a lot more money from the West Coast.

IMO the bet should be where the best action on it will be, in the later races.

You say "aside from Del Mar", but SoCal is the only other circuit that handles the kind of Pick 6/late Pick 4 money that NY does. Comparing NY pools to anything but SoCal is apples and oranges.

The time thing is a minor inconvenience for a terrific wagering opportunity. If you really want to get down to it, having races during the day on weekdays is in itself an inconvenience for people with 9-5 jobs, having races at night is an inconvenience for people with kids, etc. and players adapt.

:tro:

I don't have hard data on this, but I'm pretty certain that in CA, the late pick 4 has become a direct beneficiary of the players pick 5. Putting Del Mar aside, where the pick 4 is always huge (and there's only 1 per day), it seemed as if both Hollywood's and SA's pools have been larger over the past year. The late pick 4 benefits by:

1. Those people that hit the pick 5, feel confident, and want to take a stab at the pick 4. In most instances the pick 6 would have already commenced.

2. Those that may have gone 4 for 5, are pissed, and out for revenge in the pick four. Let's not all believe that everyone has terrific discipline with regards to money management.

I'm curious to see if this holds true at NYRA.

This is right. The churn effect is one of the reasons early Pick 4's caught on.

Yes, and on those days, it probably gives the pick 4 even more churn.

my point was no track, small or large, that i know of, offers a pk5 to start off their card (excluding del mar of course), if that's NYRA's angle, great, go for it, you're the only track that offers it. These are the races where people generally sit on the sideline and get a feel how the track is playing, and maybe jump into the pk4 that starts in race 2. Now, what about how new york tracks are notorious for carding MSW MC races early in the card, is that going to change?
To me, the idea of having multiple maiden and claiming races in a pick 5 doesn't appeal to me. When i'm looking at investing in a pick 5 it's usually with higher class stock of horses.

totally get the churn point you're making, people will definitely chase if they get knocked out in race one.

I'm not an every day/weekend new york track player, but when i do play them, i think in the past 15 years i might have played the first race of the day there less than 10 times, for multiple reasons, but that's just me

-bt-

The P5 is R1-5 at all the So. Cal circuit tracks (HOL/SA), not just DMR.

You can be assured that the NYRA racing office will do the best they can to make the sequence attractive as possible quality-wise.

I like the early start, the low takeout, and the low minimum bet. Not normally a horizontal bettor, but will have to get into this.

Best thing is you will have will-pay information on 40% of the bet, not just
1/6th. Early DD action ould be a huge leg up on the P5.