In general:

Achieve high win and ITM percentages
Maximize time off between races
Land in softest spots possible

I guess I can agree with you in theory, but this summer at AP has been a nightmare trying to get in a race, any race, unless you have a cheap claimer. There just isn't the opportunity to be that selective here. You run where you can and pray it fills.

Let me ask you, as I have no idea of who's stabled at Arlington:

I'm looking at the meet leaders and see that Ingrid Mason, Tom Amoss, and Danny Peitz have less than 30 starters each, whereas the average of other trainers seems to be around 60 or so.

Do the first 3 I mentioned have roughly the same number of horses stabled at AP as the others? If so, that's the kind of situation I'm talking about (ignoring the relative "types" of horses in each barn).

In CA, you could say that guys like John Shirreffs, Mike Puype, and perhaps Ron Ellis are "guilty" of this.

Peitz probably has 24 horses here. Amoss maybe 16. Mason probably around 20, she trains for the guy that owns the hyperbaric chamber up here. He is a 'poor man' Calabrese, just on a different level. He claims these older class horses, throws them in the chamber forever and then they freak until their wheels fall off, she has also had two heart attacks

I think this might put things in perspective to show you this meet has been doomed from the start. Some horseman were given close to 20% MORE stalls then they requested. They were told to "see what you can do". Given MORE stalls before the meet even starts.....trainers were dumbfounded by this

isn't it really about purse :$: especially if you're not IL bred or have a local owner?

Which is my point that Tom seems to have a very serious issue with. Not everyone is doing that, though Tom seems to think that every trainer is entering every horse he/she has every 14 days and races just aren't filling by some unmerciful act of god.

Are you kidding me? For the crazy nonsense in that first post back to me, you'd think Tom had never seen a racehorse, a racetrack, a condition book, and had no idea how horse racing works.

Luckily, I won't hold a couple bullsh*t posts against him because I know he's smarter than he's made himself seem tonight.

I can't tell you how bad I want to take sides in this one ... especially since it's a thread I started and I'm big on promoting my own ... it's how I roll and stuff .... but I really am not following this one well.

You are just typing. You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, period. You must have overlooked the last part when Bob states "Pray it fills"

Every guy that isn't named Canani or Catalano are struggling to pay their bills and they are hesitant to run?

You have no idea how many things actually have to go right before you can actually RUN a horse, let alone the one minor thing that can screw you for weeks.

People enter horses when they are ready to run, and until strangers start paying training bills, the help, feed man, then they can start questioning horseman when they should enter.

Good point, Tom. Until right this second, I had no idea how horse racing worked.

I am enlightened now, and I'm a better person for it.

Please. You're as much a "stranger" to paying bills as I am, so stop with the better than thou sh*t that you're trying to pull above.

Which is essentially why I posted this in the first place. Why fight it if your gonna click at 80% off the angle.

I wasn't about to get personal on this but hey, it will lead to good internet.

Explain how I am as much as a stranger? Have you seen a vet bill ever? What about a feed bill?

Better than thou? That is your area buddy, and I'll leave this at that.

Lets go back to your original asine post, "unlike alot of guys on the backside". You make a general assumption that you are probably repeating from some Arlington schill(sp). Explain what a horseman is suppose to do if last year they had 20 horses, and now they have 10? What about the guy that has 10 and now has four? These two examples are REAL. You understand that what you read from your media buddies about a full backside is absolute BS, there is about 5-6 EMPTY barns back there. EMPTY. Each barn back there has between 5-10 EMPTY stalls also. Why don't you get to the track sometime at 9am and see how many horses are on either the main track or training track? Maybe 10? training track probably 5?

Explain how a horseman makes money without running? Explain how a horseman is suppose to run when the right races are not in the condition book.

What you are saying is that horseman should rush their horses, the very asset that for some people, puts food on their table, to help out a racing office and racetrack.

The idea that horseman are sitting on horses is asine and stupid. There is no perfect spot at Arlington because the only guaranteed races to go are the nickel claimers and maiden 10k. The others you have at best a 50/50 chance of the race ACTUALLY GOING. So if I have a maiden 25k horse, should I drop the horse to maiden 10 to help out a racing office? What if i actually want to try and develop the horse, what if I do not want to be claimed, what if that is one of my few horses and I can't afford to lose the horse?

Lastly, why don't you throw some names out there of people that aren't entering like they should be...

The only motivation for inactivity is milking day bill.

Sucks when they don't fill and you're ready to go. You can always let them hustle the allowance horse into a 10000 2l. Just let me know before you do it!

Races not filling
 

I guess the next logical step would be to look to ship out of town if the particular race you are looking for doesn't fill numerous times at your home base. That of course depends on a race filling in a track that is somewhat close, the right distance, surface and level..... It seems a shame that tracks such as Arlington Park, or whomever can't fill races with their own population every once in a while beyond the low level claimers but if that is the reality then as has been stated owners and trainers and their help don't make any money by keeping their horses in the barns. I suspect having a base like at Phila Park is good because there are numerous tracks one can ship to. Arlington is a bit more challenging as you have Indiana, Churchill and not much else. The economics and reality of the game is forcing all players to reconsider how to operate....

Psh. Chd is having issues filling the better races too. They are going w very short fields or not going at all.

And it isn't like they are getting rich on that day rate either. There is absolutely zero logic in the notion that horseman are not entering horses when they are ready to run.

unless you are pointing for a toga , keeneland meet..ect

Exactly...It has become a game between Arlington and Churchill who they are going to steal next to make a race fill. And they are owned by the same company!! :)

You're right

They may not get rich not running, but if you stand to lose a daybill horse by running a lot of guys will not run.

Just hypothetically if a trainer can put 10 bucks in his pocket per head, per day, and he/she has 15 horses..... Figure that trainer makes 150 a day, 1050 a week. Certainly not gonna get rich, but it may provide a motivation for not running as opposed to running and losing one.

I have seen that often

a small trainer has to set them up to gamble, or make some profit on daybill, or it's a pretty tough gig

I'll throw a name into this discussion, how are Maggi Moss and Thomas Amoss doing this meet?

At which meet csc. They haven't ran as many at chd since that fiasco w the pletcher claim.

She's light years ahead in the claiming game though. She gets it. She makes the right moves more often than not. It's not like she has unlimited funds either. She's just well read, bright, and understands how to turn a profit

Oh thanks, I thought she was running horses at Arlington. As you say her and Amoss were miles ahead of most in the claiming game. She usually netted flat profit results and is one owner that can be compared to Calabrese for her prolific numbers.

To me what she does is much more impressive. She claims her horses w purpose. She already has an idea of the next spot, maybe next couple. Calabreses team is not equal to maggi, however can afford to jam them down your throat. Rarely, if ever, do you see her drop one till she's out and it's pure profit. Lotta people getting into this game should follow her model. There's a lot of money to be made if you play correctly

1. Anyone who thinks that there are a bunch of horseman at AP not running for imaginary reasons is getting poor information.
2. Outside of a few stables, who here has any good horses? The NW1 allowance race doesnt fill because there are a stunningly low number of quality horses and most of them are either trained by the same guy or are in the stable of a trainer who has multiple divisions most of which will be running for better purses. Dont forget Mott isnt here anymore, Pletecher isnt here anymore, Ronny Werner isnt here anymore, Asmussen isnt here anymore, Stidham splits between here and Delaware, Nafzger/Wilkes have a few crows here, Becky Maker is out of business. Outside of Peitz what new outfit showed up at AP this year?
3. One trainer in the top 5 in the standing told me that everythime he loses a horse via claim he just brings in another 2 yo because his owners arent really interested in claiming something back because the purses are too low.
4. At least 3 or 4 trainers have told me they lost horses to Monmouth, the owners sent them east because of the purses/polytrack. How many horses in the past do you think were headed to Ap and were diverted to Monmouth? I'd guess not many.
5. It is all pure speculation as to what anyone does or doesnt do. It would be naive to think that because someone isnt getting positive tests then they arent cheating. The greatest gain is when you can do something simple that everyone else can't. Was CC treated differently or given something other than what is allowable? Who knows? But it isnt as though he just tore through the condition. The Beyer number is not a factual account of what happened. If he runs a 90 in his next start with Reavis is he cheating? If he runs a 43 were Canani and I cheating? He got pretty much ideal circumstances and won a race by a head.
6. I would love to know who makes $15 a day in day money.

Cannon

I don't want to mention names.

I'm sure you know of them and it's pretty evident when you sit on a nickle life condition claimer for a month and a half it's either crippled, or the owner has not paid, or the owner is on point and pays always. In the case I'm speaking the guy is automatic w/ the day bill. He has 5-6 rotten crows w/ one trainer. Each horse makes a start every 50 days.

I don't think 80 percent of the horseman do this. Bob said what would be the motivation for sitting on a sound horse, I think the money would be motivation.

As for the races not filling, chd and Arlington both seem to be struggling to fill the good races. You'd think 2 tracks owned by the same company would practice repricocoty. Maybe both secretaries could put their heads together and come up w some good cards, but why would they do that?

As for clue. He didn't move forward. He ran the same race he ran for you just happened to be his day, caught the right bunch.

Cannon... Say you had an owner w 2-3 horses. The guy told you I don't care how much my vet bill is just have these horses ready so I can gamble, could you crank them up 10-15 more objective speed figure points. I'm sure you could. That being said do you think a guy like canani is benefitting more from that open checkbook to vet to the fullest, the liberty to run them down your throat, or ability to take a financial loss as long as he wins. That's a pretty great spot to be in for a trainer I would imagine. Money no option, run to win, bad claim one take the loss and jam.

Canani is the perfect example of why judging trainers based on small samples of numbers is hard to do. A guy goes from having horrible stock and just not being into it and getting a dream position (well if you excluded the insanity that seems to rule that bunch, so we will say dream job on paper), getting tons of horses, the ability to run them at a loss if need be (of course it is assumed that they have some inside info on this as well), and carte blanche with the vet. So he was stupid 2 years ago and now he is a genius? Of course not. When you add up everything you stated and top it off with the weak sister claiming competition here at AP they are supposed to win a ton of races. I mean seriously who at AP has the funds to challenge FCC at the claiming box? Of the guys with owners with the cash to do it, none are claiming trainers. I said to Scavs a few weeks prior to the meet that Catalano and Calabrese are going to do even better this year then ever because there just isnt much competition here as the meet drew closer and the stalls on the backside remained empty. The ironic part about CC is the luckiest thing that happened to FCC was CC got claimed! Since he had him a little over a month and surely did vet work on him with the owners share of the purse coming in at $6400 for the race he barely made any money.

:eek:

http://www.drf.com/news/article/114485.html

My favorite part:


Ness has had at least one horse get DQ'd from purse money for a bad test here.

Lets add more drama to the story. This horse that got DQ'ed was actually in COOL CLUE's 2nd place start, his first start here. They went two months with out it, and now Reavis claimed a horse that is out of claiming conditions and we actually have a win at Arlington Park now (without the picture). Purse distributation and everything already went through.

Thank you Canani and Mr Calabrese for cheating, we appreciate it. :)

Great guys filling the box only to add more work to the horseman's bookkeeper.

At least Ness had the presence of mind to finish 2nd to himself with his winning horse that got DQ'd out of an allowance win here earlier in the meet.

Does Wolfson cheat in EVERY race? It's so laughable.

Answer is yes.

He doesn't like travelling because he gets busted everywhere else but Calder. Either the 2nd or 3rd time he has been busted in Illinois

Take every cent you can get over there... especially from them!

Totally agree.

is there a connection between arlington and super testing and lack of horses?
or is it just the money (which is a big 'just')?

it's a bird at oaklawn...i think an appeal is coming up on that, but i don't see it getting overturned. especially considering the ruling they just made on another trainers appeal.

There is just a lack of middle class horses(25 claimers to Allowance horses). There is a shitload of babies back there, 5-10k claimers, and then their stake horses that they ship other places.

We entered Colonel Klink in a 25nw2 race 6 times and it didn't get more then 5 horses, which is why we were forced into a IL nw1 that we are probably gonna scratch out of.

Look at Normanruth today, he has been ready for 20 days and we had to 'settle' for this spot. He is probably gonna run good but it is unreal they can't fill a nw1 route race on poly.

We'll see what happen next week with Churchill closing, although Ellis made is awful hard to leave KY given same purses as here and weaker competition.

that doesn't sound good at all...

good luck with normanruth today!

I think you're right on target there. I look for more allowance races to hopefully fill over the next couple months (I hope, as I normally cap those a bit better than 5k claimers). Either that, or you may have to ship to Ellis.

People are not going to ship from AP to Ellis....unless they are a bad claimer

Too bad I can't still get paid on my Cool Clue win wager from that day.