The screws seem to be tightened up very snug on these Pletcher 3 year olds right now.I just wonder if they are gunna be over the top come the big day.

If they are genuinely good horses, and I am in no way implying they are not, they should improve. Good horses hold their form. Surely after today's performance by Einstein the bounce adherants learned something.

Good horses don't bounce ( and I don't think mediocre ones do either ).

No,I am not necessarily talking about a big bounce.What I am saying is that the winner of this last B.C. Juvenile would appear to have been ready to give his peak 2 year old performance on B.C. Day. I think John Sheriffs also had Giacomo read for his peak 3 year old performance on Derby Day.Barbaro the same.They all were ready to peak on that day.I just think that sometimes that may be the reason why Pletcher hasn't been dominant on Derby day,and on this last Breeders Cup Day(the horses don't peak on those days.....they peak in other races..on other days.)Dreaming of Anna ran probably (for her) just an o.k. race on B.C. Day.She (most likely) could have been upset if one of those fillies had peaked like Street did in the Juvenile.

as far as the pk4 bet is concerned . The wrecker move wa Kings Drama pulling up. This was the other obvious single in my evaluation of the pps. I had 4 of the 3yrold fillies with Oneils being a must include as my 2nd choice.I used 6 pf the 3yr olds and only included CQ because of my single of KD. NO matter how I played it it want to the floor and on to the next race. Einstien would have been no better than 3rd or 4th choice for me. So is a 3 mout of 4 getting close? In my cas I say no because of where I ranked Einstien and just barely putting CQ on the ticket as the 4th 5th or6th option.

3 out of 4 can be different things. It depends on many things. It depends on what you invested versus what you could have invested. It depends if you honestly took a tough beat in your one loss. It depends if you used too many in one race at the expense of using too few in another. It depends if you opinion bet one race and spread in the others to simply hit if your opinion horse won.

Let's assume you always invest the comfortable amount for yourself. Well, in this case you seem to have opinion bet King's Drama. Thus, for you, 3 out of 4 was nowhere near close. You liked him a lot and were dead wrong. That's an easy loss to absorb. Being wrong and losing is fine. If he won and you didn't use Circular Quay you played terribly, as even if you thought he was overrated and wanted to take a shot against him, you had to at least use him defensively.

The idea in a Pick-4 is to figure out, and this is obviously subjective and where your handicapping really comes into play, who the likeliest winners are in each race and relative to horses in other races. For example, it costs almost the same amount to use two in one race and four in another as it does to use three in both races. You have to make the decision, and it will affect your results over time, if the third horse in one of the races is more or less important to use in the overall bet than the fourth in the other. This, for example, happened to me yesterday at Gulfstream, and luckily for me I made the right decision to use the 8th winner at the exclusion of Lisa M in the 9th race. These are decisions many people avoid, or don't even think through fully, and they will devastate you over the long run.

Back to your case, it seems you played well, in that if your single had won you would have hit the bet....and that's really all that matters. One could pick your play apart, and perhaps you didn't maximize your possible returns, and that's something maybe you can look at. However, as I believe the most important thing is to hit these bets ( as the more you do this the more you open yourself up to hitting the occasional big one ), I would say you played well. You were wrong when it mattered to you....but would have cashed if you were right.

Turf horses don't bounce, they run very close groupings

Big efforts have to take something out of a horse, they aren't machines

So let me get this straight....horses don't bounce because of physical exertion specifically....they bounce only from physical exertion over dirt.

Good to know.

One quick question, as hunt season is just around the corner, what about the jumps....do they throw a monkey wrench into the equation?

Look how dirt races are run compared to Turf races, there's no question that it takes more out of a horse to run on Dirt than Turf...It's not only the surface it's how the race is run, not to mention a harder surface...

Wouldn't you think it would be more demanding to come flying out of the gate running gate to wire, than loping around and laying it down for the finish line...

The Sheets show this time and time again, most turf horses run tight groupings...

I don't know why you have to resort to being a smart a$$, I guess you know all and everyone else does not a valid opinion. Sorry, didn't mean to question "the untouchable" on the board...

I'm not being a smart azz....I'm further exposing the BS associated with " the sheets " propaganda involving the supposed " bounce theory ". Since the sheets don't believe that pace has any relevance, they therefore do not take race shape into account, and thus have absolutely no leg to stand on regarding why horses run well on one day and less well the next. They simply say " oh they bounced " as opposed to intelligently analyzing a race. I am not denegrading their numbers, whether I use them or not ( I don't ), but I firmly believe they have disqualified themselves from any sound determination of WHY horses run well or poorly in relation to their normal efforts.

Einstein was three wide on one turn, four wide on another, and five wide on the other, all while being way too close to a pace that collapsed. If one's logic doesn't say that he didn't exert enormous effort in that performance, and simply says " it was turf so he won't bounce ", then they are not analyzing the races as they occur and fitting results to flawed theories.

The " bounce theory " is yet another indefensible short cut that helps horseplayers lose....not win. Keep following it, and not taking races apart, it's all the better for me. But, please, don't expect me to sit idly by while you espouse its indefensible foolishness.

And furthermore, while I understand what you are saying about turf racing relative to dirt racing, and do see your points, there are too many contradictions for me to just agree with you.

Here's an example....Street Sense in the BC Juvenile. To be perfectly honest, his performance was almost exactly like that of a turf horse you described. He sat back off a fast pace and only came running at the end as the race collapsed behind him. yet, I had to read countless posts from people who believe in the sheet's theories, that he simply ran too fast to ever recover. Now, perhaps you too don't agree with this nonsense, but my problem is that Street Sense was thrown into the same enormous bounce box, instead of simply having his performance analyzed for what it was....a very nice effort by a horse dramatically aided by both bias ( the rail ) and extremely favorable race dynamics.

My problem isn't so much that I completely disagree with their theories...it's that they are used as a VERY wide umbrella. There is simply too much going on in racing to use such a big box to define SO many performances.

It's only indefensible because you don't believe it, I believe in it and have benefitted from it, it doesn't always work out, but more often than not, horses do bounce. Turf horses tend to bounce less often, it's not a cut and dry rule, but show me something that is in this game...

It's just regression to the mean. If a horse runs a race where he runs better than he does on average chances are he'll regress to the mean next out. It is not a rule that any horse that runs a big race though will bounce which the bounce theorists would make you believe. Sometimes it is just an improving horse that will keep improving.

winner of the 8th at Gulf yesterday
 

Andy, how in the world did you come up with that horse in the 8th at Gulfstream? That horse cost me the late pick 4. I spread with 3 horses in that race, but never considered the winner.

Scat is a good horse.

If I told you I would have to kill you.

To be honest, a friend of mine who I respect liked her, so I threw her in. I was originally only using the 3 and 4.

Now that's a good friend
 

You owe that person!!:) Bravo closing from dead last, basically never going further out than the 2 path, never getting in any trouble...Amazing!! Congrats, that was a nice pick 4 (it probably would have been a nice one with the 3 or 4 in that race as well, although we would have brought the price down a bit by both having it).

thats nothing, i went five deep and still lost, killing my pk four.

nothing burns me more than getting beat in a race that I'm going wide in.

Jim, I even used the 55-1 8 horse, Le Cordon Bleu... which seemed like a good idea until mid stretch.. ;)

It's a give and take world at the racetrack....but I certainly more than appreciate that particular help. In this case it wasn't like I needed to do anything particularly smart to get the other three winners.

That payoff was unbelievable. It was like 3 1/2 times the parlay.