Arlington Park gets it
 

So today was my first appearance at the nicest facility in North America and they continue to amaze me.

1) All new tote machines that from the look of them, are really nice, I played around with them real quick and they are real easy to use and punch tickets, just need to get used to where things are

2) Brand new LED for tote board. Clear as day now as far as prices/odds/pool totals

3) Brand new screen in infield (next to pool totals) showing head on and rear view

It just amazes me that a place like AP where the races are not that good most of the time continues to make improvements to help the fans and make the place 'shine' when a place like Churchill can't even get a machine in the place, and they are owned by the same company.

yeah

Maybe now they can actually get around to putting some working, realtime video on their site

and Scavs makes his "television debut" today after Bob's Bean wins the first.

Shaking hands with Rene D.:rolleyes:

******* T I V O ********* Alert !

You can really only see his back...but as I sat at the OTB watching, I just KNEW it was his dumbass

I was dressed to impress today and rocking the shaved head.

What a great day today was, from all angles

People thought I was nuts when I started busting out laughing after I saw you. They never seen someone get so hysterical over watching a winners circle photo on tv

I've been to almost all the major tracks in the US and I agree Arlington is an absolutely fabulous facility. Went there last year for Sumwonloves you race for the first time and was amazed at the lay out, classiness, and cleanliness of the track.

No doubt a first class operation and a great place to spend a day at the races.

It's just some of the people I've met from there are a little....

Spyder

A dream come true (winner circle picture). Thanks to Bob and Chuck for making it happen :)

BOOM!!!

:) kidding

yeah, the only reason I admitted to "knowing that guy in the winners circle" was because none of them know you:)

Ahh all of the luxuries are there for you to watch a 2/5 Calamari/Catasoprano with beatable form win in a hand ride by 15 lengths in a 6 furlong sprint.

It's like they're God and Jesus.

that is a problem

Dont forget CD sold it soul (and most of its stock) to Mr. D when they made the deal. It is still his baby and he is the boss.

and I hope he can live for many, many more years..

Dont care for junior?

I'm not sure if he envisions a new toteboard in the infield or condos. You hear a lot of stuff about how RD tied things up pretty well with CD so AP can't be razed the week after he dies, but if they don't get slots or some financial help, somethings got to give if you run 6 $10K claiming races, two Allowance and an AOC every day.

I think last year this time, Pletcher had 40 horses here and Asmussen had shippers as well. AP will always get horses after CD shuts, but there are only so many suckers like me who just want to run here because they love the track

I agree it's a great track to go watch races/simulcasts. Too bad the racing there is horrendous. IT's not bad if you like betting Catalano 3-5 shots. Their live racing has gone to sh#t since poly. Outside of the turf racing, the cards are a joke. Check out the winner of todays 5th race.....results like that keep me from betting anything on poly races.

I understand people's frustration with poly, but quite honestly, I love it.

No dude...it was sh*t before poly too...It's all dependant on the purses which is all dependant on the money the state lets them get from casinos, which is...ahh..I get a headache from IL politics.

I disagree....while it wasn't great racing like Belmont/Saratoga, it was pretty good. These races they are putting together now are much worse in my opinion then before. You would figure with 4-day racing they would be able to put together decent cards......apparently not. As far as the bs politics out there, agree with ya.

Wow....there is a horse player on this planet who loves it. This is a first.


Hopefully in time when handles continue to decrease/purses go down, the tracks realize that they need to re-install dirt tracks. A majority of the horseplayers I know wont go near a lot of these poly tracks. Keeneland's spring meet was all you need to look at.

I'm curious..I know you know AP, but I think purses/cards were bad pre-poly and rebounded LY because of the Poly. But need to find the numbers..will bump either way as I know posters are waiting with baited breath

saying the cards are much worse now is a joke. it has definitely improved since poly. no doubt about it. the early season cards are always relatively weak compared to later in the meet when Churchill closes.
the handle went up last year also.

the track is always fast and plays fairly. frankly i've never heard anyone say anything negative about the surface. there is no groundswell of support to go back to dirt around here.

I've been asking this for some time now but I'll ask it again one more time:
We know that not all of these synthetic surfaces are the same, so why do many people feel the need to be 100% pro-synthetic, or 100% anti-synthetic, across the board?

Del Mar's surface was an absolute joke. Santa Anita's was worse. Keeneland was pretty bad too.
But that doesn't change the fact that it has pretty much been a good thing at Arlington. The surface plays pretty fairly, field size was up last year, etc. Overall I am not a big fan of synthetic surfaces, but to lump all of these surfaces together never made much sense to me. Did we judge ALL dirt surfaces based on the way the old Keeneland track played? Of course not.
Do I think most tracks would be better served investing money installing the best and safest dirt tracks? Yes. But that doesn't prevent me from seeing that the change at Arlington seems to have worked out pretty well.

I honestly dont know the purse structure exactly before poly. I guess my b#tching was more about how bad the horses are/ how ridiculous it is trying to cap these races at AP. At least before, you had horses coming from Sportsman's/Hawthorne that were now running on the same dirt at AP. Now it's a complete guessing game to how these horses are gonna run at AP. The horse in the 5th yesterday was coming off of 3 straight races of losses of 31,13,25 lengths.....then gets on the track at AP and wires em easily to win going away. They have suceeded in making it a bettors nightmare (same as Keeneland). The only difference is the horses at Keeneland actually are good horses. These fields at AP are some of the worst horses running today.

So you prefer the cards now comapred to the old dirt races at AP ? The surface plays fairly? Obviosuly you didnt watch last years first few weeks where horrendous horses who showed early speed were winning at an insane clip. It became such a joke that you ahd 20-1 ML horses who had inside speed opening up at 3-1. Nah...thats not a joke....thats a fair playing racetrack. It was a friggin conveyor belt.

AP has become a joke.

You make great points and I agree with most of what you are saying. That being said last year's first few weeks at AP was ridiculous. The speed bias on the poly was unbelievable. Now I am not paying nearly as much attention this year because I refuse to wager on the crap AP is putting out. So maybe this year is different...but while at the track yesterday I thought what I was seeing at AP was still rather pathetic.

yes and yes.

yesterdays races are a good example. you had 5 one mile races.
in the 3rd the winner came from mid-pack
in the 4th the winner came from 8th
in the 5th the winner went wire to wire
in the 7th the winner went from last to first
in the 8th the winner went wire to wire.

doesn't exactly fit the conveyer belt description.

Illinois breds are kind of like the Quakers, and the Amish. They seem to like to stick together, and share. They aren't very greedy. Seems they just love to take turns at everything. I guess the other races are o.k. Just seems like a lot of chalk,and crap in Chicagoland racing. Seems like anytime I try to play the damn place that Jenks lady is bringing in some kind of chalk.Good for her,but I need something a little less obvious. Just seems like a mixture of too easy, and too hard. That's a recipe for empty pockets.

everyone is worried about what the price of a horse is going to pay, why force it. You can hit cold pick threes all day at Arlington. perfect example is the 1st three yesterday, 1-6-4 paid 16.4 to 1, and it was 2/1, 3/5, 2/1

And in the first race, people got all nuts on that 5, and Bob's Bean had better sprinting numbers then the horse. BB should not have been 2/1, more like 7/5 or 3/2

Not to point out the obvious....

The fact that she was making her second start off the layoff, had run more than one race in the last 12 months more than good enough to win this going away, and appeared to be the lone true speed horse in a race in which all of the legit form favorites were going to be coming from off the pace out of a different zip code....

Other than those relatively minor handicapping points, yes you're right, it made absolutely no sense at all.

Oh my God.You wonder why we don't pay any attention to what's going on there. Sounds like some fkn sports parlay bets.

If you don't have competition,then you shouldn't be paying purse money.

NEWS FLASH!!!

not all tracks play the same, or have the same quality or mix of horses.
you are urged to adjust your game accordingly.

that is all.

now back to your your regularly scheduled rants and diatribes.

who cares what you pay attention to? answer nobody.

You're going to judge an entire track's meet over what you saw the first two weeks LY? At the end of the meet LY it was w/ in % pts of winning horses being equally speed, pressers and closers. They won from the rail and they won outside. Opening weekend TY was crazy fast, but it wasn't all speed...they were closing too.

If you hate poly and therefore hate betting AP, that's fine, but if you think fields are bad because of it, you are mistaken. It's all about the purses. You reallly want to see bad races? Imagine AP if they HADN'T put the poly in.

I'm just telling the guy why it isn't paradise for some other people. That's all. Best part of Arlington is the fake crowd noise they put into the stretch calls. Every race is the Derby. Anytime a horseplayer sees the risk versus reward (regardless of price) go more in their favor, then that's where they are going to play. It's really not very complicated. Myself(and many others) have never felt the risk versus reward go in their favor when they play Chicagoland racing...NEVA! I got a shot in SOCAL,NY,and Kn'tucky (but not Chicago.) It's just a mixture of chalk races with impossible races mixed in. It's just no good. Why do you think we don't play it? You think we don't know it's there? We know. It simply has limited appeal.

Well nobody cares (after the race is over) whether a winner was one of your top selections in a race. Doesn't stop you from telling us. I don't particularly keep track of people on here, but some people do stuff that is uniquely them. Your gift is telling people(after the race ) how easy a horse was to get. It's like your personal signature. Even more often(after the race) you tell people who lost that their horse had no shot(with your figures etc.) I really don't think it helps people after the race. I would love if you were to say 6 of 10 horses can be tossed (before the race.)

What it comes down to is my opinion that racing was fine there on the dirt. There was (in my opinion) no reason to change over to poly. Polytrack is ruining racing. Look at Keeneland...look at Del Mar....two meets that have become jokes. I just didnt see the need to switch in Chicago. AP is one of the best tracks in the country to attend live....great place....I just think they ruined it with poly.