CONTEST ENTRIES: SA Carryover

[blackthroatedwind]

Originally Posted by Gander

Fair enough but if you are building $2,000 tickets, there is plenty of room to include horses like Pauls Hope. Its one thing playing in a make believe contest with monopoly money, but its quite another to play a ticket using your own real money (not being backed by a man with deep pockets).

I don't agree. $2000 does not go very far on a card like yesterdays and I think that was shown pretty clearly. Getting that horse on your ticket was far from easy and that was clear from the results yesterday. Perhaps if you had actually spent a few minutes trying to construct a play ( instead of writing down numbers ) you would have seen how little ground you can cover with under $2500.

I think most people took the contest very seriously and played similarly to a " real money " situation...if they had the real money to play with.

[Gander]

I cant imagine many people who play horses have $2,000 to spend on a pick 6ticket. Maybe if they got together with 10 other people but considering I didnt have the form and it was mid-week, there was no way I was going to take the Santa Anita carryover seriously. Perhaps if it was Aqueduct I would have made an exception but those races are just too hard out there. Pauls Hope was a very hard horse to come up with but certainly not impossible if that was a race you went 5 or 6 deep in.

I wouldnt diss the idea of writing down numbers, there was a guy I went to high school with who played a random sequence of mailbox numbers on one $2pick 6 ticket and won the whole pool (85 grand). It was at Saratoga and one of the horses who won that day was Poughkepsie Gypsie.

[SniperSB23]

Looking back at what I did I made a huge error in evaluating Antifreezette as my single and then putting two other horses in as B choices in that race. By doing that I offset the purpose of singling the horse and wasted almost 2/3rds of my budget in the process. I still wouldn't have hit but would have at least had 4 out of 6. So the important lesson I take out of this is that if you want to single a horse using the A/B/C method you don't just single him as an A, you have to also use no one as a B. That is why I enjoy doing things like this with fake money.

[philcski]

Originally Posted by SniperSB23

Looking back at what I did I made a huge error in evaluating Antifreezette as my single and then putting two other horses in as B choices in that race. By doing that I offset the purpose of singling the horse and wasted almost 2/3rds of my budget in the process. I still wouldn't have hit but would have at least had 4 out of 6. So the important lesson I take out of this is that if you want to single a horse using the A/B/C method you don't just single him as an A, you have to also use no one as a B. That is why I enjoy doing things like this with fake money.

Wise words, my friend, wise words. I can see you got something out of this contest, which was the whole purpose of it as far as I'm concerned. The A/B/C method really stratifies your opinions better because let's say you did like 2 others in there just a little bit, you could use them as a C and maybe have 10% of your capital on them, still emphasizing your key single but just in case you have the best day of your life otherwise you have a little extra coverage there.

Now you can see why I want to put my head through a window when a horse like Appealing Zophie busts me out of a huge P6. Certainly logical but you gotta make a stand somewhere (unless you have an unlimited bankroll), sadly my strongest opinion that day was the one that cost me.

[SniperSB23]

Originally Posted by philcski

Wise words, my friend, wise words. I can see you got something out of this contest, which was the whole purpose of it as far as I'm concerned. The A/B/C method really stratifies your opinions better because let's say you did like 2 others in there just a little bit, you could use them as a C and maybe have 10% of your capital on them, still emphasizing your key single but just in case you have the best day of your life otherwise you have a little extra coverage there.

Now you can see why I want to put my head through a window when a horse like Appealing Zophie busts me out of a huge P6. Certainly logical but you gotta make a stand somewhere (unless you have an unlimited bankroll), sadly my strongest opinion that day was the one that cost me.

Yeah, definitely. Just by moving those two horses down from B in the 6th would have brought three horses up to my B list of which two were the winners of the last two legs. It also would have allowed me to go all in the 4th and 7th races for the C list and add Paul's Hope in the 5th along with one or two others. I still would have only had 1 A, 3 Bs, and 2 Cs win but it would have been a lot more effective use of the ticket than the $1400 I wasted on tickets using those two horses as B's in the 6th. I hope we do another one of these contests even if there aren't prizes associated. It can definitely be a learning experience.

[Gander]

I can totally understand you not wanting to dedicate time to this, really, but by the same token doesn't that then lessen the value of your post-Pick-6 judgements?

Absolutely. I wont respond to pick 6 talk anymore unless I play one. I have only been close to hitting 1 significant pick 6 in my life and that one didnt work out.

Now you can see why I want to put my head through a window when a horse like Appealing Zophie busts me out of a huge P6. Certainly logical but you gotta make a stand somewhere (unless you have an unlimited bankroll), sadly my strongest opinion that day was the one that cost me.

Last weekend of the meet last year at Toga if I am not mistaken. This was the horse Oracle was very high on and got a lot of people on. I was already invested in pick 4's and did not use Zophie either so I can understand how you feel. I knew this horse would be trouble when it opened up taking loads of money.

[philcski]

Originally Posted by Gander

I can totally understand you not wanting to dedicate time to this, really, but by the same token doesn't that then lessen the value of your post-Pick-6 judgements?

Absolutely. I wont respond to pick 6 talk anymore unless I play one. I have only been close to hitting 1 significant pick 6 in my life and that one didnt work out.

Now you can see why I want to put my head through a window when a horse like Appealing Zophie busts me out of a huge P6. Certainly logical but you gotta make a stand somewhere (unless you have an unlimited bankroll), sadly my strongest opinion that day was the one that cost me.

Last weekend of the meet last year at Toga if I am not mistaken. This was the horse Oracle was very high on and got a lot of people on. I was already invested in pick 4's and did not use Zophie either so I can understand how you feel. I knew this horse would be trouble when it opened up taking loads of money.

That was it... knew I just needed to get through that leg and had decent coverage in the last. Paid $65k with Appealing Zophie, no less than half that with the 2 I had (2nd and 3rd finishers).
At least it wasn't close.

[Gander]

I remember having a good day that particular day because I hit Hither Lane earlier in the card. But I dumped some money back on a Smoke Glacken horse Chantal Sutherland rode in the very last race. She gave that horse a dreadful ride and made a very premature wide move on the far turn.

[blackthroatedwind]

Originally Posted by Gander

I cant imagine many people who play horses have $2,000 to spend on a pick 6ticket. Maybe if they got together with 10 other people but considering I didnt have the form and it was mid-week, there was no way I was going to take the Santa Anita carryover seriously. Perhaps if it was Aqueduct I would have made an exception but those races are just too hard out there. Pauls Hope was a very hard horse to come up with but certainly not impossible if that was a race you went 5 or 6 deep in.

I'm sure there were many individuals and/or syndicates that put in over $2K into yesterday's Pick-6 ( more than 250 certainly ) but yesterday's contest gave people a chance to see how they could do under those circumstances. It feels like a lot of people here took it seriously and their results bore that out.

I can totally understand you not wanting to dedicate time to this, really, but by the same token doesn't that then lessen the value of your post-Pick-6 judgements?

[ArlJim78]

Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind

I don't agree. $2000 does not go very far on a card like yesterdays and I think that was shown pretty clearly. Getting that horse on your ticket was far from easy and that was clear from the results yesterday. Perhaps if you had actually spent a few minutes trying to construct a play ( instead of writing down numbers ) you would have seen how little ground you can cover with under $2500.

I think most people took the contest very seriously and played similarly to a " real money " situation...if they had the real money to play with.

I agree, this is how i approached the contest, and its how I think most people did. I pretended that it was my bankroll and that I really badly wanted to win it. I put in a fair amount of time as well.

I have never played this way with my own money as i am just not at that level, but it was fun to go through the motions. Frankly speaking since my normal bankroll is not large enough I do not play pick sixes. Its pointless to throw $200 to $400 dollars at it.

[golfer]

Same here, Arljim, the biggest pick 6 ticket I've ever punched was for $96, and I regretted it because it was too large a percentage of my bankroll. That's not to say I did not appreciate the contest, and all the time and effort everyone put in (especially BTW). I e-mailed Steve a while back about something similar, not a contest but a learning tool, where you took one race, gave everyone the same bankroll, and using the same opinions, see the different strategies and plays each person would make. The bottom line is handicapping is just part of the puzzle, wagering strategies is the other. Anybody else think this might be a good idea?

[Gander]

I think its a great idea to have contests like this. A suggestion I might make is to scale down the bankroll to where its a tad more realistic and within the average person's budget, give or take a couple of hundred dollars.

I like the $600 ticket myself, I think that forces people to do more handicapping and avoids just tossing horses you know you would never really use. Catch my drift?

[ArlJim78]

Originally Posted by Gander

I think its a great idea to have contests like this. A suggestion I might make is to scale down the bankroll to where its a tad more realistic and within the average person's budget, give or take a couple of hundred dollars.

I like the $600 ticket myself, I think that forces people to do more handicapping and avoids just tossing horses you know you would never really use. Catch my drift?

I disagree completely with reducing the bankroll. $600 is not a realistic ticket for six races of big fields. You have very little chance of getting these right with 300 combinations. if i did my math right, if you assume 11 horse fields throwing 300 combinations at a pick six is like having a pick four contest and asking people to limit the wagers to $2, only two combinations. I don't care how good of a handicapper you are, you are not going to hit them.

[Gander]

I'm just trying to keep it real. Not many people have close to 2K to throw away on a lottery ticket. Some get into syndicates but there are usually more than 1 person making the decisions. You may as well make the bankroll
5K if its going to be a number that you'll never come close to playing.

$600 is a more realistic amount. Thats what Oracle usually throws in and hes hit like 7 of them.

[ArlJim78]

Originally Posted by Gander

I'm just trying to keep it real. Not many people have close to 2K to throw away on a lottery ticket. Some get into syndicates but there are usually more than 1 person making the decisions. You may as well make the bankroll
5K if its going to be a number that you'll never come close to playing.

$600 is a more realistic amount. Thats what Oracle usually throws in and hes hit like 7 of them.

Like I said it all depends on how deep the water is that you are wading into. If the races are compromised of 7-8 horse fields and there are a couple of real obvious singles, it is certainly much much easier to hit them with 300 combinations because the number of permutations are very very significantly reduced.

in my opinion, betting a pick six like the one in the contest with $600 is not realistic. It's stupid. That's why the syndicates are necessary because it gives people with only $600 a chance to have a reasonable shot.