Jim's Orbit: The First Texas Racing Blog

News, notes, and commentary on Thoroughbred horseracing in the Lone Star State.

Sunday, December 09, 2007

Saturday recap: $418 in winnings!!!

Hope you followed my picks in Saturday's Buffalo Bayou Stakes at Sam Houston. It was the only race I handicapped and made selections for this weekend (see below for original post) and I (or we, if you heeded my advice) nailed it, hitting the $20 win bet on Gold Sound, plus the $5 trifecta with Silver Haze in second and the odds-on beaten favorite, Smooth Bid, in third.

Gold Sound paid $8.60 to win as the generously priced second choice. My suggested wager being $20 to win, that was an $86 return, $66 of it for profit.

Meanwhile, I also suggested four $5 trifectas, all with Gold Sound on top. The correct ticket had Silver Haze in second, resulting in a tri that returned $132.80 for $2, or $332 for me since I had it 2 1/2 times! It's also worth noting that all of my suggested trifectas contained the top four finishers, which also included Wild Series in fourth at 14-1. The four horses I used made up a very hittable $644 superfecta. The $20 worth of tri wagers I recommended returned a $312 profit.

In all, my $40 of suggested wagers on this one race cashed out for $418, a $378 profit.

See, you can't afford to NOT be reading Jim's Orbit these days! Saturday's score comes on the heels of our Texas Champions Day winning selection of Alleged Hug ($21.20) in the Richard King Stakes.

For me, this latest streak reinforces my strong belief that I do better in allowance and stakes races (or in this case, allowance races dressed up to look like stakes races!), when the horses are known commodities and the trainers' intentions are more obvious. There's always a chance of correctly predicting any race, but your chances are much better when you know it's likely that every horse is in it to win, not just to be claimed, or not just to gain valuable experience, or not just to get fit for the next one, or not as a favor to the racing office who needs to fill the card, or not to appease a delusional owner, or not to just experiment with an equipment or surface change because nothing else seems to be working, etc. You get the point. There are so many more things going on with claimers that don't show up in the past performances. If you have the patience and really want to keep making money, save the bulk of your bankroll for the good races where the playing field is more level.

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