When bad handicapping leads to a nice score

Saturday was not a great day for public selections here at LoneSpeed.  In fact, it was a terrible day.  Our three longshot plays at Belmont ran like longshots.  And our Play of the Day, Del Mar May, appeared to encounter trouble in the clubhouse turn and finished last in the Chandelier.  Making matters worse, my performance over at Horseplayers was embarrassing.  No matter how you slice it, today sucked from a public perspective.

But I made money today.  And yes, this is a redboard.  But it comes with a lesson attached.  So deal with it.

As I mentioned, my top play today was Del Mar May in Santa Anita’s 9th race.  So in an attempt to plan ahead, during Race 8 I glanced at the double probables ending with Race 9.  And I noticed something.  There was one double to Del Mar May that seemed ridiculously low when compared to other doubles not just to Del Mar May, but to the entire Chandelier field.  The doubles beginning with 7-Smiling Tigress looked like they had been hit harder than expected.  She was over 20-1 with under 10 minutes to post, and the double of her to Del Mar May was paying only 52-1. (EDIT: It may have been 80-1.  It was either paying $106 for $2 or $160 for $2.  Could have been a dyslexic moment. Regardless, it was way lower than the others.) So I went back and took another look at Smiling Tigress.  And ya know what?  She didn’t look like she should be 20-1.  See below….

For starters, we have “blinkers off”.  So, if we dismiss her last three efforts because they were either “blinkers on” or on grass, we’re closer to making a case for her.  Then, if we look four starts back, we see a poor effort at 7F.  Now go back even further to all of her 7F starts.  They all appear bad.  So we can justify dismissing all of them and just look at what she’s doing today.  She’s going 6.5F.  And ALL of her starts at 6 and 6.5F were very solid.  Notice that Beyer Speed Figure of 80 back in March.  If she could run back to that today with the return to “blinkerless dirt at less than 7F”, her off odds of 26-1 looked like a steal.  So I decided to bet.  And the ONLY reason I was even giving Smiling Tigress a second look was because of the low double probable to Del Mar May.

So I bet, and I won.  It more than made up for a day of terrible opinions.  And it happened by accident.  By the way.  That double that was paying so low?  Yeah, it came back to reality.  When Smiling Tigress won, that too-low probable became a 150-1 will pay.  Good thing someone bet that double early and big.  I never would have thought about betting Smiling Tigress.