Another thought from Breeder's Cup day…

I’ve never played in a handicapping tournament. Probably because I perceive it to be a “longshots for longshots-sake” exercise. Down and desperate, you’re squeezed to play a bomb. Right? [Plus, whenever I think of tournaments, I think of one particular player, a knucklehead I knew, new to ThoroGraph, who just a few weeks prior to winning, scolded Jerry on this forum for not posting a free Race of The Week. How dare Jerry not publish a free Race of The Week! My unsaid reaction: “Didn’t the guy have $5 in his pocket to buy the damn race on his own?” Apparently not. Anyway…]

During this pandemic while binge-chilling on YouTube, I happened to catch a video of the top two finishers of this years BCHC tournament discussing how they came to finish 1-2. How they bet. How they won. Their strategies. Did they have any 75-1 shots? Any 20-1 shots? 10-1 shots? No! It turns out the winning player “went all in” on MONOMOY GIRL at 4-5! And had a couple of other, well… if I may say so, pretty obvious winners: Like, who in this galaxy didn’t think AUTHENTIC was fastest from the gate and thus, would wire the field on that concrete highway? Not to mention IMPROBABLE finishing second while running the best number in the race, yet done in by his wide against-the-grain trip, as happened twice to him last year at Oaklawn. Bottom line: My hat’s off to the top two tournament finishers. They’re smart players. My point here is that their success came without any long shots. Something of a surprise. Something that caught my eye.