Oh Vey! Dis game will humble ya!

I must say that, despite all the money I had on the line on this one, I felt a lot more than the normal pressure with my prognostication so prominently publicly displayed. Even though I lost a ton of cash, I hope my analysis at least held up.

Here are my post race thoughts --

1) I bet the race the following way -- very large Win and Place on Unforgettable Max. Some exactas of UM underneath DS and GNB. Small superfecta plays singling DS on top and keying UM underneath in all three positions. The horses I used to fill out the wheel positions were -- GNB, PH, NYH, and BAL. I was tempted to make a win and place on GNB, but decided not to when his odds started falling. My payoff was a goose egg.

2) I have no regrets. I would analyze and bet the race the same way every time. When I look at the payoffs, I do not see anything that I feel I wish I had or like an idiot for missing. It is remarkable to me that DS and SC paid the same to place and show (but those are bets that I would never be making anyway).

3) Chuckles, I hope (and believe) you are right that the figures ultimately made on the race will prove correct my assertion that UM was only a very small bit (if it all) behind DS and GNB (and not nearly as far as the odds would indicate).

4) I feel that my numbers analysis was largely correct and what went wrong was my trip analysis. Unfortunately, trying to predict trips is inherently volatile and it is one of the reason you look for compensation in the odds.

5) At 9.50 to 1, you only need UM to win 1 out of 10 times to show a profit. I suspect his number could have won with a different trip, and that different trip would have likely happend in one (or more)of the other nine times.

6) As to Saratoga County, he obviously (probably?) did not bounce yet and obviously does not always make big sweeping moves. I am hopeful that he will present a generous bet against opportunity in the future, although some of the other posts on the board make me wary that he might not be a normal horse afterall. At the price he was going at, he was an easy throw out, and I would do it every time. An interesting thing to consider is what I would have done with him if his Kentucky/Florida foray were coupled with a barn change to a Super Trainer? I was definitely cognizant of the powers of Kentucky (but this horse was also a late season three year old who should have been imporving anyway), but I was not aware of whether his trainer is a titrainer as they say.

7) As to the quality of the race, While I think a Ghostzapper would have gobbled these up in the stretch; there are not a lot out there like that one. The only relevant G1 comparisons (there are GIIs out there) to this race are things like the Carter, the Triple Bend, the Vosburgh, the DeFrancis, (Ancient Title maybe?), and the BC Sprint. (I do not count things like the Malibu or the King's Bishop because they are restricted). I suspect the #s in this race stacked up well. Maybe there is a Frankel horse could have jumped up or Kela, but I really do not think there is a lot else out there. The BC Sprint had 7 of 13 in negative territory, and I am guessing this race had 5 of 9. How deep is another question. It is possible that they came back off the -4s and -3s and were only running in -2 and -1 territory. But that is still not bad. Remember, this is a race where a horse coming off paired up -3s was 31-1 and ran last. I suspect that some of these horses will be heard from in the relevant G1 sprints that exist later in the year.

8) Taste of Paradise surprised me. For superfecta purposes, I threw out three horses (two of whom ran in the super). I knew I was taking a risk with SC, but I felt very confident in throwing out TOP and HP. It would appear that TOP ran a T-O-P as a six year old shipping cross country off an awful pattern. Obviously, things like this can happen, but they are really unusual. It will be interesting to see where this horse goes from here and how this can be explained.

9) As I seek to enter the witness protection program and go back to civilian life, I need to ask T-Graph how one changes their handle here. It says you are only allowed one handle per address. I only have one non-anonymous address. Does this mean I will be SoCalMan2 forever?

10) Michael D, if you are still interested in communicating with me off the board, ask TGJB by email.