Dear Basket777

Fair point. I also appreciate you making arguments rather than just saying I am stupid. While I understand what you are saying, I still believe my play is a case of what using the sheets is about. One of the beautiful things about horseracing is that reasonable minds can genuinely differ.

Here is what my thinking was --

First, you cannot really say whether the "0.25 h?" was a regression due to (a) the "h?" and (b) the fact AOT a young 3 yo. If there is ever a time you are saving a horse for a later race it is now.

Second, these are top 3 year olds. Sure horses bounce, but high quality three year olds early in the season are much less prone to bouncing to many other times of year and circumstances.

Third, I did not think the numbers he had ran were so beyond the pale huge that a bounce was inevitable....he is a horse that has never reacted (or only had just reacted to the negative number by a fraction of a point if you disagree with my reasoning under my first point). At seminars, Len Friedman use to always say he does not give a horse a reaction until the horse gives you one first. In my book, AOT had never given a reaction. On a horse like AOT it was hard to really say what a baseline is for judging when a jump up is just too much. If you ascribe to your theory, you have to throw out Like Now. He had reacted to an "11" as a 2 yo and was coming off a "2" just a few months later. I am not saying that Like Now was a throw out, I am just saying that these sorts of horses run their numbers a lot and it is not a good time to be applying normal bounce theories (although i was doing exactly that with Keyed Entry....although in my view the circumstances with KE were different...also I did not throw him out...i just made sure that he would not ruin an otherwise good ticket if he came in the super with a nice price horse).

Fourth, my play was not 8-5. I did not bet him to win. I bet superfectas trying to get a better effective price because the sheets told me that some good prices could come in underneath (and some short horses might not run). If you do some research, you can find that you can get some very nice supers with 8-5 shots on top as long as the field is large and you have some big price horses coming in underneath.

Fifth, normally, the trainer change would give me pause, but with this particular owner and this particular trainer, how do you know what to make of it? I just assumed it was par for the course drama with them and whoever the trainer is would be irrelevant. I think I recall reading somewhere that Amonte (or Paragallo) had basically been the trainer since December anyway.

Sixth, while passing the race may have been the best call, I think a player (who had no reason to think that AOT's foot was warm or that the exercise rider had said he was not himself on the Friday) who wants to make a play has to take a position on AOT. Either he runs his race and wins easy over these or he runs out. I was certainly not comfortable with throwing him out. I was tempted to pass, but thought there was a very good chance that the Super with him on top could pay well.


Look, the results are what the results are, I lost. If he was not already injured before the race, I lost fair and square and I have no beef with that. It happens all the time, and my bet assumes it would lose more than two thirds of the time anyway. I do not think it is fair to say that a person is not using the sheets correctly if they use a heavily favored horse in the first position. I think the sheets are about looking for value and I think that this sort of play does tend to produce value. If you and others disagree, then that is fine. It just means the inefficiences that I seek to take advantage of will not be corrected by the marketplace. In any event, I do appreciate that your comments were in a reasoned form, and I believe that this is something on which reasonable minds can differ.

SCM2