Congrats again to HP for pulling another one out.

It was a thrilling contest, and for those who care (sound of crickets chirping), here's the blow by blow:

David "cheap speed" Patent opened up a long early lead, bursting from the gate and snaring a 55 to 15 advantage after just three races. Did HP panic? No sir. Sitting chilly, he began reeling DP in slowly but surely, and by the end of the 7th race had taken the lead 95 to 85.

Having been inhaled by the fitter HP, would DP spit the bit? Not hardly. He battled back to within 5 -- 100 to 95 -- going into the 9th and final race.

As it turned out, this epic battle of handicapping titans would be decided by the show spot in an utterly forgettable maiden filly race. Since both HP and DP picked the same horses for the top two spots, the results hinged on the show horse. The best DP could hope for was an AL/NL tie.

DP had an 11:1 horse in the third spot and HP had a hopeless 30:1. DP's horse, the 8, rushed up to the lead, fell back and then came on to grab 2nd inside the 16th pole. But the 2-move effort was too much and she was passed by the 3 and then nipped right on the wire by the 7. Oh, the humanity!

Don't know about you, HP, but I had fun. As it was, I ended up only betting 2 races at Bel.

Congrats again and I'll pay you out of the $73,000 Super that I hit at Belmont. Wink.

Seriously, I'll see if I can authorize Jake to charge my credit card $100 and give you cash. If not, I can mail a check to their office for you, though I might need more than 'HP' for the name.

A couple of notes on our selections. For the nine races, we picked different winners in 6 races and there was overlap in only 11 of our 27 selections. I don't know if that was a reflection of the different products we used, the perplexing nature of the card, different approaches to evaluating the horses' chances or some combination of all three. I wonder what those numbers would look like over a span of 100+ races.

I hope everybody enjoyed their days.