With huge pools & plenty of tourist money, the undercard is the perfect setting for a betting coup, & such efforts have a tradition every bit as long & storied as the Derby itself. There is an undeniable attraction to being part of one, all the more so if it is designed to come in "over the top", as holdem players say, of a less sophisticated effort. That wasn't something we had to worry about yesterday. Nor did our attempt involve any skirting of the rules, & not just because the players had all been around far too long to risk their reputations to cash a bet. Some of you may recall the days when the undercard was mostly clming races & D Romans'(if memory serves)ridiculous defense that the big crowd & confusion caused him to saddle the wrong horse, who just happened to be dead fit & win the race. As I see it, those interested in that kind of skullduggery lack what Russians sometimes call "poetry of the soul."

Approx a yr ago I offered the observation here that despite a fair amt of work, understanding & interpreting works was still the weakest part of my game. I suggested a discussion on the Bd, but there were no takers, save a call & private email from the So Fla poster who goes by the name of Catlin, which is how he ended up in the middle of things. My efforts to improve my understanding of works resulted, by last April, in a close relationship with a "private" clocker who, suffice it to say, is a former trainer who knows how to handicap & is a shrewd observer of both horses & humans. The scores we made in Ky mdn races last yr had me looking fwd to this yr's Kee/CD meets, & I was probably a little overconfident when Cherniasky, who had been compared to Fav Trick & who Court thought enough of to fly in from Ark to work, went to the post at 5-1 in a 4.5f sprint on 4/16. I didn't know he lost a shoe before the race, but I did see him hit the side of the gate at the break, outsprint & best an odds on Lukas horse, & take what appeared to be an unbeatable lead in late stretch, only to be beaten at the wire by a fst closing Limehouse. My comrade from So Fla & I had barely finished calculating the staggering pk3&4 sums that neck cost us when I started to hear rpts on El Sysco Kid, an impressive looking, unraced 2 yr old in the barn of the one & only Ernie Retamoza, who was seen galloping the horse himself,itself odd considering that Ernie is neither a young nor a small man. Things began to get interesting when the Kid had a gate work in "company" on 4/25. Not only were the reported times for the work slow, but there were 7 other horses in the gate, which I had never heard of & which in my estimation qualifies as a race. The Kid's internal fractions were extremely quick & the way he pulled away at the end fueled speculation that he might be entered in the 3 Chimneys, a stakes I learned that Ernie had won with a mdn some 14 yrs or so ago. We were looking for at least 50-1, especially after Bruin, a jockey who enjoyed some success at CD yrs ago but who is now at RD, was named to ride. The 2 scratches depressed the odds considerably, but all systems were go Sat am, so that all that was left was to decide on a betting strategy. Heckle had tied the track record in his debut & figured to be odds on, but we were hearing that his workmate & our nemesis Limehouse was at least equal to & might now be better, & that Korsakoff was going bkwards. I therefore decided to devote about 60% of my bankroll putting those 3 on top in exactas,tris & supers, with the remainder in pk3s&4s & the win pool. My buddy from So Fla decided not to be the race vertically, which is why he can now say that in 2 races Limehouse has cost him the equivalent of a new jaguar. As for me, I probably shouldn't complain about crushing a $350 exacta, but I can't help feeling that I'll go to my grave convinced that I missed the score of a lifetime by a nose because JB did not ride 1-2 Heckle all the way to the line to hold on for 3rd. My So Fla pal asked me to relate this tale, which he says is one for the grandkids. Perhaps, but what I keep wondering is why when it comes to bettors, the Racing Gods almost always seem to opt for the bittersweet intead of the happy ending in this most difficult of games.