Okay, up and ready to go. To bed at 11 (2 am) up at 4:15 (7:15 am) and not overly tired - exhausted, yes, but tired no. I ain't alone though - its fun to hear the comments from other horseplayers. We're all in the same boat, eh? Of course there are those who play this like they would play a regular day at the races with a couple hours of handicapping and a little bit between races. Well, those folks are probably not amongst the leaders and, if so, won't be at the end of the contest. Anyway, enough commentary. Now on to the matter at hand.
George and I needed a strategy today. So, I handicapped the mandatory races with picks for the last three or so including a bomb and a "safe" horse in the unlikely event we were in contention at that point in time. Then, Geroge went through the eight race tracks with the help of HTR and picked out those low Vi races (the lower the Vi the higher the percentage a longshot will win) and we're only handicapping those races. Will certainly miss some chances but you just can't handicap 80 races in the hours we had since yesterday.
George found about 20 potential races. He's taking FG, TP and OP (rain expected today) and I'm doing AQU, GP and SA. We're skipping TUP. We talk at 7:15 am. He gives me his picks. I enter them into my access database along with mine. I print out a report with a daily appointment book of sorts with a running clock of the race post times, our picks and a little bit about why we chose that horse. Then its off to the races.
Today's card has a ton of races between 10 am (1 pm) and 12:30 pm (3:30 pm) so you won't hear from me during those times. I'll be posting before I head out for the day and when I can, but wish me luck. I know this weblog is a silly idea but what the hey, I'm kinda silly anyway.
Before I head off to the form, I just wanna say that I don't see how you could really do well in this contest without the aid of something like Thorograph or HTR. It is just mind boggling to handicap all these races well without some handicapping tool which helps you get to the essence of a race quickly. That shows in the fact that several Thorograph users are at the top of the leader board (or were at 2 pm yesterday anyway). I suspect HTR folks are also doing well, but I haven't gotten an update to be sure.
Enough said.
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