A Lesson Learned

Before I get into the “Learned Lesson” as denoted in the title of the article, it seems appropriate to give a little background first. I’ve started a series of “Spotlight” races where a random race is chosen for coverage that is not a graded race. The idea of this is to give players who don’t own the high-caliber type of race horse the chance to see their horse covered within the pages of the BTB. Also, I try to give some subtle hints in the articles to help out new players.

This past weeks race is a good example of ‘what not to do’ and how to take advantage of it. My top pick in the race was a longshot, Darth Stoners at 12-1, yes a longshot. In reviewing the race, I noted that trainer Legends4 picked this horse up out of claimers at the beginning of January. In looking at the past history, I observed that the prior trainer was very aggressively running Darth Stoners with starts occurring too frequently. This resulted in a steady drop in speeds from the 90-range to 67 in his last race. Legends4 must have picked up on this when claiming the horse as Darth Stoners was quickly sidelined for a two month rest. I commented in the article that “If rest was long enough, this one could pay off very nicely!”.

As my top pick, Darth Stoners did pull off the upset, paying $26.30, $13.10 and $8.10. The rest break paid off as Darth was charted at a speed of 100. Unfortunately, my 2nd and 3rd choices fell well off the board.

Every horse is different. Some can run well with short rest periods, but for most, they will eventually suffer as Darth Stoner did. So there are a pair of things learned here. First, don’t over race your horse. If the speed #’s drop rapidly, give the horse a break. Second, if you are looking to add a horse to the stable (through claimers or auction), you might find one with decent speed numbers that have dropped due to being over-raced.

Oh, I guess there is a third lesson to add…the betting angle!