"Introspect is one of five horses Turner trains for Castle Village Farm, a racing stable that distributes its horses to trainers in the New York area. Stephen Zorn, managing partner of Castle Village Farm, says Turner is "very, very patient."
Interesting to note that the writing credited is as follows:
Elizabeth McGarr is a student at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She can be reached at enm2107@columbia.edu
Usually these types of stories are "generated" with some sort of pr value behind it. I'm having trouble finding it here, though. Could it be that Ms. McGarr is a (gasp!) FAN of the sport and pitched the idea to ESPN? Is she connected to Turner, the subject? Maybe there's a connection to Castle Village Farm? It could be worth a quick email to give Ms. McGarr a little shout out/kudos on her efforts here. Also, nice to see a grad student get a lengthy, prominently placed piece in a major world-wide media outlet.
On another note, I found this interesting little bit over on BG's blog. I think it's worth a little perusal. I don't think I've ever looked at wagering in this manner:
"+$35 yesterday playing horses at Santa Anita and Turf Paradise. I hit the early Pick Four at SA, only to find out that there was a $400k carryover in the late Pick Four. Dammit. Anyway, that was a nice little pickup ($125 pay-out on a $1 ticket - I had played it eight ways), and my handicapping at Santa Anita was on-point all day long, having one of my top two win six of nine races.
But one situation in particular illustrates how far I've come as a horseplayer.
In race two there were six horses running, ranging in price from 2-1 to 7-1. On my oddsline, my favorite was the betting favorite, but as I had the horse at 2-1 on my line, she wasn't playable at the same 2-1 on the oddsline. My co-second choice was 3-1 in my book, but 7-1 on the board.
Now, sometimes you should just play the second choice at 7-1 on a win ticket and be content that you made a good choice regardless of the outcome. That's an absolutely valid approach.
Instead, I saw the fairly even spread on the oddsline and thought I'd look to the Place pool to see what odds I was being offered on that same 7-1 horse there. If I was willing to play that horse at 7-2 to win, I'd be thrilled to get 2-1 on the place, right?
Sure enough, I did the math and because the money was spread out amongst the six horses (as opposed to concentrated on the favorite), there was an opportunity to get a minimum of 2-1, and a maximum of 4-1 on my horse if I chose the much safer Place pool.
She won, and paid 3-1 in the place pool. Granted, 7-1 is nice, but it was riskier. It was a grinder's bet, and an opportunity I don't think I would have recognized a couple years ago. I felt really good about that play, despite "missing" a 7-1 win bet."
(editor's note: I copied the whole bit, b/c it actually shows up way down at the bottom of a larger, unrelated post.)
Interesting, me thinks.
1 comment:
You know, I was hoping someone would comment on that play. I feel like I did something right there, but did I? Don't just leave it as "interesting," pick me apart dammit!
Heh heh... Yes, I'm just trolling for someone to validate my strategy there.
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