Turns out that Mine That Bird’s remarkable win in the Kentucky Derby was not the
most surprising upset in May. As far as a tote board explosion is concerned, Stinger Blue
Chip rattled the bettors the most, roaring up in late stretch to score by length in the
$73,500 final of the Diplomat Pacing Series Saturday night, May 9 at Mohawk, and he did so at eye
-popping odds of more than 90-1 for catch driver Jason Brewer. The $193.40 he paid almost makes the
$103 payoff from Mine That Bird look like small change. Well, not quite.
I was the benificiary of a most unusual payoff last Sunday. If you allow me, I will rant on for hours about
the mathematical advantages of playing the daily double. So there I was Sunday, handicapping the first
race at Woodbine and I see that Patrick Husbands is almost 5-1 on Sir Heart Throb. Here’s a tip. If you
ever see Patrick Husbands at better than 3-1, go to the window, bet heavily. Husbands is so zoned in,
it’s insane. He could win on a donkey. Sir Heart Throb had a few decnet lines, aside from having the
track’s best jockey on his back I wheeled him in the double with three win the second, making sure to
include Sweet Therapy in the second. Sweet Therapy was ridden by Chantal Sutherland, and though
I have already characterized Husbands as the best rider on the grounds, it’s amazing how many
Sutherland horses produce their highest Beyer number. Rule of thumb – any horse ridden by Chantal has
to be considered.
So Husbands wins the first and the horse pays a happy $11.50 to win and Sweet Therapy goes off at
7-2 and pulls away to win the second. That would be the third favourite hooked up with the second
favourite and a couple of the track’s most bettable riders. So explain me this: How does the double pay
$130.50? That’s 64-1.If you apply a little math to the two winners, you get about 18-1. So the double
returned about 3 1/2 times the value of the win prices.
I didn’t bet the pick 3, but I wish I had. I did hit the third race exactor. The winner paid $13.90. Again, a
$2 parlay on the first three winners would have been worth less than $400, but a $1 pick 3 paid
$743.45 or more than three and a half times the value of the win prices on the three horses.
It’s all about pari-miutuel wagering. Unfortunately only a tiny percentage of the people who go to the
track (and virtually no one who doesn’t) has the vaguest idea how pari-mutuels work. I won’t bore you
with a wordy explanation, but suffice it to say, a person at the track with a grasp on the pari-mutuels will
always do better than anyone playing the lotteries or scratch tickets or slots. The afore-mentioned
payoffs were posted in advance, so the alert bettor was able to see that there was tremendous value in
one betting pool that was not present in another.
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