Sunday’s 20-cent jackpot hi-5 at Woodbine for $72,210 USD was taken down by a U.S. bettor with an Elite Turf Club account. It was one of many tickets the player purchased, says Woodbine’s communications manager Mark McKelvie, but Bettor’s Edge has discovered a very interesting angle that could have worked to win it.
The top seven best Tomlinson turf figures in the 11-horse field could have been boxed at a cost of $504 to win the huge jackpot. But here’s the rub: The race was taken off the turf, so you’d think those figures wouldn’t work … or would they? It should be remembered that synthetic surfaces are considered “near-turf” in such countries as Australia and England. Horses go from turf to synthetic with impunity.
So it couldn’t be a surprise to some players that the original best Tomlinson turf figures worked to take down the $72K. It wasn’t an easy sequence. The odds of the top five finishers were 5-1, 32-1, 7-1, 5-1 and 42-1. The favourite was nowhere to be found. The turf Tomlinson figures for those five horses were 380, 353, 401, 360 and 359. Those figures are shown in the Daily Racing Form in the top right corner of the past performance lines.
But if a player wasn’t prepared to spend $504 at a chance of landing the jackpot, what about spending $168 for a 20-cent superfecta box with those horses? The superfecta paid $2,206.
$94 winner had two things going for him
A $94 winner always draws attention, especially when that victory comes in a grade 2 stakes race. Such was the case Saturday when Stitched, a four-year-old colt, won the $400K Wise Dan Stakes on the turf at Ellis Park. He paid $94.50.
Maybe that win had you wondering how you might have flagged that horse to win. One aspect made him a slam-dunk for players who bet a jockey who has a single mount on the card. Marcelino Pedroza Jr. was brought from Horseshoe Indianapolis in Indiana – where he was a 14 per cent rider – to ride for trainer Gregory Foley at Ellis Park. Why? The colt had 13 starts and Pedroza had ridden him only once – to an eighth-place finish when the colt debuted as a two-year-old at Fair Grounds. Suddenly, the jockey is named for this big race. Hmm.
The second angle? The horse’s last race set him up for coming off the pace to try to win. That’s because he set an uncharacteristically high pace number of 112 in a previous allowance race, being pushed for all he was worth, only to finish ninth. That primed him for a race in a which he could save all that early energy for a late move in a much more important race than the allowance race. One can only imagine the extent of the celebrating in the Foley barn (12-0-1-2) Saturday night after the Grade 2 victory. In four decades of training, Foley’s best previous win had been a Grade 3 stakes.
ASD betting up by 18 per cent; place bets work
With almost one-third of the 50-day racing season now in the history books, Assiniboia Downs continues to post exceptional wagering numbers, with $1.47 million being bet last Wednesday and the pick-4 pool exceeding $119,000. Per-race wagering over the first 16 days of racing increased by more than 18 per cent over last year. The average wagering per card is now more than $1.12 million. A seven-race card goes to post at 7:30 p.m. CT tonight.
And how did things go last week (21 races) for the highly-promoted handicappers, Kirt and Stretch? The racing gods weren’t kind to track announcer Kirt; he posted two winners and a single successful bet but Stretch gave online viewers seven winners and a couple of things to think about. He scored with a few large place wagers and, as related in last week’s Bettor’s Edge, his triactor wheels bear watching because another one could have been extended into a superfecta wheel that paid more than $1,000. That aspect of his suggested wagers is making me a believer.
The pair will be at it again tonight in ASD Live at 6:45 p.m. CT at ASDowns.com; click on Player Portal.
