Woodbine 11-08 Race #3

[Ted Craven]

I went to Woodbine this past weekend, mostly as a social occasion, but analysed several of the races and worked and bet Race 3, which I lost. I was asked to describe my analysis process on this race, so here it is. Anyone else who worked it is welcomed to chime in!

The BL/BL screen shows the pacelines selected - no magic here. For myself, on non-Turf surfaces, and when there are no other extenuating circumstances (which I saw none of here) I like to err on the side of recent effort. I used all lines 1 and 2.



The #2 and #3 are currently making good efforts and are fit. Their recent route lines and #3's on the Turf are close enough to 7f that I will trust the WO ITV and distance adjustments to compare them for today's distance/surface. If you use previous lines, per their Total Energy and Perceptor Total scores, you would do them a disservice and rank them worse.




The #1 Dhanyata looked by far the best - 2 or 3 lines better than the rest of the field and no surprise to anyone at 1.40 - 1 odds. (Err, hadn't technically won a race in several years, OR on this side of the pond, but...)



I felt funny betting against the #1, but could not bet on it. One (successful) wagercapping strategy is to hide a horse you will not bet on due to odds. Can the #1 lose this race? Maybe. It finished in front but was disqualified for interfering in the stretch with the #3 and placed 2nd. If you hide it and bet the #2 and #3, you get a lucky win. If you box the top 3 in an exacta, you also get a nice score. Me, I bet an exacta on 1,2,8 (#8 the counter-energy horse from Fort Erie, which drives my wife wild as she knows, where I fail to believe sometimes, that FE horses won't reproduce anything like their FE competitivness in true WO company - vive la différence...)



Pretty straightforward. I'm sure many, many methodology practitioners cashed on this race.



Ted

[shoeless]

Thanks

[RichieP]

Very nice work in laying it all out Ted!
Thank you

[tfm]

Ted

Hope you don't mind me jumping in here, from a different perspective.

I've be cashing with a particular move lately; and with TRAKUS available at KEE (and DMR) I've also been observing how much distance a horse runs in a race in relation to the winner.

If you look at the chart, Dhanyata stands out based on this angle: She's the only one of the top four early that's around at the finish, in a race where the top 3 came from off the pace. Now, the replay shows that while she got a nice inside trip, she was stuck behind horses, getting bounced around until late in the stretch, and by the time she got out, the closers blew by. She'd thus be a definite betback. However, if we look at the distance covered, she ran 1 foot less than the winner and 26 feet less than the 2nd finisher. In fact, she was only one of two horses in the race to run LESS than the winner (the other ran 3 feet less and finished 6th) while most of the field ran quite a bit more (32 feet more was the maximum). So the question then becomes do race dynamics, where she got a bad trip, and actual race events, where she was bounced around, trump distance covered.

It didn't matter as she was 6:5 and not bettable. It was, ironic, however, that she made her own trouble and got DQd in a race where she was best.