River Downs Event

[dehere]

Anyone going to be at River Downs this week end? According to a conversation I had with the one in charge this afternoon (Thursday) it appears they are a little over half filled for the event but they have hopes that will pick up a lot tomorrow and Saturday morning.

[Mall]

Perhaps the contest craze is a figment of my, & some others, imaginations. Hol only had 734 entries & it was free to enter. Hoo only had 379 entries & it was only $100. At CD today, 30 of the 127 who had qualified were no-shows. Totals of $56.80 & $52.20 on a bankroll of $24 for live races 3 through 8 were enough to earn a trip to the NHC. In River's case, last yr's lack of seating & failure to advise everyone that Arl was added at the last minute are possible factors. In any event, best of luck this weekend.

[dehere]

All of that is fine and dandy Melvin, but all I know is that the winner at LV gets at least $225,000 so the fewer people that show up this week end the better.

[hurrikane]

H-

I had it on my dance card. Unfortunately hurricane Dennis is hosing me. I have to go to 24hr support tomorrow thru Wed. Can't do that in Ohio.

good luck. from what I have heard the people do very nice by their customers.

[km]

Received this email report from "dehere" on the RD tourney Saturday. He is partnered with George Mann (7th place - see below).

KM, Just a note to let you know about the first day at RD.

Not sure of the number of entrants but I think it was around 120 – so definitely not sold out. Better odds for those of us in the contest. There were some seat hassles to start the day, but Jolyn (director) was superb and handled everything well. Canceling CRC was a bit of a drag but picking up CD which was offered as a substitute track was okay. We picked up on that early in the morning from the Calder website so we handicapped CD for a couple of hours before getting to the contest. Of course, that's one of the great things about HTR – to pick up a track like that and deal with it on fairly short notice.

Here is a general idea of the top ten – not sure of HTR names so maybe you will recognize someone. Forgive my spelling – I can't read my writing but the following is pretty accurate. I rounded off scores. This is the status with about one race to go - the last at CD.

Jason Pippinger - $122

Tom Long - $118

Louis Cohn - $104

Mike Eless - $80

Tom Ryan - $71

Dave Templin - $73

George Mann - $70

Dave Stewart - $67

Dennis Douglas - $61

William Gignoulis - $63

The nice thing is George Mann and I are playing a mutual ticket under his name (I want him to qualify this year and would rather qualify at EMD, as if I have any choice/chance). We're each playing a ticket and sharing one and the nice thing is that all of our winners was on the mutual ticket. So there's a shot here for and we're ready to go for it tomorrow.

Take care and see you next week.

Henry "Dehere"

[dehere]

Just to complete this post with final results. I didn't stick around long enough to get names, etc and I really don't think there were too many other HTR players at this tournament, but I wanted to provide some final stuff about this tournament in case anyone intends to attend next year as well as give a thought or two regarding what is somewhat obvious tournament techniques.

Our mutual ticket which looked pretty good at the end of the first day and actually improved during the first part of the second day because of some funny way that River Downs has of giving everyone $40 bucks in their account totals at the beginning of the contest and then deducting $2 for each bet made. Thus, as other folks made bets during the beginning part of the second day and we held onto most of our bullets we moved up in the rankings to about 6th place or so. Then we made the crucial error of backing off one of our pre-day picks. The horse (Dinah's Pearls - Race 5 Belmont) was 0-24 as a maiden, ended up winning the race, paying $33 bucks and thoroughly deflating our spirits on the mutual ticket. That stupid move began our downfall and we ended up in something like 20th place.

I did a wee bit better on my single ticket by playing Dinah's Pearls and following it up five minutes later with Carrots Only in the 5th at Monmouth for another $24.40 and ended up in 15h place for the contest ($184) and fourth in day money (some Brisnet American Produce Records book supposedly worth $325).

I guess the moral of the story is - play your picks or you'll regret it later. Had we played these two races on our mutual ticket George would have qualified for Vegas and we would be able to go there with our American Produce Records book in hand, ready to do battle.

It was a good contest. The lady in charge, Jolynn, was superb, but is leaving River Downs and is not sure what will happen to the event next year. She was really great at providing constant updates on contest standings even though nothing changed nearly all day with the parade of chalk. One guy qualified in the 12th at Calder, a 2year old MSW won by a $22.20 horse - he moved up from 9th to 3rd on the last play of the day.

Anyway - I didn't wanna leave this post hanging so there you have it. Oh, yeah, Ken was very kind to provide me a beta version of the new HVX export which I had incorporated into a past performance printout I had already prepared. It was so cool to have actual FR1, 2, 3, sp, etc. etc. numbers there in front of me while handicapping. That sure beats looking at DRF and trying to figure out what the leading horse's second call time means for my horse insofar as FR2 is concerned. We're gonna love this export over time.