When I have a pick 4 wager that goes 0 for 4, I always like to go back and try to figure out what went wrong. That is exactly what happened last Wednesday on the late pick 4 at Gulfstream Park. From a handicapping standpoint, it looked like the favorites had the advantage. Even former track announcer Larry Collums, now a TVG commentator, had a pick 4 with all the favorites for $6. He said that he didn’t want to spend more than that because he thought the favorites were going to win. The sequence started with a claiming race, then a maiden race, followed by two more claiming races. I usually try to avoid pick 4’s with maiden races, but the $2500 TVG “hit it and split it” bonus was in effect.
The claiming races were for 4-year-olds and up. By only looking at the last 3 races, I was missing the highest career speed figure. When I added that to my spreadsheet, each horse that won the claiming races had the best career speed figure. That isn’t going to work in every race, but on a day with perfect track conditions the favorites would need to run their best race to win. The jockeys that won were all good riders too. Irad Ortiz, Jr., Tyler Gaffalione, Luis Saez, and Tyler (again). After losing the first race, I put in a pick 3 and lost that too. The part that hurts the most is that the payout for the late pick 4 was $2900. You don’t get opportunities like that every day. In the future I will definitely be looking at the career speed figure when older horses are running.