How to bet on a horse
This is actually a mint mojito which I recommend on Derby Day to anyone who, like me, doesn't care for bourbon.
It is Derby Day and my daughter is going to a wedding. I assure you, there is no way my mother would have ever let any of her daughters get married on the first Saturday in May. My parents raised and raced thoroughbreds – they were horse people – and so were at least 50% of the people that attended my sisters’ and my weddings. If one of us had gotten married on Derby Day, no matter what sentimental wedding activity was in progress, half of the attendees would have dashed, tightly clutching their bourbons, to find the closest TV. Had he heard, “It is now post time,” my own father would have dropped my hand and abandoned me during our father-daughter dance.
As a daughter of horse people, I spent plenty of time at the track, first as a teenager attending the races with my family, and later with a boyfriend who was an avid handicapper and took it all very seriously. He taught me how to handicap using racing times as a basis, then how to factor in weight, weather and class to arrive at the most likely winner. My sisters considered me a social maladroit because I would sometimes take my programmable HP calculator with me and totally geek out, entering times and distances for which the HP automatically calculated the average speed per furlong. I usually had just enough time between races to get the job done and get to the window in time to place my bet.
HOW TO CHOOSE A HORSE
As a young woman I chose the horse I would bet on by calculating which was expected to have the fastest time in the day’s race based on past performances. If previous races were shorter than the distance of the race I was handicapping, it involved determining the average time the horse could run a furlong, then extrapolating a projection of how fast the horse could run a longer race, like the 1 ¼ mile distance of the Kentucky Derby. After selecting two or three horses who appeared to be faster than the others, I would factor in other things. If there was a classy horse in the race – one who had run in stakes races at top-drawer tracks – I would pick that horse over an ill-bred, low-class, opportunistic trash bag with a stupid name and ugly silks. In horses as well as in humans, you can identify subtle predictors for success if you know how to look for them.
Nowadays I possess neither the stamina nor the intellect to carry out these tedious calculations, and find it more enjoyable to utilize my mother’s handicapping method which can be performed in under 30 seconds. Starting at the top of the list of horses in the race, recite the alphabet, advancing one horse for each letter. When the first letter of the horse’s name matches the letter you are on, that’s your winner. If you get to the end of the alphabet before you get a match, just start over again at A and continue down the list. Eventually there will be a match. Bet $2 across-the-board (win, place and show) on that one. Always look at the tickets before you leave the betting window to be sure they are correct, then use the bathroom and get another drink before returning to your seat to watch the race. When the race is over, toss the valueless tickets on the floor and perform the handicapping method on the next race.
If you are an exotic bettor, today’s Kentucky Derby line up offers a rare opportunity for winning a trifecta using Momma’s method. (A trifecta involves picking the first three finishers in the correct order, and this is something I have never done). After predicting the winner of today’s Kentucky Derby to be Girvin which, at post position 7 was a match the first time through, I noticed that the next two horses were Hence and Irap. That’s G-H-I in perfect order which is clearly more than a coincidence. Momma is smiling down from heaven today and I can hardly wait to see how this race unfolds.
Author’s note: Success with the aforementioned method is not guaranteed and, as always, this information is worth precisely what you paid for it. Good luck.