Saturday, January 21, 2012

Making allowance optional claimers team events

You know what I think would be a fun head-to-head bet? In optional allowances, the horses in for a tag could be put up against the horses not in for a tag. A horse from one of the categories has to win, so this wouldn't be a head-to-head decided by best finish. I like the type of head-to-head involving winning better, because it's less artificial. Purse money is guaranteed to be at stake in the bet, whereas with two horses pitted against each other, it can make no difference to the connections if their horse wins the bet, if he or she runs out of the money.

Would there ever be a case where the horses in for a tag would be stronger on the average than the horses not in for a tag? On first thought, one would think not. In a $25,000 optional, the horses in category A aren't worth more than $25,000, or $25,000 plus the purse of the race, and the horses in category B are. But what tends to happen is that owners and trainers don't expose eligible-for-the-allowance-condition horses to the tag, whereas owners and and trainers that have horses that have graduated the condition have to, if they are going to participate in the race at all. So the in-for-a-tag group might be in a sense be more accomplished. Another factor is that the tag horses are usually on average older and more run down than non-tag horses. Therefore, while they may not be worth as much for the rest of their careers as the protected horses, they may be worth more for the coming race. And the coming race is all that the bet concerns.

Finally, the numbers of the claiming and non-claiming contingents are free to vary. In some races, you could have a couple of favorites in the non-claiming camp, and a larger, more motley group in the claiming camp. So as a bettor, you'd be deciding between quantity and quality. The bet would certainly fall apart to some degree if the bigger number were also stronger per horse, which would often be the case with allowance optional claimers at the very good tracks.

For the 8th at Gulfstream today, a nw1x/25k at a mile and a half on the turf, I think the bet would probably be interesting. There would be seven horses in the claiming camp, and five in the non-claiming camp.

I don't know what would be done, by the way, if tracks used entries, and an entry had one horse that was in for a tag, and one that wasn't. I guess the bet would have to be void then. But my head is starting to hurt.

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