Since my employer is a supplier to Chrysler among other auto companies , I have been laid off for the duration of the BK, hopefully. So I find myself with some time on my hands that I dont quite know what to do with.
So I have rediscovered horse racing , in this case standard bred horses that pull a sulkie, or a cart depending on how you want to call it. I used to go all the time back about 15 years ago , with a buddy that was engaged in the sport , to put it mildly and we would pretty much go on a tour of southern ontario, flamborough, mohawk, greenwood , and woodbine were the main attractions.
I fell out of it probably about a year later , horse racing like other gambling venues is setup to take money off you , not give you money. I used to quip that the Ontario Jockey Club, merely lent you the money, and that you paid it back with interest with every visit.
Todays racetrack is a very different animal than the ones I had visited in the past , gone are the days when you had scads of older gentlemen hanging around different televisions smoking whiteowl cigars and cursing wildly when a particular animal was deemed ready for the glue factory, off track betting was ilegal and I would not even have known how to go about it.
Now , I still see a couple of the old timer types and hear some of the saltly language, but the overall age of the crowd (not that it was particularly packed) was of a more younger variety , say between twenty five and forty years old.
Two visits so far and I have at least done okay with betting , its nice that I can go in with ten dollars and have a possible win ratio that is acceptable, the first night I think I came out ahead by five dollars, and tonight (tuesday) I lost somewhere around the same.
Some things came back to me from the original tours, what to look for in the horse rather than go for the kvetchy name, the track conditions , the odds that the horse goes off on , in all , not betting stupid.
Having said that , I found what I was doing last week was betting too safe, two races in particular had the horse paying off 22 bucks for a win and I kid you not , $1.89 for a show , since you get back the original two dollar bet. Clearly my betting game was a little off.
My betting for Tuesday was adjusted accordingly, only one horse was bet to show, wich he did , and I got a grand total of 80 cents after getting my twoonie back, but the winner that I did pick , paid out just under ten bucks, yet horses that did exceptional last tuesday never showed south of 5th place.
So weather conditions were the same, I can only assume that in a pool of a hundred horses, some of them are weaker and stronger relative to the rest of the field. So I need more data before I move my betting up to the next level, the trifecta and exacta and the more complex betting ratios.
But overall, its turning out to be an engaging sport
Mods , not sure if this goes in cafe or games or imho or where ever, lol. I wont be too shattered if you move it.
Declan