The sport's two brightest young stars, Waples, a stool jumper, an unbeatable Beatable Favorite and my BIG, FAT MOUTH!

The weekend kicked off with awful conditions at all three of THE PETE SHEETS' featured tracks.

It proved to be great night for followers of THE PETE SHEETS that played Flamboro last night as the product's suggested bets yielded profits of more than $700. Those of you that were doing the same with Western Fair's version are washing dishes in the Top Of The Fair Restaurant! Only three of our five Beatable Favorites lost while our three Most Probable Winners finished 2nd, 2nd and 3rd respectively. The night's only Live Longshot, Undone Hanover, finished 2nd to Windsun Rachel in the 10th, a mare whose idiosyncrasies led to my writing this:

I'm a firm believer that (the likely favorite) WINDSUN RACHEL can't win either. Listen, if she wins, I quit. She has such a noticeable aversion to winning (affinity for losing) that I don't think it even matters finds herself in a race in which she faces the most beatable field she's faced in a long, long time. Her numbers are absolutely staggering: she has lost 29 races in a row and is just one (March 20) for her last 52. Even with McNair and against a mediocre group of similarly struggling horses, how can anyone be expected to bet her on top?

Listen, she only won by 36 and I lied...I'm not quitting! When it comes to playing against favorites, especially those as frequently overbet as Windsun Rachel, the numbers are always on the side of the gambler. I explained it best in last night's version of THE PETE SHEETS for Flamboro when making a case for playing against Beatable Favorite, Baskin Babe:

BASKIN BABE's last five races are a perfect example of why anyone serious about making money gambling on horses shouldn't bet favorites. Let's pretend you bet $20 to win on her in each of those races:

Date Bet Result Odds ROI +/- Running Total
Mar25 $20 Win 1st 0.30 to 1 $26.00 +$6.00 +$6.00
Apr1 $20 Win 1st 0.80 to 1 $36.00 +$16.00 +$22.00
Apr14 $20 Win 3rd 0.30 to 1 $0.00 -$20.00 +$2.00
Apr22 $20 Win 1st 0.20 to 1 $24.00 +$4.00 +$6.00
Apr29 $20 Win 5th 0.60 to 1 $0.00 -$20.00 -$14.00

You cashed a win bet on her in 60% of her last five races and still lost $14.00! No thanks.

Windsun Rachel was one of five winners for young Doug McNair. I know, I know, we hear it all the time from neighsayers: "Anyone can win if they've got power!". Maybe, but there are only a few drivers in the country that could have engineered the gate-to-wire win that McNair did last night with Classic Commotion (5-1) from post seven. Even perpetual longshot Brontewine (five for 61 life, 8th by 19 and 6th by six in her previous two in the exact same class) won last night thanks to McNair's gift and the few that backed her (or more likely, McNair) were rewarded with a $34.50 win price.

Scott Zeron can make a horse do special things, too. Like McNair, he's only a few years into his driving career and I have to say, he's already better than I ever thought he'd be. The punk couldn't even put a harness on a horse when I worked for Rick at the start of the decade, but now he's better than many with decades more experience than him. While the (much, much, MUCH) younger Zeron's abilities aren't limited to such, he led from start to finish with Molly Baran (3rd), Nobananas (4th) and Duchessofnorthyork (7th) on last night's card and not one of them were favorites, so don't even start! The latter of the three winners left followers of THE PETE SHEETS' Pick Four Synopsis very disappointed as they had very profitable tickets alive onto four of the nine horses in the anchor leg, none of which were Duchessofnorthyork. Her pre-Zeron performances were so horrible that even though she was dropping in class, she didn't have the look of the contender. My mistake, one I won't soon make again.

Before I leave the subject of drivers, I have to once again praise Randy Waples for his heads up drive on Elleofnxample in Woodbine's Friday opener. THE PETE SHEETS identified her as a Beatable Favorite, expecting that her trip would be one in which she was either first-over or mired in traffic, losing momentum as she struggled her way through the last turn. Neither materialized. Waples' ability to read the program and visualize a race's dynamics is not lost on this scribe, nor should it be on anyone gambling on the WEG circuit's races. I'm happy to be wrong when I see a performance like the one I saw last night because heads up drives from our sports' drivers do a lot more good for an industry with perception issues than THE PETE SHEETS beating a favorite will.

Speaking of Waples, when are the masses going to stop betting the Waples-driven Freckly Sara? She tanked at 2-1 again last night and, with one or two more losses as the favorite, will have officially torched almost as much investor money as Bernie Madoff himself! She just does not want to win and it is absolutely beyond me how anyone could want to invest one dollar of their hard-earned on her in win-based bets. Her (perpetual) false favoritism helped the bottom lines of THE PETE SHEETS' followers as WINDSUN COUNTESS paid a healthy $10.40 while being identified as one of the product's Most Probable Winners (announced in yesterday's post) on last night's card. Her 4-1 price was a far cry from the 77-1 that she won at in the previous week, but after the marked improvement that she showed in that race (especially the fact that she was passing other horses, which is something she's been somewhat averse to throughout her career), I figured that with any kind of trip last night, she was a cinch to beat the futile foes she found herself among last night.

Last night's 6th Race was the Ontario Spring Series Final and it featured a "stool jump" (I find if hard to believe that someone that had enough capital to bet $6000 to show on a horse would jump off of a bridge, but a stool, maybe) bet on heavy favorite, Terror Time, who had $8454 of the show pool's $11806 riding on his four feet. As a guy that has torched a lot of money through the windows himself, I can't for the life of me figure out when it would ever be worth risking $6000 (which is what I figure this particular stool jumpers bet was since I don't have access to the actual amount) to make $600. For those of you that aren't from the dark side, gamblers refer to this kind of bet as a "points bet", one in which they are betting a large sum of money not to make a big score through the windows (Terror Time would've paid $2.10 to show), but rather through the cash back that they are afforded by hosts like horseplayerinteractive.com. I'm a little out of the loop these days, but if this person was in a 10% cash back bracket (which seems far-fetched), he'd get $600 credited to his account. Talk about the numbers being against you! Using these numbers as a reference, that person would have to be correct on eleven stool jump bets before s/he could be wrong once in order to stay in the black. Good luck.

Blog reader, Sandi Spencer's Casimir Freedom just missed in the 7th (more Waples) at 17-1. The horse has absolutely come to life since being claimed at WR5/8 on February 14 for just $4000. In the times since, he's amassed a 9-3-4-0 record and more than $14,000.

Speaking of claims, that race's winner, Neocon, was taken for $20,000 by the productive owner/trainer duo of Bert Smith/Dave Menary, who themselves enjoyed a(nother) win with Royal Academy. You all know what I think (and what the earlier graphics proves) about favorites, so in last night's Woodbine version of THE PETE SHEETS that I made disapper (read yesterday's post), I had actually built a late Pick Four ticket that left Royal Academy out. In the end, the horse's unique will to win got him home first over (Live Longshot) Strider despite having the absolute worst trip of any horse in the field. Big shot Waples wasn't so sharp in this case, was he Bert?

When you're as opinionated and outspoken as I am, every once in awhile (a reflection of how often I'm wrong) you have to eat proverbial crow...

Mr. Michael Hamilton - you were right! I was in the booth at Western Fair prepping for (which means drinking coffee and talking to myself) the night's card and like many of you, was watching the pre-game show from WDB7/8. It was the first time in awhile that I'd actually been able to sit down and watch the show from start to finish because we're too broke to subscribe to much more than HPItv's "rolling channel", so I'm usually subjected to watching a post parade from Penn National or an on-air host from Australia picking his nose while not realizing he's on camera rather than Woodbine Racing Live and shows of that ilk. Anyway Mike announces that his Play Of The Night (or whatever) is Whycantiforgetyou in the 11th. He shows video evidence, calls two witnesses, cross-examines Chris Hickey and blah, blah, blah. I'm beside myself. Whycantiforgetyou? Are you kidding me? My know-it-all nickname for her is Whycantiwinone! I immediately send Mike the following text:

"If Whycant wins I'll slow dance with you in the middle of Church Street! Come on! They can all finish like that. You've missed identifying that she has no will to win, an aversion to winning, affinity for losing!"

In a Windsun Rachel-like manner, Whycantiforgetyou won the nightcap by two as the chalk. While I absolutely have not wavered in the opinion I so boldly shared with my friend, it's safe to say I won't be watching the races on Monday night as I'll be tuned to ABC to see what pointers I can pick up from my man Bruno on Dancing With The Stars. Me and my big, fat mouth.



Just putting the finishing touches on tonight's Woodbine version of THE PETE SHEETS, which is quickly becoming the most requested of them all. To all my regulars: I'll email you once it's done. For the rest of you: request your copy by emailing thepetesheets@hotmail.com.

No blog post tomorrow. Our youngest daughter, Charlie Olivia Kyte, is being baptized in the morning and we'll be spending the day with family and friends.

Until Monday...