Santa Anita Showvivor

[ranger5830]

I like that idea, I play a lot of poker tournaments and it is common practice that once you get to heads up, to split the money that is left but still leave something to play for to make it interesting. Perhaps $2k each and then leave $1k "on the table" so to speak. I think my lead in the place tiebreak has some value so I think that is a good split. When I wrote that post I was two wins behind but made up one over the weekend, but lost a piece of my total places lead.

When I had my first miss we had a discussion about the importance of field size, I was curious so I went through and evaluated all the odds-on horses at the current meeting so far through Sunday. (Can't say "odds-on favorites" because there was a 4-horse race that had two 9-10 shots.) Anyway, here is what I found:

field size itm% # of applicable horses

4 100 7
5 83.3 30
6 88.2 34
7 80 20
8 84 25
9 85.7 14
10 87.5 8
11 100 3
12 100 2
13 100 1

Obviously it's a very small sample size, but it seems to indicate that field size is not the most important factor, the quality of the horse relative to its competition is, other than the 4 horse fields where you need the favorite to run dead last. Plus in contests like this the horse in the short field will always get more picks. With the 12-13 fields you get very good horses that
lay over the field, for instance the three horses so far that have been odds on have been Dortmund, Gimme da Lute and Shared Belief.