By Joe Quillen
Sometimes, there’s no place like home. For me, that would be racing at my nearest race track Parx Racing, as today we will look at the sixth race on the card which is a race for horses four years old and up going a mile and a sixteenth. Nine horses are entered for this race which can be claimed for a price of $10,000.
One thing I don’t understand is why my main avenue for this segment Quills Picks Winners, the Daily Racing Form is always picking the sixth race. Anyone? Bueller? I guess because it is the start of the late Philly Big 5 wager? But we will debate this another time.
One thing with a claiming race that is near the bottom of the claiming ladder that I look for is consistency. In this case, the most consistent horse to me is the 8 Rerally (9/2 morning line). He’s been consistently claimed, having been claimed the last three time he ran and four of his last five, he’s also very consistent over the last few months on the track. He’s going to be near the front since there is no real consistent speed here, or just off someone uncharacteristically up front ready to pounce as the hit the top of the stretch. I don’t think you will get higher than the 9/2 odds, but I’m all about picking winners, so that’s why I am picking Rerally today.
The 1 Secret Path did face tougher, but faced horses at a lower tag and get back to the winners circle last month. Trevor McCarthy is scheduled to come in from New York to ride here. Though McCarthy had a rough year on the NYRA circuit, a day down I-95 might cure some problems. Secret Path is back with 10k claimers here and looks to be closing here.
The 4 Hey Porter is the morning line favorite (7/2 ML) and faced a higher class of claimers in his last few races. He may wake up here as he’s below the 15k tag where we won back in September.
My play for today is the 8 Rerally, and my play is $20 to win on the 8. Since I’m the type of guy that occasionally plays numbers for laughs and giggles, I’m going to add the 2 Saint Marco (12/1 ML) for a 50 cent superfecta box of 1,2,4,8 which is a geometric number sequence that I used to play a lot and would occasionally come out and some math nerd stuff I have flashbacks on from when I was in my first college foray. If one of those four horses are scratched, ignore the superfecta since I’m not adding another horse. Good luck everyone!
2023 stats (final)
I did some number crunching on New Year’s afternoon, and here are the results for 2023 with the small sample size we had:
- Win bets: 7 for 39 (17.95%)
- Exactas: 0 for 2
- Superfectas: 0 for 1
- Pick 3s: 0 for 1
- Pick 5s: 0 for 1
Smarty Jones Stakes result
Our New Year’s Day horse Lagynos fooled me and went for the lead in the Smarty Jones and finished off the board finishing sixth. Catching Freedom passed Just Steel in the stretch to win going away as the 7/5 favorite. Informed Patriot and Gettysburg Address finished third and fourth.
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