Click Here for an introduction to the NY Hot List & the Interbets Blog Archive

********************************************************************

February 18, 2012
********************************************************************

By Shawn Rychling

The Aqueduct winter meet (does it really feel like winter this year) rolls on and the New York Hot List has lived up to its name with several multiple-win days of late.

Our biggest day may have been Sunday Feb. 5 when we had Minister’s Fate win and pay $75.50 to win.  That wasn’t all as another hot list horse, Wow Me, took second in that race to complete a $391 exacta!

Minster’s Fate took some mild action moving from 8-1 to 6-1 on the board in her previous race on Jan. 16.  Let me include our race notes on her effort that day:

Took a little late money off that mild wakeup last time out. Raced 3-wide on both turns in this one and showed very little.  She does have two wins on the inner and we think she is better suited to a 6-furlong event.

As you can see this horse was on an upswing for 2 straight races and we stressed the inner track success and that a turnback to 6 furlongs would be a boon to her chances.  This is why you need access to our race reviews and you can get them by opening an Interbets.com account.  And in addition we’ll always have picks and analysis for every racing day on the NYRA circuit.

Things I Think About

If you follow the races daily as I do you look for every conceivable angle to gain an edge and at the forefront of that is race conditions and how horses may perform as they move in and out of those conditions.

Saturday’s card has a couple of good examples of this with Hot List horses.

In Race 2 we have The Tapinator making his sixth career start in a $35,000 maiden claiming race for New York State breds.

The horse is coming off the best race of his career in which he ran second at 17-1.  That race came against open 16k maiden claimers.  I checked the past performances for that race and he was one of only 3 New York breds entered.

So now the question is how a 16k maiden claimer for any horse compares with a 35k maiden claimer for New York breds.  The price is higher, but it is restricted to a limited pool of state breds.

Alas, The Tapinator is the morning line favorite at 2-1, but is that prediction due to the class move or his recent form?  As for how he actually runs we’ll have to wait and see.

The 5^th race on Saturday’s card is a bottom-level, $7,500 claimer for horses which have never won 2 races.  That would be the N2L condition. 

The hot list has Purge Bird and Cool Operator racing at that condition for the second-straight week.  But if you look at the 2 horse, Up Above, he arguably ran his best race in a while of Feb. 11 and it came in a Clm7500N2X race. 

The X stands for races ‘other than’ maiden, claiming or starter which means Up Above may have raced against horses with multiple wins rather than against horses that have won only once in their lifetimes.  Owners and trainers will tell you that horses with 2 or more wins are ‘hickory tough’ or a huge cut above the maidens and one-time winners.

Up Above may have run against significantly better horses last time while he is in today against foes that are 1-for-55, 1-for-46 and 1-for-36. It is interesting that he is 10-1 in the morning line.

Just a few tidbits to think about as you play the races this weekend and beyond.

Be sure to check out all our Hot List picks right her every day.  Don’t forget that all of our daily race reviews are available to Interbets account holders. To sign up for an account go to Interbets.com.

Saratoga opens in 152 days!