Horse Player World Series Blog, Day One
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GREAT TURNOUT, TOUGH
DAY
By Dave Gutfreund,
DerbyWars
Having reversed a
trend over the past couple of years, The Horseplayer World Series (HPWS) has
drawn a strong field of 681 at the Orleans Hotel in Las Vegas which is a nice
increase over last year creating a prize pool of $681,000.
Here is a brief
breakdown of the top awards:
Overall -
1st/$306,450, 2nd/$68,100, 3rd/$47,670, 4th/$34,050, 5th/$20,430
Daily - 1st - $9,080.
2nd - $4540, 3rd/$3632, 4th/$2724, 5th/$2724
With a dearth of
decent-priced winners around the country yesterday, the overall scores were
rather low. Only 9 of the contestants managed to at least
double their mythical bankroll of $600, which consists of fifteen $20 WP
wagers capped at 19-1 for win and 9-1 to place for all but first $2 on which
full track odds are paid, while only about one-quarter of the field could
manage a 'break-even' effort getting more than $600.
Here is the Top Ten
after yesterday's action:
1. Robert Gregory -
1682
2. Bob Montgomery -
1442
3. Chris Larmey - 1376
4. Bernard Reilly -
1368
5. Tom Heller
1286
6. Rob Rubin - 1264
7. Zev Lederman - 1260
8. John O'Neil - 1258
9. Ray Moriarty - 1238
10. Rick Soriano -
1198
Our Derby Wars
spotlight goes out to 'pseudoego' who ended Thursday's action in 17th-place
with 1132. He'll be getting a Derby Wars hat this morning upon entrance
into the Mardi Gras Ballroom.
Sadly, my day which
started out a combination of promisingly and frustrating at the same time ended
with vast disappointment...emabarrassingly not even netting a winner on
any of my three entries. There was a stretch early in the day when
in four consecutive races I was involved in (three of them using two horses on
different entries it must be noted), horses I used ran second at 13-1, 15-1,
16-1, and 5-1. I felt like I was on my game identifying live
runners at good odds but from there it went straight downhill. The
pathetic bottom line is my three scores are 270, 198, and the dreaded 0.
[Read Dave's preview of the HorsePlayer World Series here.]
Obviously, I must have
one of my three entries have an unusually good day for me to have any
sort of chance going into Saturday for a major prize. And in reality, I
shot myself in the proverbial foot yesterday as did a number of tournament
regulars chasing longshots on a day when there were very few horses which
paid above $20 and no limit horses.
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