Horse Player World Series Blog, Day Two
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THROUGH TWO DAYS, A
LEGENDARY PERFORMANCE
While Robert Gregory
is slightly familiar to yours truly from the handicapping contest world, his
name could very well end up going down in the history books as his performance
through the first two days of the HorsePlayer World Series (HPWS) at the Orleans
Hotel in Las Vegas has been simply amazing.
On days when a number
of seasoned tournament regulars had difficulties directly related to not being
able to have the board co-operate with a number of bigger-priced winners,
Gregory has accomplished sopmething which this long-term contest player can't
remember having happened before. It is difficult enough in a field of 681
contestants to have the highest score in a single day but to do it on
back-to-back days is beyond amazing. A 680-1 shot coming in on consecutive
days has natural odds of 463,760-1.
And as you'd expect
with the same person having had the top score on both Thursday and Friday,
Robert Gregory has a nice working margin heading into Saturday's action, where
players will make fifteen mythical $20 WP wagers with a cap of 19-1 for
win and 9-1 for place though full track odds are paid on initial $2 of
wager. Races from eight tracks (AQU, TB, GP, OP, FG, HAW, SA, GG) can be
selected. Here is how the Top Ten shapes up after Day 2:
1. Robert Gregory -
3348
2. Bob Rubin - 2630
3. Jerry Baldando -
2490
4. Bill Moore - 2391
5. Randall Miller -
2368
6. Rick Soriano - 2150
7. Bob Montgomery -
2096
8. Tom Miller - 2084
9. Randy Scholz - 2038
10. James Lei - 1969
Gregory's lead over
the second-place contestant is more than the starting bankroll while the
current sixth-place holder is more than double the starting bankroll behind the
runaway leader, who has spread-eagled this group. Having watched many
contests on Derby Wars over the past few months, to get to the score Gregory
has gotten given the texture of the board, he must have basically connected
just about every dot somehow. It is difficult enough to do that in a
contest with all mandatory races but to find essentially the only decent-priced
prices which exist from a large number of tracks and to have all of those
winners on the same ticket is just mind-boggling.
Speaking of Derby
Wars, our spotlight player today is JoeK, who managed to climb into
31st place in the overall standings with a score of 1680. Not only
that, JoeK was sighted playing on Derby Wars last night as well...not a bad
idea by the way with the Saturday Big Game taking place this afternoon. I
will try and find JoeK today and give him a Derby Wars hat.
To do extremely well in
a handicapping contest with 681 players, a high-risk, high-reward approach must
be taken. All the big money is in the initial few placings and finishing
at or near the bottom pays the same as finishing in mid-pack or just missing
making the money.
And for me, after my
pathetic Day 1, I had to take on even more risk in an attempt which turned out
to be feeble to get back into the tournament from a competitive
point-of-view. It didn't happen. My three pathetic scores are 374,
270, 266. All I have to go for today are going for daily awards and
in-turn if I do manage to get something going today on one or more of my
entries, I could possibly sneak into the money with a big number.
But my feelings are a
combination of vast disappointment and just being wiped-out with all of the
work associated with grinding away with eight tracks. I'm not getting any
younger and despite my poor position overall thus far will give it all I have
to give today until the math says I can't even scrounge up a daily award.
Be back tonight with a
quick score update and an overall Top Ten and will have a full-blown review on
Sunday.
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