Race 4

ARVer: Mel

Now things start to get really interesting 😉

Mel is not doing any judging, that’s up to Marty and me. For this race, Marty and I came up with different best matches of photosites to his sketch – we flip-flopped, with my highest being his 2nd choice and vice-versa, and we even exactly flip-flopped Targ CRs of 3.5 and 5.

Marty had #3 Dabnabit and I had #6 White Shoes.

(Up to this point, this was the only difference in our two tickets.)

#6 raced close to the pace, got to 2nd at the eighth-pole (12 seconds from the finish), then tired to finish 5th at 5-1.

Marty’s choice #3 led through late stretch – he had a big 2 1/2 length lead at the eighth pole! – then tired suddenly to finish 3rd, beaten 2 1/2 lengths – at 50-1!!!!!

I was SCREAMING at the TV down the stretch!!!!

Had #3 held on to win, Marty’s ticket would have been among the contest leaders (with $64, due to the odds cap of 20-1 Win and 10-1 Place, plus it being unlikely anyone would have all 4 winners of such high prices).

We both gave the winner#9 a 2 Targ CR.

So, we are definitely getting closer and closer – all our horses seem to be outrunning their odds, which is always a good thing, but especially in contests like this.

Race 5

ARVer: Teresa

Teresa was out of town all week, so submitted her sessions in advance, with nominal coordinates.

She also did judging, but since she did not know the number of outcomes, she fixed it at 10. I decided not to use her judging for this reason, and did my own, with a new photoset.

As always, the rationale for this is that the universe knew ahead of time we’d be doing this, so arranged it for us to ARV the new photoset’s winning photosite.

Our horse #9 Macedonian was off slowly, and never a factor, finishing 9th at 30-1.

There were good matches with the winner #2’s photosite – I gave it a 4, tied for 2nd (after a scratch) – and #2 just got up to win by a head at 20-1!

Now, if our choice #9 had been a shorter price, I may have looked at betting #2, since he was such a longshot – but at 30-1, I didn’t even consider it.

If I had, #2 would have netted us $55.80 in points winnings – and we would be at or near the lead, if we had also had the horse in the 4th race hold on at 50-1.

Are you getting the idea of how fluid all this is?

In case you were wondering: Teresa’s judging came up with #6, who finished last at 122-1. She gave the winner a 0; two outcomes were missing from her judging, since this was a 12 horse race, and she only did 10 outcomes.

Race 6

ARVer: Loraine

By this time, as both our tickets were still at $0 points in spite of our good longshots, it was time to consider selecting only longshots on Tom’s ticket.

(Marty was not available during the contest, so his ticket remained unchanged from the self-judged ARV choices all day.)

Loraine (Targ 4.5) and I (5) agreed in our judging that #3 Farmer Jones’ photosite was the best match.

But at 10 minutes to post, he was around 8-1, and that would not be enough for us to play quick catch-up in the standings (he went off at 14-1).

So I looked elsewhere for a better price. I settled on #11 Christophers’image, whom Loraine had given a 2.5 (tied for 2nd) and me a 3 (3rd).

In the race, #3 was no factor, finishing 9th.

But imagine my EXCITEMENT when #11 came charging down the stretch, GAINED the LEAD seconds from the wire – only to be passed by #5 in the last few jumps, to finish 2nd – at 74-1!!!!!!

EXCELLENT!!!!

He was beaten a length – if he’d won, and the other 2 races had turned out, we’d be in FRONT!

As it was, we cashed our first points of the day – $22 on my ticket as the 10-1 cap Place price (he actually paid 23-1 to Place!).

The winner of this race got a 2.5 from Loraine (tied for 2nd in her rankings), only a 1 from me.

So, to summarize the first 6 races, we had several excellent opportunities with longshots, but this race was the only one where we got any points out of it.