Nat'l Championship Prizes

[Cliff]

New purse format.......go get it guys:

http://www.drf.com/nhc/nhc.html

[ronnie h]

what is head 2 head? as a ky red neck i got a lot to learn

[Cliff]

One horse "head to head" against another for several races each day. Usually pretty evenly matched.

Each DRF/NTRA qualifier can enter and most wins takes the pot. Seems like there were lots of ties last year. Can't remember for sure.

[100Aces]

Hello Boys,

I don't remember how the H2H played out but it works just like Cliff said. Tournament designates several races. From those races they choose 2 horses. You, the player must decide which horse will beat the other. Not which horse will win. Just who will beat who - Horse A runs 7th, Horse B runs 8th - you win if you selected Horse A. Most winners gets the 5 large each day.

[dehere]

Also, for what its worth, I've set up weblog which is dedicated to my entry in the NTRA finals at Bally's. I want a way to be able to communicate with friends easily during the contest and figured this would be a fun way to do things. Of course, if I go 0-fer the weblog is gonna be kinda embarrassing. But, hey, I've never been one to avoid a good time out of a fear of being embarrassed. Anyway, feel free to check out http://horseracing.typepad.com and offer comments or suggestions on how to improve things or what horses to watch out for.

[MikeDee]

Post
I have a question on the rules

do the payouts have a max?

and

can you play the same pick as a mandatory and as an optional or if you paly a pick as a mandatory then you cannot also pick it as a optional?

[km]

'Dee, the usual $42/$22 cap on the winnings applies. So the maximum points for any one tournament tally would be 66 points.

I don't know if you can use an optional wager on the mandatory races, but I'm guessing no.

[Cliff]

MikeDee,

Supposedly, only one horse per race which would, in effect, keep one from playing a mandy as an optional. However, I'm 99% sure that the guy next to me last year played more than one horse in an optional race at least once. Apparently, there were no double-checks in the system to prevent him from doing that.

Ken,

$42 + $22 = $64
You must be sleep deprived! :o

[km]

ah - that was a test Cliff - you caught the error (66) good for you!

No word from Vegas on the Standings and the DRF.com has no update. There are rumors of problems there though. Ernie said he would contact me with the standings and scores of the HTR people asap. Let's hope they didn't have a breakdown of the tote or computer like the Orleans.

[Inglewood Flamingo]

Hey Ken! What happened to the update from LV on the fellow HTR players?... I hope someone had the $150 top rated workout bomber at Gulfstream!

[km]

Welcome aboard 'Flamingo. The news had been tough to come by from Vegas on the tournament. I did post some results and await the entire HTR totals on the General forum.

Wow - what a monster winner at GP - 70/1 with a top rated workout of 91. Only problem with that race was there were about 8 horses with strong work patterns since it was a big stakes race, but the winner did have the highest workout number of all. Thanks for reporting it.

I hit an exacta on Friday with a 70/1 shot that finished 2nd at GP in race-7; Fr1 = 1. Good prices continue to come home at Gulfstream, and several of them have been 2nd or 3rd ranked (K). Good example was GP-5 on Saturday. Maybe I won't continue to boycott!

[AlanLN]

Ken,
I have a question about the pedigree rating. The pedigree rating of that 70-1 horse was 276, one of the lowest in the field. Does HTR have anything that indicates whether the sire of a horse tends to sire sprinters as opposed to routers, perhaps that is incorporated within the pedigree rating?
This GP race was a MDN race at 9.0f with several horses stretching out from sprints. Most of the horses' sires in this race appear to have distance pedigrees.
In the past( before HTR) , when looking at these MDN races and horses trying grass ( or stretching out in distance) for the 1st or 2nd time I've usually considered pedigree (mostly using Mike Helm's Sire Ratings, and the Tomlinson Ratings somewhat) and whether the horse may or may not tend to improve with the different race conditions.

[km]

Alan, the pedigree rating on the 70/1 winner was an excellent = 662
Oh, I see you're talking about the 70/1 Fr1 horse that finished 2nd on Friday.

HTR PED rating is based on distance + surface. The computation also contains both the sire and the dam sire. So the rating might be considerably different if the horse is racing in a dirt sprint vs. a turf route, etc. Also there is an adjustment to the PED for first time on the surface and FTS. So keep those differences in mind when comparing to other ratings which use only the sire and only the surface to compute their number.

With most maiden races at the big tracks, the pedigree and the trainer are scrutinized heavily by the public. Had the horse had a strong sire rating it is unlikely it would have been such a big longshot and 70/1.

Having said all that, Fr1 tends to transcend almost anything we try to tie in with it, particularly when you study 'bombs' and Fr1. Horses have won at 80/1 with top Fr1 at 1 5/8 miles on grass and everything in-between. It is just not possible to narrow it down because with the big priced Fr1's it is evident that the race must somehow unfold in their favor, usually a comfortable lone lead. That is just not predictable ahead of time except that the Fr1 is the most likely runner to take advantage of any situation that somehow becomes advantageous for the early speed.

[tomcat]

No disrespect intended, but a sire rating is only half of the story. In fact, most equine appraisers will tell you that the mare can account for 60% of the linage effect. For whatever reason, not all breeders match turf to turf, sprint to sprint or dist to dist breedings.

Having said that, there are several very fine handicappers in Ky who handicap by breeding. I think Neil can talk about that.

BTW Neil, where are you?