I did a big edit on message 92 and filled the angles in.. 

Oldbettowin said...

Does it matter if they bred him or if they just bought him at the yearling auction?

Yes, that's why I said Calumet doesn't have the same owners since I took that stat.  ;)  And I didn't list Everfast as a homebred in the preakness or the derby.  Of course it matters, but they still have good bloodstock people who know what they're doing there.  
Lukas gets a lot of horses from them, and he has a pretty good eye for good horses, despite that he is no longer the force to be reckoned with that he once was, I trust his *eye* for horseflesh.  

A few years ago I made a list of every horse who ran ITM in the TC races and their auction prices.   Usually cheap horses don't win this race, but then you have some who do like Palace Malice, Victory Gallop, etc.   I'll be glad to PM the document to you sometime.  I have one for this year too, but I can't find it under all the paper on my desk  LOL    From memory, intrepid, bourbon and WoW were pricey.   
Tax (gelding), spinoff, master fencer and tacitus are homebreds.......any horse outside of all those were *pretty cheap*. 

BTW, Tax is running with plastic shoes.  

I read thru all the veterinary reports. 
 

Very solid.

I guess something like whether a horse was cheap or not would mostly be in the eye of the beholder.  Take PalMal for instance...I can’t tell if he was sold as a yearling or not but pedigree query says he was sold as a two year old in training for $200,000.  That is decidedly not cheap.  

I have several things I look at that aren’t strictly quantified (and some that aren’t quantifiable at all) and therefore have to stay mindful that some of my impressions are inevitably going to be subjective.  But without subjectivism we would all be betting on the same horse and where’s the fun in that? ;)

Oldbettowin said...

I guess something like whether a horse was cheap or not would mostly be in the eye of the beholder.

We were talking about auction prices, right?   Not sure what that has to do with "eye of the beholder".  :)  I just copy them straight out of equibase.

Meanwhile, undercard is going well.  Made me realize my investment in Belmont won't be very large.  The odds seem kinda low for the kind of risk we are taking.  
 

Not to belabor the point but I was just using one of your examples Palace Malice to try to understand where you were coming from.  Most people wouldn’t consider anything about him to be cheap as he was bred by royalty (well not literally royalty but Will Farish was US ambassador to the UK)  and sold to Dogwood for 200k.  

It’s been a crazy Triple Crown season, and I haven’t cashed on either of the first two legs, so let’s see if we can go out with a bang.  After all, 2017 was my only other season (since I started capping TC races in 2010) that I didn’t cash in at least 1 of the 3 races, so I’d like to avoid another goose egg.

In this year’s Belmont, after I tallied up points for all of the different pedigree and performance factors that I’ve learned to respect, my scores were clustered into tiers.  My top contenders are Tacitus and Spinoff.  After them I like Tax and Sir Winston the best.  And then my fringe contenders, just for the bottom of a tri, would be Master Fencer and Intrepid Heart.  Accordingly, I structured my tickets as shown below.

Total wager is $62.  Enjoy the race, and thanks to all of the good people of this forum for sharing your thoughts with me this spring.  Let’s do it again next TC season!

Cheers and good luck,

Patrick

=====

$26 PLACE:

6

$2 EX:

6, 10 with 4, 6, 7, 10

($12)

$1 TRI:

6, 10 with

4, 6, 7, 10 with

3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10

($24)

Ive had Tacitus slotted as Belmont horse since I first looked a his pedigree.  Also playing Sir Winston., putting MF in 3rd and Wow 4th, will play small exotics with tax, the the previous four mostly straight. mixing up the top two in top posititions and bottom two in bottom positions.

I'm also playing Tacitus, along with Intrepid Heart, as top 2, wheeling the rest in 3rd for the tri....placing a saver bet on Spinoff for the win, as his price warrants it.  A possible wire-to-wire..

Nicely done!  Hopefully Raes has something on it too; he was all over Winston and Tacitus.