Fast and Firm, by Guest Blogger Owen

Please join me in welcoming back for a second guest blogging stint, your favorite degenerate gambler and mine, Owen Poole.

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Handicapping the ponies is a tough racket but it seems wildly entertaining if you let yourself get into it, so a chance to spend three days trying to do just that with the likes of grizzled veterans bearing nicknames like Billy the Hat, Andy the Greek and Super Johnny Supers couldn’t be passed up. Plus, there’s a part of me that has always wanted to be a degenerate gambler. Here was my chance to take my quest to a new level.

You kind of need a remarkable mind to do it right. It’s a completely different language to read and understand. Part of it is like being in a classroom. Except it’s outside and you have a cooler that fits 101 beers.

The process starts early, and of course, involves omelets and coffee. Then you head to the track ($3 admission), stake your claim to a table of your liking (a cooler, a couple of papers and a plastic tablecloth will do the trick), and retreat back to the hotel, in this case, the luxurious Robin Hood Motel,

where you crash over the racing forms every day for the test.

Then it’s back to the track.

To me, the hour or so sitting there before the races start, that’s the best part. If only for the one-liners that haven’t gotten themselves too drunk yet. A context-free sampling:

It’s a nice hat if you’re going on safari.
If you knew where I was, I would have moved already.
Unless she’s got four legs, I don’t wanna look at her right now.
He’s got champagne taste and a root beer budget.
If I get any smarter, you have my permission to cut me in half and make two of me.

We were near the paddock for the first two days, where the general gambling audience can get one last look before the race starts.

The basic formula I’ve used in my very brief history of handicapping is to play the jockeys and the trainers before anything else, and I got a tip that Ramon Dominguez was the hot jockey. So I spent the majority of the first day betting on any horse that had Dominguez up. Only when I stopped betting on Ramon did he win the last two races of the day. Damn that Dominguez.

I don’t know who would want that rotten crumb’s autograph.

Time for a new strategy. But first, steaks.

I lost the first nine races the next day, and had one $20 bill in my pocket heading into the final race. So, I did what anyone of sound mind would do: I put $20 to win on the 3 horse, Dominguez’s Living on the Edge, and broke maiden. If you’re only going to win one race, make it the last of the day. It’s funny how leaving the track with $77 bucks in your pocket makes you forget that you had already spent $100.

After, while others made preparations for Vodka Night (no photos available), I had a hankering for some beer, so me and Johnny Slips hightailed it past a bunch of lawn jockeys in town and made our way to the Olde Saratoga Brewery, where the indomitable Stevie Z. does his thing.

Brewers speak a whole ‘nother language of their own, but, damn that’s a tasty batch.

Until next year, goodnight from Saratoga.