Monday Morning Message with Jason Beem March 20, 2023

A good Monday morning to you all! Hope everyone had a good weekend. As we talked about on my podcast last week with TwinSpires’ own James Scully, this weekend was kind of the quiet weekend before the final round of Kentucky Derby (G1) preps really kick in this coming weekend.

While most of us do enjoy the prep season and all the excitement of the Road to the Kentucky Derby, it was kind of nice to get a little respite from it.

I think I’m just as guilty as anyone in the racing landscape for focusing too much sometimes on stakes races. Granted, it’s where the stars play, but my real passion for this game has always been on the betting side of things. And quite often, the best betting races on the card aren’t the big stakes races that we all dedicate so much time to covering.

If I think back over all the years, most of my biggest scores always just occurred on random days of racing. No huge stakes, no big huge anything. One time I took down an entire pool in a late Pick 4 at Emerald Downs. It was a Monday night, and the card was just regular old claiming races and yet, I can remember each leg of the sequence very clearly and how the ticket laid out. I think my second-biggest hit was a Pick 4 at Hollywood Park that was on a weekday. Again, no big stakes, just a sequence that laid out well and some good luck along the way.

I bring this up because I think sometimes we as horseplayers can get sucked into the marquee events. It’s not a bad thing, per se, but I think it’s something to be aware of. The opportunities that come along from a huge day are exciting, and it’s so easy to get swept up in that and bet accordingly. Hey, the pools are huge, let’s go for it.

However, if you don’t have an opinion or feel strongly about a sequence, why are you dedicating so much time and money to it? Just as there might be a Tuesday at Parx where you hate a couple of big favorites and love some prices. Maybe that’s the sequence you should be aggressively going after and not the all-stakes Pick 4 at a track you never play.

I think this “quiet” weekend just had me thinking about stuff like that. One of my favorite things to do back home is to go out to Emerald Downs’ fifth floor and watch the races all day Saturday. It’s the same characters there every weekend. Larry, Tony, and the same other 10 or 12 fellas are there every weekend, and they don’t really care about if it’s a big day or a "quiet" day. They’re all playing two or three tracks, playing the early Pick 5s, and hoping to catch a winner or a big ticket.

One of the great things in our game is that anything can happen on any given day. You might be reading this column on a Monday morning and on the verge of smashing a big sequence at Mahoning Valley. A score you’ll remember for years and be able to recite what happened in each leg as you built up to the payoff. That can happen today!

Or, it could happen on Saturday at Fair Grounds or Turfway, where everyone will be watching. You truly don’t know when or where that big score is coming from. It’s a great part of our sport, and walking into my booth at Tampa on a quiet Friday or Tampa Bay Derby day, I never know if something great, awful, random, or crazy is going to happen.

Here’s to more great than crazy for you all this week!