I Could Be a Contender

I’m thinking that the best career for me later in life is to be a professional pari-mutual betting gambler. That’s right, a horseplayer. Now, this might seem like an odd career choice given that I’ve only been to the track about a dozen times in my life and have not been particularly successful in making winning bets. But the key point is that I think I have the right sort of temperament and abilities to be a horseplayer, and more importantly, I look good in a straw porkpie hat.

They touts in the Daily Racing Form don’t seem to be much better than me at picking winners; they’ve just got a rap down on each race. I think I could do that. Consider my assessment of the 6th at Emerald Downs on September 5th, 2005:

Standard Setter came close last time out at better than 2-1 and his Beyers’ are pretty solid for this field. Bucko Wins steps down precipitously and ought to show class among these foes. Voile Soar could surprise given more room to work with.

It ain’t poetry, sure, but guess what? I picked the exacta and it paid 15 to 1.

Also, my top pick of the day, Once It Happens, went off at 3 to 1 and paid $6.00 on a $2.00 bet.

All in all, I bet $101.00 yesterday. In the end, I won $124.00. That’s about a 20% return on my investment. If I were to do that consistently, I could support myself as long as I was willing to wager about half a million dollars a year. That would mean I’d have to average about fifteen thousand dollars a day in wagers. That would require me to make about two thousand dollars worth of better on each race. Had I done that yesterday, I’d have won around two thousand bucks. And what fun I would have had…as long as my wife had no idea of what I was doing.