I want to take a minute and express a concern that I've had for some time, but that has been placed into clear relief by this week's contest card. That has to do with the way in which the points contest format tends to push most of us into selecting lots and lots of the same horses and tends to stifle handicapping creativity. In this week's group of races, the small fields and relative lack of bad favorites (you know, those horses for which you would say, "I wouldn't bet on that horse with YOUR money") has left us with picking many of the same horses on top (well, why in the world wouldn't you put Imperial Hint on top?) and often putting many of the same picks in the second slot. That means that there is a high likelihood that the winner will be the player who does the best job of picking a some third place finishers out of a few equally matched candidates. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but to me it is sort of disappointing.
Of course, I could be all wrong in this. The Turf Classic has the potential of having real surprises and when you are dealing with 2 year olds stretching to two turns for the first time, just about anything can happen. But it seems that most of us are looking at a lot of these races the same way, and that our experience in trying to win a contest with the points contest format has driven us in that direction.
I wish I had some proposal that might be a solution to this concern, especially if anyone else might happen to share this concern. Unfortunately I don't. This post is designed to provoke reaction and perhaps ask whether we ought to think about any other format that we would find more to everyone's liking. There may be a majority who say, "I like the format exactly as it is", in which case I'll try to keep my concerns to myself.
Thank you for listening, my friends.
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