Possible Venue for April 6 Contest - "Coast to Coast"

[JolyB]

For this weekend's contest, I'd like to suggest a "coast to coast" group of races. We can include 3 qualifiers for the Kentucky Derby that carry 100 points to the winner, 3 qualifiers for the Kentucky Oaks that do the same, and 3 major stakes races for older horses. There are some pluses and minuses for this that I'll mention later.

Aqueduct:
Race 8 - Gazelle - (4:47 PM Eastern) (6 entries)
Race 9 - Carter - (5:22 PM Eastern) (8 entries)
Race 10 - Wood - (6:00 PM Eastern) (11 entries)

Keeneland:
Race 8 - Madison - (5:10 PM Eastern) (9 entries)
Race 9 - Ashland - (5:45 PM Eastern) (8 entries)
Race 10 - Blue Grass - (6:23 PM Eastern) (14 entries)

Santa Anita:
Race 3 - Santa Anita Oaks - (1:00 PM Pacific) (5 entries)
Race 8 - Santa Anita Derby - (3:30 PM Pacific) (6 entries)
Race 10 - Santa Anita Handicap - (4:30 PM Pacific) (6 entries)

I intentionally limited the card to 9 races to compensate for the additional handicapping and scoring time involved in covering races at 3 tracks.

The number of entries on several of the races is somewhat disappointing. Another drawback of jumping from coast to coast is that it dramatically reduces the opportunities for ROI players who want to make multi race wagers (i.e. no Grand Slam at AQ - sorry RQ)

On the plus side, we get to play each of the major Derby and Oaks preps as the fields for both of those races start to take serious shape. We'll have a chance to see whether the trend of horses in Derby preps that finish in the exacta without any prior Derby points continues or comes to an end. Additionally, I believe that the bulk of these races will be televised, since both Fox Sports and NBC Sports have horse racing programs on Saturday afternoon. While the fields are small for some races, they include "name" runners - Game Winner, Roadster and Instagrand in the SA Derby, Bellafina and Chasing Yesterday in the SA Oaks and McKinzie in the Big Cap. The aggregate purse value of these races is $5,250,000.

I think that we can have an enjoyable and competitive contest card despite some smaller fields and would like to propose this set of races. If any of you have serious objections, please post them here for further consideration.