Horse Racing: Garrity goes after Thursday exotics at Santa Anita

We looked at Santa Anita's card today, and at first, the races looked to be rather formful: We've all seen parades of winning favorites, and while there are some horseplayers who relish this -- chalk-eating weasels, the lot of them! -- this is not our bag. We need overlays. The objective here, as it is with all gambling, is to make money, and it's simply too hard to turn a profit when one race after another features winners paying $4.60.

But another, deeper dive into the past performances caused us to reassess the card in Arcadia: rather than fighting the chalk, we're going to use it to try to grind out a profit. And the best way to do that is in the multi-race exotics. We're talking here, of course, of the early Pick 5 (Races 1-5) and the early Pick 4 (Races 2-5).

Race 1 is a $35,000 claimer for older fillies and mares at a mile on the grass. It's a fairly wide-open race, and we'll spread in the Pick 5 to cover as many of these as we can.

Race 2 is a 6-furlong dirt Maiden Special for older horses, and features a seeming standout: 2-Victory Element, features the lethal trainer-jockey combination of Bob Baffert and Drayden Van Dyke. He's 6/5 on the morning line, and will likely be even shorter at post time. We will use him, as well as 4-Mantaray Island, who looks the best of the rest, in both the Pick 4 and the Pick 5.

Race 3 is an 8-furlong Maiden Special on the dirt for 3-year-old fillies, and this is the crux of all our plays: 1- Slewgoodtobetrue, a Peter Eurton trainee ridden by Mike Smith, towers over the rest of the field. She is even money in the program, and will be more like 3/5 when the gates open, but we're not going to outsmart ourselves and try to beat her: we will single her on all tickets.

Race 4 is an interesting $25K claimer at a mile on the grass for fillies and mares 4-and-up. This race, like the first, is competitive, but we think we can get this race with the combination of 1-Girl Downstairs (2-1), 3-Miss Boom Boom (5-2), and 6-Peach Cove (4-1). We'll use these three in both the Pick 4 and the Pick 5.

Race 5 is 6 1/2 furlongs down the Santa Anita hillside turf course for $50,000, 3-year-old maiden claimers. These races can be chaotic, but we feel that we can cover it with 2-Nice Work (3-1), 3-Drink (5-2), and 7-Dyf (5-1). 5-Gran Martillo (5-1), is a marginal contender; we'll include him on the Pick 4 tickets, but for the sake of economy, we'll leave him out of the Pick 5.

So we are going to try to leverage Race 3 chalk 1-Slewgoodtobetrue, and to a lesser extent the two standouts in Race 2, to fashion the following two plays:

Race 1 Pick 5: 1,2,6,7 with 2,4 with 1 with 1,3,6 with 2,3,7. For a 50-cent wager, this ticket will cost $36. For a smaller wager, leave off 4-Mantaray Island, from the second race: this skinnies the ticket down to an $18 play (1,2,6,7 with 2 with 1 with 1,3,6 with 2,3,7).

Race 2 Pick 4: 2,4 with 1 with 1,3,6 with 2,3,5,7. For the 50-cent base wager, this ticket costs $12.

When you're dealing with favorites who figure to dominate races at miserly odds, you can either fight them or join them. We're not going to try to fight City Hall today; we're going to try to use them to turn a small bet into a decent score.

That's it for today: we'll be back Saturday with a look at the national stakes races. Good luck at the windows!