Its time to dust off your cowboy boots and hat, because we are heading down to Houston Texas to tackle StableDuel’s biggest contest of the day. Sam Houston Race Park is open January through June, but thoroughbred racing ends early April. After that, the track is used for quarter horse racing. Also fun, if you go on certain Saturdays, you can find osterich, camel and even wiener dog racing. StableDuel adopted a small track mission and have been putting their money where their mouths are. They are committed to putting on big contests at the less than premium tracks, which has in turn brought real money to these tracks. Its pretty remarkable to see the track pools grow.
Back to the contests… Today we have a $30 contest with a $3,000 guarantee and a FREE RIDE contest with a $500 prize pool. I highly suggest building a lineup for both. In my experience, the free contests are a bit harder to win whereas that same lineup in a paid contest will sometimes land you in the money. I’ll be in both contests today and you can look for me with the stable “splitxserenade”. Racing gets underway at 5:00pm EST. In this article, I will lay out some opinions based on price tier.
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High Price Favorites
She’s Our Fastest $8500 / Boerne $8000 – Race 7
I’m going to give you a 2 for 1 play here. If we have a dry day, I LOVE She’s Our Fastest in this race for Gelner. When Gelner brings Ty Kennedy to Houston, it normally means the horse is sitting on a big race and that’s what we find today. There’s a lot of speed in this race today and She’s Our Fastest will be sitting back waiting to pick off tiring horses. Now I also put Boerne here. The weather shows a chance of rain and if that happens, I want Boerne in my lineup. A front running style that has flourished in wet conditions. I’d actually like this horse on dry weather too if there wasn’t so much other speed signed on.
Mid Price Plays
Half Ours To Keep $6000 – Race 10
I found this race extremely tough, but I love the connections of Broberg/Eikleberry here on a horse that is a model of consistency. Half Ours To Keep should be forwardly placed on the turf and compete for minor awards. Despite how well this horse looks or trains, he struggles to find the win column. I have a sneaky suspicion that this race gets washed off and Half Ours To Keep does very well on the dirt and has never finished outside of StableDuel points on a wet track. If it does wash off, Comedian ($750) is also a sneaky play here.
Value Plays
Zcat’s Chatain $750 – Race 5
On a day where a lot of the favorites look strong, I think Zcat’s Chatain looks to be the best value play of the day. When looking at this race, 12-1 odds on a Karl Broberg horse with one of Sam Houston’s top jockeys, Ry Eikleberry, just seems off. While this horse is hot and cold, I like the spot of a bottom level 5k claiming race for him. Also nice is that this horse is 1 for 1 at this distance. Might be a tall task for this horse to win, but I do think positive points are in order.
