There is another mathematical constant that shows itself at the racetrack whenever the Assembled are gathered at Aqueduct or Belmont: Jose will hit a 1/7, 7/1 exacta, and it will pay enough to at least lease a Toyota Corolla for a month, maybe two.
The Assembled are a group of now-graying individuals who can all claim to have worked for the same employer once upon a time. This number can swell to five individuals, but the 7/1, 1/7 exacta certainty will only appear on the tote board when Jose is there. And guaranteed, Jose will have it.
It took all day on Saturday, October 24 for this phenomena to present itself at Belmont. The wait was made even longer due to there being 11 races on the card known as New York Showcase Day, a day of racing where all the entrants are New York State breds. This can mean a lot to to certain people.
Ten races came and went on the card, with mostly favorites, or near-favorites winning. One longshot came through, but no one had it. Some of us were having a decent day, and others were having a frustrating day. Jose, true to the demands of the distance he has to travel to get to the track from his home, missed the first few races. No loss, apparently. He said he wouldn't have had those winners anyway.
Jose once told me the significance of the 7/1, 1/7 combination, but I've forgotten. Jose is known as a handicapper and a numbers guy, so the 7/1, 1/7 represents a birthday (July 1st, or January 7th) a birthday or an anniversary date (17). The number 71 doesn't seem to have any significance to Jose, so it definitely is a permutation of something to do with the calendar. Whatever it is, Jose has now learned to "box" exacta number combinations after several lectures from myself to insure he can still win even if the order of finish is the reverse of the primary bet. Hedging is always a good bet when betting.
So, we've spun through 10 races and no one is really ahead for the day betting-wise. It is getting dark out. Really dark, since the last race is going off at 5:52 and the day was solid overcast all day. The light has been going on at the finish line, and now the lights from the tote board are in sharp contrast to the oncoming darkness. It almost looks like we're at nighttime trotting racing.
The last race is a turf race, with a fairly typical turf race finish. Nearly everyone in the 12 horse field is within mere lengths of each other at the finish. It is a scrum headed for the finish line. A little more than three and three-quarter lengths separate the first 7! horses to cross the finish line. The third and fourth place horses dead heat, creating two triple payouts and two superfecta payouts. There are numbers all over the place.
The numbers of the first two horses across the finish? Seven, one. The win payout for the 7? $60.50. Jose had a deuce on this.
The exacta payout of the 7/1? $358.50, which Jose has a $1 bet on, so he gets half of that. Jose has now collected nearly $200 to the race, but that leaves him with only nearly a $100 profit for the day. Winning money at the races is never easy.
The exacta numbers 7/1, for some reason, were bet rather heavily. By rule of thumb, an exacta payout for some mathematical reason (an alert reader can tell be why this is?) usually pays out to the tune of the product of the win price and the place price of the second place horse, in this case $9.90. You would expect those numbers to produce an exacta payout of somewhere very near $600. For some reason, this didn't happen.
A possible explanation for the lower exacta price is that the first two horses were trained by the same trainer, Bruce Levine. He, and others, might have liked the 1-2 chance of a same-trainer-finish to a considerable degree. Payouts are a function of distribution of bets, hence the name pari-mutuel wagering.
Then there are always the conspiracy theories that abound at the racetrack. These can generally be summed up into: "somebody knew something."
Jose sure did.
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