"You play to win the game" or in the case of horseplayers, "You play to make a score'', there is no better feeling that making a hit, a payday, but even better when you take the whole pot on a Triple Crown weekend.
In Gee & Dee own words:
"Dee wanted to bet the All Stakes P5 with two of the races on Friday and three of them on Saturday. We talked about it (like we always do) – I was really not in favor of it because of the very good chance that the track conditions would wind up being what we got on Saturday.
How do you bet a 2 day Pick when you have to bet the entire thing on Day 1 and hope the weather forecasted for Saturday wouldn’t come to pass???
We compromised – we’d go all in to bet it and then bet a couple of exactas here and there but no more P4’s or 5’s. We decided to handicap it for fast/firm conditions and after we completed all that work, we went back and “tweaked” the picks to make sure that we had at least one horse in each race that had proven off track form. Another round of discussions and compromise. Our ticket was $768 – way more than we usually bet.
Friday arrived and we made it through the first two legs with wins so we were ALIVE! Paid $4.60 and $6.60 (both horses were Bruno picks). The Turf races were particularly difficult as so few of those horses had ever run on yielding/soft turf. Hit the 3rd leg with Bruno’s pick of Groom’s All Bizness paying $13.60, whom with scratches had moved into the suggested selections.
We were deepest in leg 4 (the Dinner Party). The turf was about to turn to mush (and remember we had to bet all of this on the previous day). We put Frankie Dettori on #3 Balnikhov on our ticket even though the horse had not had much success at 1 1/8th and in 4 races on good turf, best finish was 6th. The horse has late closing speed and we figured since Dettori has had a lot of experience running on 'squishy green' stuff he had a shot to win it. Boom! Paid $12.80.
The Preakness. The track at this point looked more like a venue for mud wrestling than a Grade I race. Seize the Grey had a modicum of off track success early in his 2 y.o. career at Saratoga with a win and a show. Earlier on Saturday, Christina Blacker, at Fan Duel, presented some data showing that offspring of Arrogate are 22% ITM on off tracks. Of course I would have liked to have had that info on Thursday night or early Friday morning BUT I’m happy to know that now. He wins and pays $21.60. We knew he was probably going to go and try to steal the race and sure enough he did! Like Yogi Berra and it is déjà vu all over again, I had the memory of Oxbow’s race where he got on the lead and just gradually got further and further ahead until the rest of the field tried to catch him and they couldn’t. I thought I remembered that was at Belmont but I looked it up and it was the Preakness and Lukas was his trainer!
We knew we were going to cash our ticket but we had NO idea that it would be a pot ticket. It took almost 30 minutes to get the results and we were stunned. Still are. I think that we have been with Racingwithbruno since 2016, so in 8 years, we’ve learned a lot and Bruno and the staff are responsible for that. I have added a copy the ticket – I was able to get the Mutuels Manager at our OTB to copy it for me, and they have to wire Pimlico the ticket and then Pimlico has to wire the money to our OTB because they did not have enough to pay us.
It’s been a standing joke for along time but I have memorized our bank routing number and account number just in case this ever happened! Dreams do come true!"
First of all, there is always a lot of talk about ticket structure.
Ticket Structure is only as good as the horses used, if you don't pick winners in the ticket, your ticket is no good.
Ticket structure is about picking winners, and I am amazed at the pushback I get on this point, but no winners, no payoff. Period.
Gee and Dee have been Racingwithbruno all-inclusive and Gold Members on the Zoom for the last 6 years or longer.
Gee and Dee had the only ticket on the two day Pick 5. They took down the pool!!!!
Gee gives credit to Dee for being insistent on putting a ticket in. She is glad Dee stuck to guns.
What I love that Gee & Dee did is go against the grain on their key play in the Dinner Party with Dettori on board, the horse had been 0 for 4 on the wet grass, but they cited that Dettori had extensive experience finding the 'good' path on a wet turf course. He did.
Horseplayers should just want to have fun and dream.
Dreams can come true, even for you.
Congrats Gee & Dee.