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This is Tablelegs.
Tablelegs was my hamster in grad school. Not grade school. Not middle school. I had a hamster in grad school. And he was the man.
Another very middle school thing I did in grad school? Cover my walls in posters. Like, every poster I had, in an attempt to cover up all available wall space. This included posters of Scooby-Doo and Kelly Kapowski. But, I at least I had a good excuse - I didn't want my place to look like it hosted 70's key parties. You see, my 420 square foot studio apartment was wall-to-wall wood paneling, and 80% of the floor was covered in orange and brown shag carpeting. It was like if John Holmes had a ski lodge. So it wasn't so much what was on the posters, so much as how much space they could cover ("but Alan, why didn't buy some updated posters, and perhaps frame them, so you looked like an adult?" Because I was a poor grad student happy to have enough spare change to buy a 12 pack of Natty Light. Stop judging me)
Anyway, Tablelegs was awesome. He was my little homie while I lived away in a little cow town (see many many previous posts for explanations and bitching). He lived to be 2 and a half year old, and yes, there were some tears shed when he died. He was a trooper, and he was also a little speedster, often waking up in the middle of the night because he wanted to go for a light 30 minute jog on his wheel. But this was fitting, as Tablelegs was named after a race horse.
More after the jump (this is the first time I'm trying the whole page break thing, where you click below to continue reading. Hopefully it will make the front page a little cleaner. And hopefully it actually works).
Back when my friends and I were 18, we spent a few nights at the race track in the burbs of Detroit. Mighty Hazel Park Raceway. Yes, it was a race track, just like Suffolk Downs, where I ended up going a couple weeks ago, but there's a huge difference. Hazel Park only has harness racing, and THIS is harness racing:
It's like going to the Tour de France and you end up watching a tricycle race. It's like wanting to see the Boston Marathon, but you end up watching race walking. In short, it wasn't REALLY horse racing . . . but you could gamble so we went.
And the first time we went, all we knew was that we COULD gamble, not HOW we could gamble. Trifecta, schmifecta, what the hell are you talking about? But the basic odds are posted, and they're simple. If horse #3 has 3-to-1 odds, and you bet $2 on him to win, and he wins, you get $8 back - your original $2 plus $6 (3 x $2). If you can't understand that math, then please leave now.
Some basic knowledge for the newbies:
- Betting a horse "to win" means you're betting it will, ummm, win.
- Betting a horse "to place" means you're betting it will finish in the top 2. If you win, you'll get less money than a "to win" bet, because you have a better chance to win your bet.
- Betting a horse "to show" means you think it'll finish in the top 3. Even less $ to win than a "to place" bet
- A Perfecta or Exacta bet means you're picking the both winner and the 2nd place horse. You must get both right to win. It's hard, so it pays well (how well is based on the horses odds)
- A Trifecta means you're picking the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place horses exactly. It's REALLY hard, and thus typically pays really well.
13 years later, accompanied by Ryan, Matt and Kurt, I made my triumphant return to the track. This time it was to Suffolk Downs outside Boston, for a jam-packed afternoon of real honest-to-god, nothing-holding-them-back thoroughbred racing. And the excitement in the crowd was palpable.
They . . . were . . . riveted. Actually, before we discuss the racing, let's discuss the crowd. A Saturday afternoon at the track is certainly a slice of Americana. But the best part is that much like the afternoon at the Puerto Rican cock fights, the event wasn't just for the degenerate gamblers. It was fun for the whole family! And considering there was an actual playground there, Suffolk Downs was certainly encouraging that vibe.
But the best family-fun came as we were sitting down just before one of the races started, and we overheard some father-of-the-year tell his 5 year old kid, in 100% seriousness, "no more peanuts until you pick a winning horse." That's just good parenting right there. I mean, you don't want your kid to grow and be a gambling LOSER do you? You want a WINNER! If you ain't first, you're last Ricky Bobby. Odds that guy has at one time either punched an umpire or another parent at a little league game? 1-to-1.
But back to the actual racing. To start the day, I went with a $2 trifecta, the close your eyes and pray bet, as I took Swampy Town, No More Goodbyes and Lir Jet to finish 1-2-3 in the race (or since I didn't want to get a beatdown from any of the track employees, I went with "$2 trifecta on horse 2, 1 and 7).
And sweet fancy Moses, I won. I won a fucking trifecta bet, as all 3 of my horses avoided the post-race trip to the glue factory (note: approximately 36 "glue factory" jokes were made throughout the afternoon). I didn't even believe it until I took my ticket to the counter to cash it in, and could only imagine what kind of riches this type of long shot bet would bring me. A full tank of gas? A bottle of Cristal? A vacation home on the Cape? Ummm, no. My reward? A dinner for 2 to Denny's. $16.60. 16 fucking dollars and 60 fucking cents on a damned trifecta. Actually, taking away my $2 investment, it was only $14.40 (sorry Denny's waitress - no tip for you). The odds on my horses were that much better than the rest of the field that all my long shot bet brought me was enough to cover 3 beers at the track. Sigh.
Of the 9 races that day, I ended up winning the trifecta bet that brought the least winnings. In one of the races, a longshot horse won, and a $2 trifecta bet would have won ~$2500. THAT'S the type of return I was hoping for.
But that was just race #1, and we had 8 more to go! So I hunkered down, regrouped and put in some study time. Yes, study time, because the race program looks like this.
That just the info on 1 horse. Somewhere in there is how the horse finished in its last 5 races, its times, the length of the races, its winnings, its GPA, and its favorite character on Friends. I suppose you could use all this info to make educated bets . . . or you could see that the horse's name was Senor Enrico, remember that your internet pseudonym is Enrico Pilazo, and decide that fate has led you to bet on this horse. Of course, Senor Enrico was scratched from that race, so he never got the chance to make me rich, but other horses that we bet on solely because of their names include Disco Fox and Taco Don (whose bio did not explain if he was simply named Don and he liked tacos, or if he was some sort of Godfather-like figure in the world of horse tacos).
Sadly, neither Taco Don nor Disco Fox came out winners, as my initial winnings began to dwindle . . . and dwindle . . . and dwindle. Chart time.
which leads to . . .
Yup. Not a single win after the trifecta hit, even though every bet I made after that was theoretically much simpler and much more likely to win. This is concrete evidence that I learned nothing from my 400 level probabilities class in grad school, and that math is for suckers. But after 4-5 hours of quality old-timey gambling, I only came out $13 in the hole. Considering you can blow this in 20 seconds at a blackjack table, that's good degenerate gambling value! And every time you lose at the track, not only do you get to throw down your hat in disgust (note: I highly encourage you to bring a hat if you ever go to a track), but you also get to the take your betting tickets, tear them up, and throw down those pieces in disgust too. It's a delight. And besides a bare-knuckle boxing match, where else you going to get to see a guy like this run the show.
So I had some bad luck, but it could have been worse - I could lost money and gotten pooped on by a bird, like someone in our group did.
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