Triple Carryover on Triple Eleven Day

11:59 am: Wanted to post at 11:11 am on 11/11/11 but I lost track of the time trying to decipher today's Aqueduct Pick-6, which starts with a three-day carryover of $188,308 in the kitty. Time to stop licking those Court Vision and Drosselmeyer wounds and get back in the pool.

It's a challenging sextet with big fields and three grass races. As per recent custom, the NYRA racing office has needlessly made things as difficult as possible by carding a 2-year-old maiden claiming race with first-time starters as the finale -- unnecessary because the two other grass races, for veterans with full-exposed form, had equally big fields. Either would have been a better choice for a 9th race instead of positioning a race with firsters where no one can see the betting, compromising the late pick-4 and pick-6 yet again.

Here's the lineup after scratches, with my thoughts on each entrant. The fun begins with the 4th race, scheduled for 1:50 pm. See you then.

Oh and here, via Gawker.com, is what The New York Times had to say about the 11/11/11 phenomenon back on Nov. 11, 1911:

"To-day it is possible to write the date with the repetition six times of a single digit. It is the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year, and so one may save time and just put it down 11-11-11. It will be a century before the same thing can be done on Nov. 11, 2011, though, of course, on Dec. 12 next year there wil be a close approximation to it with 12-12-12 as a correct presentation of the date.

"Still to-day for the last time until the era is changed will one digit appear seven times in the date, however it be written. To-day is 11-11-1911. Eight hundred years ago this was beaten by writing 11-11-1111, on Nov. 11, 1111, but it is not likely that the precise monkish scribes at the time would have allowed so slovenly a method of recording an essential fact. As none of us is likely to be living in the year 11111, it would be well for those who delight in curious trifles to take their fill of enjoyment out of this method of dating to-day, 11-11-11."

1:30 pm: Twenty minutes to post for the pick-6. Here's the play:

Whole lotta chiclets, I know, but it's thinner than it looks: A caveman using every horses above would have been $51,840 (6x5x8x4x3x9) but I ABCed it to the tune of $2,340. (An $1800 all-A's-and-B's and five 5A/1c backups totalling $540.)

The biggest lean is Sneaky Girl in the 7th, who I expect to be more like 4-5 than her 7-5 ML. Any one of her last six races would blow this field away but here's the rub: Those were all at six furlongs and today she stretches out to a mile, a distance at which she's 0 for 5. On the plus side, she's not a fainthearted speedball who's going to be gasping late, and there's no particular reason her closing-sprint style shouldn't work in a one-turn mile.

Boys At Toscanova ($2.60), runner-up to Uncle in last year's BC Juvenile, won the 3rd race comfortably in his second start back after running third to Tapizar in his return last month. Boys At Toscanova was not fully extended beating Hillswick by 2 1/2 lengths in 1:17.46.

Seven horses between 7-2 and 8-1 in the upcoming 4th aftyer five of them opened at 5-1.

1:55 pm: Count Catamount provided an early-knockoutgood scare, surprisingly getting loose in what seemed like a speed-packed field to take a clear lead into upper stretch, but Dominguez slipped I've Got Speed through a two-path seam and the favorite drew clear in the final yards. I've Got Speed, who made his debut at Calder in August of 2004, is a 9-year-old Suave Prospect gelding who has won 23 of 59 career starts for eight different trainers.

2:30 pm: I didn't see Perfect Drive being 2-to-5 but congrats if you singled him -- he hung on by a few inches over Digger Karakorum after being softened up early by Leap Day.

Those of you rooting for a quadruple-carry into Saturday might want to be careful what you wish for -- it's a ferocious bear of a lineup:

That buried 7th race has NINE first-time starters.

Perfect Drive's winning time of 1:11.48 over restricted $7500 claimers (with Digger Karakorum beaten just a neck) doesn't make Boys At Toscanova's 1:17.46 look like anything to get excited about.

3:00 pm: Hard to imagine there can be a quadruple carryover after 9-5 Glacier Bay held off 7-2 Kid Curry to complete a chalk-chalk-chalk first act of today's pick-6. Easy as 1-2-3, the winning pick-3 combo, which returned $34 for $2. Alive 8/4,5,6/2,3,10,11,12 or 8/4/5,7,8,9 or 2,6,7/4/2,3,12.

3:30 pm: Maybe not so hard to imagine: Sneaky Girl an awful fifth beaten 10 3/4 lengths as the 3-5 favorite, and even if you tried to beat her you had to come up with Eleni's Hope ($62.00). Beaten a combined 115 lengths in her last five starts, the 3-for-41 mare (trained by 3-for-42 in 2011 Leo O'Brien) was winning for the first time since a victory going this same mile on the Aqueduct main track on March 31 -- a day when she paid $4.20 rather than $62.00. Blinkers off and a rider switch today but still very tough to like, though I hope you did. The $2 superfecta, in just an eight-horse field, paid $23k.

4:00 pm: With Associate (opened 6-5, bet down to 1-2, floated to $3.70 late) winning the 8th by as far as the eye could see, 10 of the 12 are covered in the finale, each with at least two potential winners:

Please don't ask me how it can be paying $164k to two horses and $165k to another. Can't be a difference in the number of live tickets. Must be the old Panamanian or Canadian currency-conversion glitch.

4:30 pm: Goldberg/Dominguez firster Selection Sunday ($24.40) came widest to run down 5-2 fave Dendrite, capping a $246,256 pick-6. Four A's, a B and a whiff on Eleni's Hope got me one conso, worth a spectacularly low $144. The usual loose rule-of-thumb is 1/2 of one percent of the 6-of-6 payoff but this was more like 1/20th of one percent. Given that there were four winning favorites, two of them odds-on, not a complete shock. Still, not much consolation.