Adami wins Australia trip without looking out for No. 1

Jeff Adami and Fred Accarino are headed to Australia for the Everest, the world’s richest turf race which is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 13, and will feature a purse of $13 million AUS.

Adami, a 46-year old who works in federal law enforcement, won a VIP trip for two to the Everest last weekend in a special event tied to the Championships at Royal Randwick on DRF Tournaments that concluded last weekend, sponsored by Sky Racing World. It’s appropriate that Accarino will be joining him as he is the man who introduced Adami to tournaments three years ago.

“I grew up going to the track,” said Adami, a Rochester, N.Y., native. “My father used to take me to Finger Lakes and I’ve always gone to the tracks near the places I’ve worked.”

For most of Adami’s life the track was pure escapism, a place to eat and drink and have fun. “I didn’t used to be a handicapper,” he said. “I’d just pick horses from the odds.”

That changed when he met Accarino. “I’d heard that he knew a lot about racing and one day we were working together and he told me about a contest through an ADW where we both had accounts.”

Adami played and won $300. That was his seed money as he started to play in contests weekly. But he knew that if his success was going to continue he was going to need to learn about the art of handicapping. Once again, it was Accarino to the rescue.

“He sat down with me one day and showed me how to read the Racing Form,” he said. “I still only use about 70 percent of the information in there.”

Apparently, 70 percent has been enough for Adami as he’s qualified for major contests like the Horse Player World Series and Saratoga Betting Challenge on the strength of his handicapping. His story about qualifying for the National Horseplayers Championship is infamous in contest circles as it had very little to do with handicapping. Before Anthony Robb pulled the same feat last year, Adami won his way to Las Vegas simply by playing all the No. 1 horses, much to the consternation of many contest players.

“I had handicapped the first couple of contest races for that afternoon and I liked the number 1 in both of those,” he said. “I was running behind so I just went ahead and put in the number 1 for every race, figuring I’d change the picks after I got home and had time to study more.”

Adami got home only to discover that the contest used a format where all the picks were locked after the first race, known as “all-in” in the DRF universe.

“It was a complete mistake on my end, but when the number 1 came from nowhere in the last race it worked out for me.”

For the two weekends of the Championships contest, Adami did his work. The comparatively bare-bones Australia PPs provided by Sky Racing World dovetailed perfectly with his handicapping style, and after the first day he sat in third place, with his friend Accarino also in the top 10.

“Some people play only longshots in contests and that’s fine,” he said, “but what good is a longshot if it doesn’t win or run second. I’m really just looking for winners.”

He found plenty of them on the contest’s second day, including a cap horse early on that propelled him to a lead he would not relinquish. He tried to stay up late to watch all the races through the night, but he was tired and was drifting in and out of consciousness through the wee hours of the morning. He knew he was doing well but wasn’t certain how well.

“When I woke up I saw I was on top of the leaderboard but I wasn’t sure if there was another race or not,” he admitted. “When I saw the little trophy next to my name I knew I’d won.”

There was a logical choice of companion for the trip: Accarino. “People asked me, ‘Are you going to take your wife?’ and I said, ‘She’s not a racing fan, and besides I really owe it to Fred for introducing me to these contests.’ ”

Weekend preview

It’s a relatively quiet weekend on DRF Tournaments after the flurry of activity last weekend, but there are still plenty of feeders, match-ups, and winner-take-all games to give players a chance to build their bankrolls for the coming weeks and months.

This weekend’s featured game is a Grade 1 qualifier for the World Championship of Handicapping, DRF’s major online event that will take place in 2019. The contest has no takeout in the finals and assuming full participation of 200 entries there will be a purse of $1 million. The event, in its second year, is expected to sell out.

Another highlight of this weekend is a free contest on races 5-11 at Laurel Park on Saturday. A total of $500 in site credit is available. It's a free roll so there's no reason not to compete, even if you just play all the 1's.

Next weekend will feature qualifiers for the World Horseplayers’ Tour Santa Anita contest, Monmouth’s Pick Your Prize, and the Belmont Stakes Challenge. Look for feeders both Saturday and Sunday for all three of those events.

For the WHT/SA event, there will be a special feeder that costs $135, with one in four entries advancing to next Sunday's $458 qualifier.

For a full list of all the games happening at DRFT, go to tournaments.drf.com.