King: Del Mar pick three play for Thursday, Aug. 7

With contention running deep in the last two races on Del Mar’s Thursday card, multi-race gimmick players seem best served by taking a stand in the sixth race before using more combinations in the seventh and eighth races, the final two legs of the late pick three.

Stakes-dropping Tribal Jewel (#6, 3-1) is the horse to use in the sixth race, having faced much better opposition and being proven on synthetic tracks. He won on the Tapeta surface at Golden Gate earlier in the year and was third on the Del Mar Poly earlier in his career.

Using the ABC format used in DRF’s Ticketmaker program, he goes down as the lone ‘A’ play of the sixth.

Budget-minded horseplayers may wish to single him, but the inclination here was to use one more as a backup ‘B’ play: Polytechnicien (#10, 7-2). The latter is a classy runner and a skilled miler, and though he has raced exclusively on turf since being imported to the U.S., he did perform well on synthetic tracks overseas.

Leg two, race 7

Two ‘A’ runners go on the tickets here, plus one ‘B.’ The aforementioned ‘A’ horses are Heat Trap (#1, 6-1), a filly who has been first or second in 5 of 7 starts while handling both turf and Poly, and Hail Mary (#9, 9-2), a runner-up on the Del Mar main track July 17 when returning from a layoff and who figures to improve second time off the bench.

Tribal Gal, (#8, 5-1) is the backup ‘B’ runner, coming off a restricted stakes victory, one of seven wins she has from 18 starts. But she might be disadvantaged compared to the top two, shipping in from Los Alamitos, while Heat Trap and Hail Mary have trained locally.

Leg three, race 8

Two early scratches to note here: #3 Misdeed and #7 Well Insulated. This allows #13 Mahalo Arturo to draw in from the also-eligible list.
Warrior’s Ridge (#2, 9-2), Expo and Fig (#4, 7-2), and It Is Living Water (#10, 5-1) all rate as major players, with little separating them on paper. All three go down as ‘A’ horses.

The longshot Fast Mast (#11, 15-1) isn’t as likely a winner as any of the top trio but is an apparent overlay and a horse that may move up shifting from dirt to Poly. He is a ‘B.’

The bet

Plugging the horses into Ticketmaker as described above, using a $1 base wager and a budget of $46, yields the following tickets: