King: How I'd play Del Mar on Thursday, Aug. 7
In addition to a late pick three play outlined in another handicapping feature at DRF.com, here is my strategy for playing the races Thursday at Del Mar.
Not having strong opinions in the first five races – three are for inexperienced 2-year-olds, and the other pair are low-level claimers – my emphasis will be on playing two of the final three races on the eight-race card.
Besides playing the late pick three, Tribal Jewel (#6, 3-1) looks like a win play for me in the sixth race, dropping out of stakes into a $25,000 claimer and being proven on synthetic tracks. Well drawn in post 6 in this one-mile race on Polytrack, he looks like he should work out a good stalking trip under Rafael Bejarano in a field with plenty of speed.
Hopefully, he sticks close to his 3-1 morning line. Odds of 5-2 or higher would warrant backing him.
The next potential win bet goes in the nightcap, the eighth, with my eye on Fast Mast (#11, 15-1). Although not the most likely winner, he is the overlay of the race based on the morning line.
This is a horse who ran some competitive Beyer Speed Figures on the grass late last year, and his comeback race in his only start of 2014, a runner-up finish on dirt at Los Al on July 10, was easily the best dirt effort.
He is a move-up candidate making his second start off a layoff and moving to Polytrack, a surface over which he was sixth of 10 in his only prior start last summer – a race better than it looks at first glance on paper. It came against better competition and after a slow start, and he outperformed the expectations of the public, who sent him off at 57-1 odds.