Litfin: How I'd play Aqueduct on Sunday, Nov. 23

While always looking for opportunities to play multi-race exotics in the quest of winning a lot for a little, that’s not happening for me in Sunday’s early pick four, or the pick five because of the dastardly positioning of a maiden race for 2-year-olds as the anchor leg.

There’s really no good reason that race 5 – in which 10 of the 14 entrants never run – could not have been situated as race 2 instead of as the final leg for both sequences. This would have at least afforded pick four players a look at how the race was being bet and a chance to scope out pre-race appearances, while perhaps gleaning some additional physicality information from the New York Racing Association’s Maggie Wolfendale. It also would have given pick five players a chance to check the early double will-pays for some clues.

C’est la vie. We’re sticking to a couple of possibilities for good old-fashioned win bets – remember those?

My first opportunity comes in race 3. Purling is 5-1 on the morning line, and she probably will be running on a fast track at six furlongs for the first time since paired Beyer Speed Figure tops of 73 in June and July. Something close to that will be very competitive in this $17,500 claimer, and she’s going to get plenty of pace up front.

While race 6 hardly is an aesthetic triumph, this maiden claimer for New York-bred fillies may have a pace standout in Quit Smokin, who has been freshened up since spending the summer and early fall in turf sprints. Her last two dirt races were against Girlaboutown, who now is a dual allowance winner, and Star Grazing, who subsequently was a $200,000 stakes winner at Saratoga. At 9-2 on the morning line, she’s a potential play if actually offered at somewhere near that price, and the track has seemed reasonably hospitable to speed.