Del Mar Horse Betting Tips

New Way to Bet at Del Mar

Online wagering has been in the news lately, as the Senate has been considering prohibition of online wagering. However, the one exception to any legislation is thoroughbred racing. One company that has an online betting service and streaming video of all the races at Del Mar (and other tracks) is TVG.

For a setup fee, TVG will give you the ability to place your bets online and then watch the actual race real-time. While off-track satellite wagering has been around for years, it required a visit to a track. TVG gives you the ability to wager from home in your bathrobe.

For more information, click here

Still, Del Mar is an exhilarating place to spend an afternoon (and spend your money).

Squeaky-clean Hollywood guys like Jimmy Durante, Bing Crosby and Pat O'Brien founded the Del Mar Race Track — could it be anything other than wholesome? Bring the family? Absolutely.

And you'll still find the same old sunshine, convivial crowds and adrenaline rush where the surf meets the turf.

That's what we call a sure bet. My first summer parking cars at Del Mar, it seemed everyone had advice for me on which horse to bet. "Put everything ya' got on Shorty in the 5th", one track patron would yell as he got out of his car and raced to the entrance to get down for the double.

"Wow - I get tips like these, I'm sure to win," I thought. After a week of taking advice from these 'helpful' touts, I realized I hadn't won a single dollar and that betting could get expensive.

I remember these little kiosks, in a row just outside the entrance. Inside each was a man selling a tip sheet - his (or the company his kiosk represented) picks and recommendations for the day's races, I remember one in particular - Baedeker was the name - and had a headshot of a man who looked like he was right out of central casting for gangsters in the 30's.

Del Mar Track Facts

Track Shape: Oval

Track Length: 1 Mile

Homestretch Length: 919 feet

The Turf Course

Track Shape: Oval

Track Material: Turf

Track Length: 7/8 Mile

Admission:

GENERAL:Stretch Run (formerly Grandstand): $5 per person.Clubhouse: $8 per person.

CHILDREN:17 years and younger: Free (with parent or legal guardian).

SENIORS:Stretch Run Area: $3 on weekdays only.

ACTIVE MILITARY: Stretch Run: Free with ID.

Clubhouse reserved seats:

Opening Day and Pacific Classic: $15

Monday, Wednesday, Thursday: $5

Friday: $8

Saturday, Sunday and Sept. 5: $10

Restaurant tables:(Clubhouse Terrace, Cafe Del Sol, Stretch Run Grill - all-day seating for four) Opening Day and Pacific Classic: $100

Fri. Sat. & Sun.: $80

All other days: $50

Parking:

General: $5

Valet: $20

Wagering menu: $2 Win, Place and Show, $1 Exacta and $2 Quinella on all races; $2 Rolling Double on all races except last; $1 Pick Four on final four races; $2 Pick Six on last six races; $1 Trifecta on all races with at least six betting interests; $1 Superfectas on all races (except first Pick Six race) with at least eight betting interests; $1 Rolling Pick Three starting with the first race; $1 Place Pick All.

Key Races:

Saturday, July 23 John C. Mabee Handicap $400,000

Sunday, July 24 San Diego Handicap $250,000

Sunday, July 24 Eddie Read Handicap $400,000

Sunday, July 31 Bing Crosby Handicap $300,000

Sunday, Aug. 7 Clement L. Hirsch Handicap $300,000

Saturday, Aug. 20 Del Mar Oaks $300,000

Sunday, Aug. 21 Pat O'Brien BC Handicap $300,000

Sunday, Aug. 21 Pacific Classic $1,000,000

Saturday, Aug. 27 Del Mar Debutante $250,000

Sunday, Aug. 28 Del Mar Handicap $250,000

Sunday, Sept. 4 Del Mar BC Handicap $350,000

Monday, Sept. 5 Del Mar Derby $400,000

Wednesday, Sept.7 Del Mar Futurity $250,000

Complete list of Stakes races for 2005

Simulcasting: Full-card simulcasting is available from Belmont Park, Saratoga, Arlington Park, Calder (Mondays only), Los Alamitos (evenings) and a Northern California track.

For the kids: Camp Del Mar is a day camp for children, 5-12, available every racing day except Closing Day, Sept. 7. The $23 fee includes activities, a Camp Del Mar T-shirt, lunch and snacks. No reservations are required.

Contact information:

Del Mar Thoroughbred Club Phone: (858) 755-1141Information Line: (858) 793-5533Address: P.O. Box 700, Del Mar, CA 92014 Online: Del Mar has a Web site filled with tips, betting programs, track news, real-time simulcasts and more.Main telephone: (858) 755-1141 Ticket office: (858) 792-4242 or 1-877-LETSBET

Information line: (858) 793-5533

Race results: (858) 793-5544

On the Web: www.delmarracing.com. There are real-time odds, plus streaming audio and video of live racing, the nightly replay show and archives of individual races.

Radio results: Race-by-race results, including Trevor Denman's stretch calls, available at 20 and 40 minutes past the hour on ESPN Radio 800.

TV: Complete coverage on TVG, available on satellite and Cox digital cable. Two hours of that coverage also is shown at 4 p.m. (later on Fridays) most racing days on Fox Sports Net 2 (unless there's a scheduling conflict). FSN2 is available on Adelphia cable and sometimes on Time Warner digital cable. Five major races will be shown live on ESPN or ESPN2 – John C. Mabee Handicap (July 24), Bing Crosby Breeders' Cup Handicap (July 25), Best Pal Stakes (Aug. 15), Del Mar Oaks (Aug. 21) and Pacific Classic (Aug. 22).

Del Mar Betting Terms

Win: Your horse wins.

Place: Your horse wins or is second.

Show: Your horse wins or is second or third.

Exacta: The two horses you pick in one race finish first or second in exact order.

Quinella: You pick the first two finishers in any order in one race.

Trifecta: You pick three horses in one race to finish first, second and third in exact order.

Daily Double: You pick the winners of two consecutive races.

Pick 3: You pick the winners of three consecutive races.

Pick 6: You pick the winners of six consecutive races.

>B>Racing Terminology:

Silks: A jockey's jacket and cap with a distinctive color and pattern selected by the horse's owner.

Blinkers: A hood with eye cups worn by a horse to limit vision and lessen distractions during a race.

Scratch: A horse withdrawn from a race, usually due to ill health or adverse track conditions.

Gelding: A male horse of any age which has been neutered.

Colts/Horses: Male horses are "colts" through the age of four and "horses" thereafter.

Fillies/Mares: Female horses are "fillies" through the age of 4 and "mares" thereafter.

Maiden Race: A race for horses which have never won.

Stakes Race: A high quality race, often requiring entry and starting fees paid by owner to be added to the purse.

Furlong: Equivalent of 220 yards or one-eighth mile.

Free Daily Picks at Del Mar

As we watched the horses round the track, Harry Henson's voice, like an auctioneer, rattled off the names and positions of the horses over the loudspeaker.

My friend was reading a discarded program and saw the word "furlong" and asked me what it was. I said I didn't know, but the man standing next to us, without taking his eyes of the horses, said "Its just like a hen-weigh."

My friend looked at me with a puzzled expression, "What's a hen-weigh?" he asked.

Without missing a beat, the man said "Oh, about a pound and a half..." and he walked away. It took a moment before we realized we'd been had!

William Murray, Author

• Tip on a Dead Crab (1985)• When the Fat Man Sings (1987)• The King of the Nightcap (1989)• The Getaway Blues (1990)• I'm Getting Killed Right Here (1991)• We're Off to See the Killer (1993)• A Fine Italian Hand (1996)

March 10, 2005

William Murray, an international man of letters who found inspiration for several of his works at the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, died early yesterday morning in New York City after suffering a heart attack. He was 78.

A New York native, Murray was a correspondent for The New Yorker for more than 30 years and wrote more than 20 books, 10 of them murder mystery novels with horse racing themes. Characters in the novels were often based on people Murray met at Del Mar, a track he discovered after moving to California in 1966.

The fairgrounds facility itself served as a setting for the action in many chapters. Del Mar provided the background for Murray's first such novel, "Tip on a Dead Crab," and titles that followed included "The Hard Knocker's Luck," "When the Fat Man Sings," "I'm Getting Killed Right Here," and "A Fine Italian Hand."

The main character throughout the novel series, Shifty Lou Anderson, is a combination close-up magician and inveterate racetracker, a compilation of Murray's friends in those professions.

"Horse Fever," published in 1976, was a behind-the-scenes account of an entire racing season at Del Mar. In 1988 he was commissioned by the DMTC to write a history of the track's first 50 years, which was entitled "Del Mar Its Life and Good Times." Murray updated it for recent re-release.

Among Murray's other works, "Malibu" was adapted into a TV miniseries, and "The Sweet Ride" was made into a feature film starring Jacqueline Bisset and Tony Franciosa. An opera devotee, Murray also wrote several nonfiction books and two volumes of translations of the plays of Luigi Pirandello. "Italy: The Fatal Gift" was chosen by the American Library Association as one of the most notable adult books in 1982.

Murray and his wife, Alice, divided their time between Italy and a North City West residence that Murray often proudly noted was "3.2 miles from the finish line at Del Mar." Murray also found time to teach writing courses at UCSD and San Diego-area extension schools.

"Bill was kind of the keeper of the flame for Del Mar," said DMTC President, CEO and General Manager Joe Harper. "I don't think anybody ever had more passion for the sport. I wish there were a whole lot more like him, but he was one of a kind."

Said Del Mar assistant director of media Mac McBride: "Bill was a raconteur, a bon vivant, and a wonderfully social man that anybody who ever met him wanted to be around whenever they could."

Murray had traveled to New York on Monday on business related to two books he had completed: one on opera, "Fortissimo," due to be published next fall by the Crown Books branch of Random House, and his 10th racing mystery novel, "Dead Heat," which will be published later this year by Eclipse Press.

Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons

The throw of the dice this week is on Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons, Seabiscuit’s first trainer.

I interviewed Sunny’s grandson at the family compound, Fitzsimmonsville, one day last summer.

James Fitzsimmons was born July 23, 1874. Everyone talks about Seabiscuit’s trainer, Tom Smith. But it was Sunny who spotted the mangled bay colt first.

James Fitzsimmons was born in the right place at the right time. The little house in Brooklyn is still standing today. It became the infield of Sheepshead Bay Race Track. I’d never heard of Sheepshead Bay but I’d heard of Coney Island and that’s where the race track was built.

The Coney Island Jockey Club opened the track in 1874 and held their first race meet. Sunny Jim crossed the race track to go to school. The juxtaposition is obvious; the poetry of choices is film material.One day while crossing the dirt track, a fellow stopped young Sunny.

“You want to make a quarter in the mornings?”“Doing what?” he asked.“Looking after the horses.” Sunny dropped out of school. This is the part I love; truly gets me roaring with praise for anyone that throws the dice that early in life. He started training horses by the time he was ten years old.

Sunny brought the horses into the house, and they would stand around the table while the family ate dinner. The family loved animals. He subsequently became a jockey. I asked Jack to tell me some of the adventures of a jockey back in the twenties.

He said, “One time his dad was riding a favorite at 2/5 odds, and just before the race, someone filled the horse with water. Sunny knew it, but he needed the money, so he ran the race. Afterwards, he went looking for the owner in the crowd to get his $10.00. This was quite dangerous as the crowd was apt to kill him because everyone had bet on his horse.”

Another time he went to a match race in Virginia and the owner of the horse that he was riding had to hide Sunny, so no one would know who he was. If they knew who he was, they might offer him a payoff, as he was a favorite and so Sunny had to hide until the day of the races. Sunny grew frustrated with the irregularity of a jockey life, and placed his understanding of horses into training.

If you live inside your passion, you are bound to excel. Sunny became a horse trainer at a young age and tried to make a living. He trained long shots and got his name around but he couldn’t get the winners. He married and started a family. His training fee did not cover family expenses so he gave it up.

A friend introduced him to a conductor for the Philadelphia Railway. Sunny moved up to Philadelphia to run the trolley cars. Trains were big business then, it was a real good future.

The first day he was on the trolley a man called out to him,“Hey aren’t you Sunny Fitz, the horse trainer?”“Yes,” he answered.“Well, I want you to train my horses.”“Okay, I’m leaving.” He got off the trolley and went back to the track.

The first lesson he learned was that if you didn’t have good horses, it didn’t matter if you were the best trainer in the world.In his stable were two Triple Crown winners, Gallant Fox in 1930 and Omaha in 1935. Ogden Phipps, a name you see everywhere in Saratoga Springs, hired Sunny to train for Wheatley Stables. Sunny Jim became a household name across America.

Take Seabiscuit, Sunny was the first trainer to recognize greatness in the runty little bay colt. Sunny was sixty-one and riddled with acute arthritis. His back collapsed into a permanent arch forward when Seabiscuit came into his care. The year was 1934. Perhaps in the hands of a different trainer, the cunning wiseness of the horse would have been mistaken for laziness.

Sunny trained him rigorously and entered him in every two-bit race between Rhode Island and New York. He didn’t win a race and so Ogden Phipps went looking for a buyer. You won’t see that part in the film.

Sunny Jim loved horses, and didn’t care less about the show, but he understood owners had the money to put it on. He could sit at the backstretch of a race track and place bets on who sired the two years old in the race. He recognized heads and feet. Jack grew up in the same house as Sunny and lived upstairs. Jack’s family lived downstairs.

“Sunny was actively training; he came on Saturday after the races and went to Coney Island for a Turkish bath. He had so many horses in stakes races he had to ship them out all over to New Hampshire and Rhode Island so they wouldn’t be racing against each other. There wasn’t as much racing in the forties. Sunny had a stable of fillies. He had a way with the females. He was able to get the best out of them, without breaking them down or pushing them too hard. He knew by looking at them. That’s a gift.

Every horse is different, you cannot use a formula. The trick is to find the whole card. Every horse has a whole card, what makes them run?”“What if a horse feels bad, how do you know and what do you do? “ I asked.“Sometimes when a horse is depressed, we give him a beer mixed with feed.”Nashua was a horse Jack likes to talk about. His record was anything over a mile.Sunny was 78 when Nashua was foaled in 1952. By 1955 he was horse of the year. Sunny was the only trainer with two Triple Crown winners, Omaha and Gallant Fox. He trained over 148 stakes winners all because a track was built around his crib.

That just goes to show you to pay attention to your surroundings. I, however, was raised on a track of gamblers, entertainers, and racketeers. Today those characters always turn up in my writing. So far none have paid off at the bookstore.