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The Omen Bet
Betting the horse with the funny or unusual name can be a fun way to play the horses – but that is merely “play”. There is a more serious method of betting on just the name and that is betting the “omen”. The “omen bet” is emotional, personal and somewhat supernatural.
It’s one thing to bet a horse with a name of a favorite relative, or a town you lived in or a cat you once knew. If you bet every name that was familiar in your past – you wouldn’t have enough money to keep up with them all. Moreover, the longer you live, the more of these bets you’ll be placing.
However, an “omen bet” goes one step further and almost into another dimension as it becomes a message from beyond. And, the limited knowledge of the beyond that I possess is that “they” (whoever they may be) know more than we do and that “they” are trying to give us a sign or clue of some kind from the never never land.
The basics of an omen bet, therefore, is two parts. The name of the familiar and something familiar with the familiar.
For example, when you see on the program a horse with the name “Ted” and you had an Uncle Ted, that should make you remember that person (if it’s someone special in your life, of course). But, in this example the horse’s name is Joke King Ted and your Uncle always had a new joke whenever he came around – there’s your “omen bet”.
Remember that this bet is personal and only YOU or someone that experienced the same will see the importance. If you put $10 to win on Nancy Pants and your sister, Nancy, always wore colorful bell bottoms and she’s going off at 30-1 don’t be surprised to get a funny look from the teller or the techno handicapper standing in the line next to you. They aren’t getting the same vibe from another world like you are about this horse who, by the way, is moving up in class, had to be vanned off a time or two recently and his best finish in his last 8 races was 7th.
There’s a theory that those in the hereafter give us signs all the time but we have to be open to those signs to be able to see them. So, keep an open mind and if a name on the program jumps out at you, it might be someone or something from your past giving you a tip from out of this world. Or, you could just be throwing your money away – only the shadows of the unknown will know for sure.
Year End Sale Opportunity for Bettors
No, I’m not talking about polo shirts or souvenirs and this is not about the price of hot dogs or nachos. It’s a betting angle at your favorite race track.
Have you ever noticed a horse drop in class to a level that you think is a misprint? Well, depending on when you see that drop it could mean a huge opportunity. For example, a maiden, running against $48,000 maiden claimers and finishing mid-pack suddenly is entered in a $25,000 maiden claimer should get the red flags flying. Why would an owner risk losing his horse to a claim in this instance?
One reason may be he noticed something wrong during a workout or around the barn and is dumping the horse onto someone else and cutting his losses. Hey, it’s business.
But, there is another reason why this happens and that’s where the advantage to the bettor comes in to play. You see, in accounting, a stable or barn full of horses is considered “inventory”, and, on a tax return for a business, such inventory is taxable. Owners, therefore, in an attempt to “thin the herd” so to speak, clean out their inventory to benefit the bottom tax line. Some of these horses are sold outright but there’s another great way of selling off their inventory…. claiming races.
Drop the horse in claiming value to sell, pick up the win purse and get the horse off your inventory. It’s a possible horseman’s trifecta. So, for the bettor, how do we know the difference between dumping an unhealthy animal or just lowering the inventory?
The “inventory sale” usually happens at the following times:
End of Meet
When the meet comes to an end and the owner doesn’t plan on shipping the horse to another track or to another state, then sometimes it is financially smarter to sell the animal instead of spending money on feed, vet and miscellaneous costs for 6 to 8 months till the next season starts. Look for this to happen in the last couple of weeks of a meet.
End of Year
Great time to get the horse off the inventory and get a much needed tax break just before the last day of the year. Most retail businesses build up inventory for Christmas but use January to sell off the excess inventory to avoid a tax hit. And they use January 31st as the last day of the their business year. But in the racing business, the year end most commonly is the last day of December.