Pick four fever now an epidemic

I think the conventional wisdom is that you starve a cold and feed a fever, and that is my approach to Saturday's wagering menu.

I blogged about pick four fever setting in on Thursday because of a carryover at Arlington Park. I flamed out chasing that $20k+ pot, thus starving myself from the spoils of untold riches, but I am feeding the fever today by only playing pick fours.

I handicapped the late pick fours at Arlington (all stakes), Belmont, Canterbury, Churchill, and Hollywood. Unlike the pick fours at Pimlico Race Course during Preakness week, I don't expect the favorite to win 75% of the races in these sequences (although chalk talked so loud Friday at Churchill it was yelling). There were five pick fours Preakness week at Pimlico, and I managed to "hit" four of them. That 80% strike rate produced a $50 profit.

My pick four handicapping is a two-part process. I handicap the races individually before thinking about how I'll put together the tickets. I have all the races handicapped, and now is the time to structure the tickets. I try to play multiple tickets that zero on a couple key opinions. Hitting those allow me to only have to be marginally right in other legs versus a "caveman" approach (as Steve Crist calls it) that requires me to be right in every race.

The action starts at 4:12 EDT at Belmont then goes fast and furious with 4:19 at Canterbury, 4:29 at Churchill, 5:26 at Arlington, and 6:37 at Hollywood. The reason I chose Canterbury is because it offers $.50 pick fours, and I wanted to reward that. Plus, the last leg of the sequence—the 8th race—is the HANA Player's Pool race of the week.

Follow my progress on Twitter.