Playing a Dead Rail ☠️

Real Writing on Racing 💯

*The Going in Circles Digest is pleased to share the work of excellent writers who provide educational, informative and passionate prose about a wide variety of horseracing topics. Today’s guest writer is Julian Brown who has written about handicapping for American Turf Magazine among others. Julian has owned horses under the name of Black & Tan Stable that raced in the mid-Atlantic region and also moderates The Handicappers Insight a private Facebook group for serious handicappers.

Playing a Dead Rail

By Julian Brown

Laurel Park’s rail came up dead this weekend, which is rare of late for this track. A deep inside can be counter-intuitive to the handicapping puzzle, but I hope below to provide guidance on dealing with those days.

Ignore the deep inside. You can ignore a dead rail and may not suffer for doing so. It’s generally difficult to project who will be helped or harmed by the deep inside because often horses’ positions in races are difficult to predict. You may find if you handicap well that your picks will be equally helped and harmed by the dead rail over time, so the best way forward is not to worry about it. Also, the bettors catch on, so horses that appear likely to be trapped inside, like closers with the rail posts, tend to be completely ignored in the betting and can become value. You also just ignore that track that day and bet others!

Favor outside post positions, especially in sprints. Horses with outside post positions are in prime position to get the “run of the race,” running on the fast outside to control and then dominate a race. Often though horses on the outside clear the field too quickly from the off and end up on the dead rail. Shorter sprints are better than longer because the outside horses have less time to clear the field are more likely to be “stuck” on the favorable outside. Two turn races are tricky because horses with inside posts can float off the rail themselves, putting horses outside posts too wide on the first turn to be a threat. Horses that draw too far outside, like the #12 post in either sprints or routes, may be compromised if riders inside are aware of the bias and chart wide courses themselves. Outside is good, but not too far outside.

Bet jockeys who understand biases or whose riding style natural favors the outside path. You will see in races certain riders keeping their mounts off the rail and drifting their mounts wide in the home stretch. Look to see if those riders have mounts in later races. Also, certain riders can be relied on to pick up on the bias and take advantage. For example, Frankie Pennington at Parx, and Raul Mena and Daniel Centeno at Delaware seem to look for days where the rail is dead and stay wide where possible.

Bet mid pack horses and stretch runners. When the inside is deep and the riders aren’t attuned to it, the early speed horses get mired on the deep inside and longshots seem to reign in the center of the track. After a couple days of biases, most of the riders generally adjust, and the speedy types are intentionally kept off of the rail, taking away the advantage of the late runners.

Generally I don’t enjoy tracks susceptible to dead rails, though betting them can be lucrative if you’re among the first to notice the bias. Also, you can take note of horses hurt by the deep inside and look to bet them back in future races. My general feeling is that dead rails make a complicated game even more challenging!

Today’s handicapping column is sponsored by Tropical Racing 🏝