Monday, January 5, 2009
HOW TO WIN AT THE HORSE RACING TRACKS
Dear Readers,
I am happy to report that I won 3 exactas the other day at Santa Anita Track. I am sure you are dying to know how I did this.
First, it was a miserably cold day - worse than Ireland or any other cold place we'd been too. It was cold and clammy, and the air oozed with moisture. Usually we sit outside where you can actually see the race, but I felt I'd get instant-pneumonia if I did that. We had tickets to the Clubhouse so I parked myself in a warm room with a television nearby. It turned out that some serious gamblers were in that room. They would discuss the horses; and one man was getting bets or tips via cell phone, and so he would shout out: "What? Victorina? And who else is good?" etc. etc.
So, dear Readers, I listened to this man and his friends, jutted down the names of the horses that they tossed out. And I had some 3 newspaper predictions of which horses would win. I looked at the horses names and came up with the top 3 mentioned by all these sources. Believe it or not, I bet three exactas and won three exactas. Basically I boxed my 3 top horses. I didn't bet a lot, since I only bet for entertainment - if I cash a few tickets now and then, I'm happy - but I was ahead.
I've tried other methods of divining the winners, such as following my instinct, betting on gray horses, studying the trot of the horses to see which horse really wants to win, waiting for a horse to wink at me, using birthdays or lucky numbers, even trying to decipher the racing forms; but this was the method that has worked best for me. Three exactas is not easy to divine.
That makes for a good day at the track!
Labels:
horse racing,
horse track,
santa anita
Cecilia Manguerra Brainard's official website is ceciliabrainarddotcom. She is the award-winning author and editor of 22 books, including When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, The Newspaper Widow, Magdalena, Selected Stories, Vigan and Other Stories, and more. She edited Growing Up Filipino 1, 2, & 3, Fiction by Filipinos in America, Contemporary Fiction by Filipinos in America, and other books..
Her work has been translated into Finnish and Turkish; and many of her stories and articles have been widely anthologized.
Cecilia has received many awards, including a California Arts Council Fellowship in Fiction, a Brody Arts Fund Award, a Special Recognition Award for her work dealing with Asian American youths, as well as a Certificate of Recognition from the California State Senate, 21st District, and the Outstanding Individual Award from her birth city, Cebu, Philippines.
She has lectured and performed at UCLA, USC, University of Connecticut, University of the Philippines, PEN, Shakespeare & Company in Paris, and many others. She has served in the Board of literary arts groups such as PEN, PAWWA (Pacific Asian American Writers West), among others.
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