Weekend Winners Club

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Friday, May 1. Oaklawn has a big Arkansas Derby eve card today with 10 races and over 110 horses running after morning scratches.  These include the featured Fantasy G3 for 3yo fillies, the Gardenia 80k also for 3yof, and the Arkansas Breeders Championship for all 3up. This is a good day to see how the track and connections are playing out the day before the big Arkansas Derby G1 X 2.

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The expert picks for each race are listed below in order of preference.  In the interest of time, we’re posting the early pick 4 first and then will add the later picks by 4pm ET.  Weather is clear and warm with 0% chance of rain.

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Race 1:  Key 6 and 9 after that it’s a crapshoot. 4 will likely show up on the board somewhere.

Race 2:  11 5 4 1 9 12

Race 3:  7 8 19 1 2 4

Race 4:  6 11 1 8 4 5

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To recap the early Pick 4 it helps to look at what the Grid said and why we said what we did above.

In Race 1, you can see the 1^st and 4^th place finishers were no surprise to anyone.  But you can also see the 3^rd and 4^th were not surprising here either.  We did have them ranked 5^th and 6^th.  In a field with decent amount of speed but only 6f, not surprising to see the top 3 Power finish 1 3 and 4, and the runner up was tied for 3^rd in EP and 4^th in Speed.  Unfortunately no exotics here but alive in Pick 4.

Race 2, again the top 3 this time no surprise to anyone.  But some may have been surprised at the 57-1 long shot in 4^th.  Not here, we had him ranked 5^th as you can see, primarily because he was 2^nd in LP and Stamina in a 8.5f race which had an average amount of speed in it. Really easy dime super that paid $52.

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In race 3 you can see again an average amount of speed and a 6f race.  Thus not real surprising at all to see the top 2 EP fillies finish 1-2 while 2 of our favs finished 3-4.  All top 4 from our top 6 ranked.

Race 4 back to 8.5f, but not a whole lotta speed, so we dared rank the top EP horse 2^nd, while the rest of the top 5 were mostly top Power and LP picks. This paid off well as 11 held on for the win after taking command midway.  Obviously someone using our picks was betting on it since his odds cut in half. A little bit surprised by the 3^rd place finisher, but you can see in the HI column that he does have the 2^nd best PF overall, achieved in a sprint race way back when he was in better form.

So, no trifecta there but there was a nice 50 cent Pick 4 payout of $814.

The remaining races are listed below:

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There is no middle Pick 4 today, there will be tomorrow.  Late Pick 4 starts Race 7.  Pick 5 Race 6.  We like to pick the top 5 or 6 in each so you can have some good shots at the bottom of tri and super.

Race 5:  12 3 5 6 11 1 7

Race 6:  10 12 9 7 6  

Race 7:  3 9 4 11 1 10 2  Pick 4 and first stakes race of the day. Long shots specials 9 10 and 2.

Race 8:  3 5 7 9 2 10  Gardenia 80k wide open, 4 and 12 only non contenders. LSS 9 10 and 2 again.

Race 9:  2 10 3 4 5 11 14   LSS 4 5 11 14

The Fantasy G3 has 11 solid contenders in a field of 13.  2 and 10 are the most proven, both G1 winners.  But there are 4 other graded stakes winners in the field, and several other listed stakes winners.  2 3 4 are all top 3 LP and Stamina so must be included in a field full of speed, along with the G1 winner 10.

Race 10:  6 7 8 11 10 13 3  LSS 11 10

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As usual, you can get the Grid for all the major tracks here.

Good luck! And stay tuned for the Arkansas Derby Precap coming later today, click the Home button up top if you don’t see it by Saturday at noon.

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