Posted
Friday, January 15, 2021
This week, the $1,000 Saturday Survivor game at Derby Wars will span races 2-9 at Aqueduct. There is a $100 jackpot if you are the only player to correctly pick all eight races.
There are plenty of unexpected results that contest players must survive in these eight race contests, which requires your selection to finish in the top three. Last week, early on in a survivor game, longshots lit up the results board at Aqueduct and 90% of the field was eliminated with over 100 players getting knocked out leaving only a dozen in the contest.
Survivor players need to look at those tricky results as an opportunity rather than a disaster. You want to be one of the players left in the game. With each entry costing only $5.75, players have the opportunity to buy-in up to 12 times. Multiple buy-ins give players the insurance that they need to survive when your confidence level is low in any particular race.
This game kicks off with the second race, which is one of those races, that might wreak havoc with this contest. This $12,500 open claiming race has a field of eight in which only one horse won her last start and she now steps up in class. No other horse in the field has finished better than third and half of the field finished seventh or worse in their last race. Five of the horses are making a significant drop-down in class.
These low-level claimers at Aqueduct are very hard to trust. They move into form to win suddenly and then just as quickly will run badly.
This Saturday contest will require plenty of entries to play with confidence. In race 2, I will use at least three different horses and hope that the result will leave me as one of a small number of survivors.
Violent Trick will switch from the barn of Todd Pletcher to Rudy Rodriguez following a July layoff from racing in Florida. She will drop out of allowance races to the lowest level of her career, although she has won twice for a $25,000 tag.
Viradia gets a favorable jockey change to Kendrick Carmouche who will no doubt try and put her into contention early in the race. She hit the board in eight of 14 career starts at Aqueduct.
Mongolian Humor makes her second start for new connections and drops back to the level where she had success in the past. She gets an Aqueduct leading rider in Jose Lezcano for the first time.
