00:00This is the first episode of Better Things with Joe Bianca.
00:03In this show, we'll be having one-on-one in-depth conversations with some of the
00:06handicapping world's brightest minds. We'll ask them about wagering strategies,
00:10how they got into the world of horse racing or even sports betting,
00:14and we'll ask them about life as a whole just to get to know who they are.
00:20So I'm so thrilled to welcome my first guest on this show, Better Things with Joe Bianca. He's a
00:24fellow podcast host, but he's so much more than that. He's the morning line maker for NYRA.
00:29He's a sharp handicapper for Daily Racing Forum, Time Forum US. David Aragona,
00:33thank you so much for coming on. Yeah, thanks for having me on. Looking forward to having a chat.
00:37Great, great to have you. Honestly, the reason I wanted to have you on first is I feel like
00:42on the surface level, we have a lot of things in common. We're young New York-based guys.
00:47We're handicappers. I wouldn't compare myself to you as a handicapper,
00:51but I feel like I don't know that much about you. So let's start with that. Let's start with
00:55how you got into horse racing. What was your origin story for being a horse player?
01:00I mean, I feel like my origin story is pretty typical. I started going to the races with my
01:05dad, you know, the cliche when I was a very young kid. Actually, my dad and his brother, my uncle,
01:12were both into races since they were in their mid-20s. They both went to college together,
01:16and they had a college roommate that one day asked them if they wanted to go see a horse race.
01:21It happened that the first horse race their college roommate took them to was Secretariat's
01:24Belmont Stakes. So that was their introduction to horse racing. The morning line thing is really
01:29interesting, I think, because you kind of have to separate your own opinion from what you think the
01:34public is going to do. Is that hard for you? Or are you able to separate those two things?
01:40When I first started doing it, I thought it would be harder than it actually was.
01:44But it really is kind of like just turning off that side of your brain and saying, OK,
01:49my opinions don't really matter. It's just like basically an exercise in paying attention to what
01:56happens on the tote board. And the biggest homework that I did, and I still do, for
02:01making the morning line is just kind of like sitting in front of the TV and watching the
02:05tote action and taking note of which horses take money, which horses don't, what was I right about,
02:09what was I wrong about? Because a lot of the times the trends that you see on the tote board
02:13and the wagering, it doesn't really follow things that you think should be moving the money that
02:18much. But there are certain angles that a lot of people do put a lot of faith in that you do have
02:24to be aware of. So for me, I kind of have this repository of all these angles that are kind of
02:29in a hierarchy in my head. And when I go through the races, you see which ones apply and you just
02:32try to do your best to look at it through the eye of the public, in quotation marks.
02:40And then once I'm done, I'll go back and see what my opinions are. But I do try to make them
02:44two completely separate endeavors. It's been a big discussion and debate around the computer
02:50wagers. And I think Naira has done a very good job in kind of limiting them in certain pools.
02:55Do you think that that's something that needs to happen more across the board to make it fairer
03:00for the for the common horse player? For sure. I mean, there are kind of two components to that.
03:05I mean, the first is just the general presence of the CAW wager, which I feel like it's not
03:11going anywhere right now. And when Naira did it, it doesn't completely solve the problem. I know
03:16that they have probably some more steps planned down the line to address it. But what they did
03:20without your referencing, like taking the CAW wagering out of the wind pool, it does solve
03:24that immediate problem of appearances, where a horse's odds are going to drop in half in the
03:29middle of a race. Obviously, it's not because money's being bet during the race, but it's
03:34because so much of the play comes in in the final seconds that you do have that slight delay and
03:39the wagering, the wind wagering, it does really change at a lot of tracks. And I feel like Naira
03:44has solved that problem. And it can give you a little bit more confidence betting into the wind
03:47pool because you know, you're going to be locked into a certain price with a little more confidence
03:52than you do in some other circuits. But yeah, it really, for me depends on what my handicapping
03:57opinions are, and where I think the value lies. I'm not, I don't necessarily like to come into
04:01something saying I'm going to bet the pick five today, I like to look at the race card and say,
04:06like, okay, my opinions are in races X, Y, and Z, how can I hook those up? Or which horses do I
04:12like? So what are the best bets to use in these situations to capitalize on my opinions? Not so
04:18much trying to like retrofit my opinions to a specific reason. That's so smart. Like, that's
04:22one of my big problems is like, I try to like, you know, hammer out a pick five play just because I
04:26feel like it's such a, relatively speaking, it's such good value, because you can always find 15%
04:31takeout. But yeah, I think that's one of the issues I have is like, you know, putting in
04:36hundreds of dollars into a pick five play, because I'm like, well, this is the best value, but you
04:39really Yeah, I mean, and I think that's one of the problems that's been born out of the way racing is
04:45covered on TV. A lot of times you see, I mean, not to pick on one specific network that's not looking
04:49to do but like, there's this always this conversation about like, what's your pick five
04:52ticket? What's your pick six ticket? Who are you singling? And I feel like sometimes that leads
04:56people down the path of thinking like, I have to be this kind of player to make money. And it's not
05:00the case. I mean, you should do what suits you, you should look at what you've been successful at
05:04and build your strategy on that. Don't have to come into a day thinking I'm going to play the
05:11pick five at this specific track, because everybody's talking about it. If your opinions
05:14don't really line up that way, find something else to play, you'll probably do better.
05:21I promised the Kentucky Derby future wager bet. Pool three of the Kentucky Derby future
05:27wager opens this weekend. I'll start with the caveat that I don't normally love
05:30giving out Derby future bets because there's such a relatively high likelihood that the horse won't
05:35even make it to the starting gate to begin with. But if you're going to make one, you want a horse
05:39that you think will be either similar or hopefully better odds in the future wager than on Derby day
05:45if they do make it to the starting gate. And I'm going to go with a bomb, I'm going to go with
05:49command performance for Todd Pletcher. He's an interesting horse because he still hasn't broken
05:54his maiden. He's run four times, hasn't won a race, but he's run big in a couple of big grade
05:59one races. He was second in the champagne as a two-year-old. He was fourth in the Breeders' Cup
06:03juvenile, and he hasn't started yet as a three-year-old. So he's kind of a forgotten horse
06:08at this point, I think. He's going to be a huge price. He's going to be overlooked in the future
06:12bet, 50, 60, maybe even 70 to one. Those are the horses you're really trying to bet because if they
06:17do jump up and run big in a prep race, which I expect him to do somewhere between now and Derby
06:22day, he's probably going to be more in the 30 to 41 range or maybe even lower than that if he wins
06:26one of these races. He's by Union Rags. Union Rags won the mile and a half Belmont, so I think he's
06:32going to get better as the distances get longer as well. He obviously has a tremendous hall of
06:36fame trainer in Todd Pletcher, and I think he's just going to be one of the forgotten horses
06:40on this Derby trail until he runs big in one of the preps. So I like command performance,
06:4550 to one or better for sure in the Kentucky Derby future wager. And thank you so much for
06:50watching the first episode of Better Things with Joe Bianca. Thank you so much to David
06:53Aragona for joining us. We'll see you next time.
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