By G.S. Thompson
Kevin Palmer won the February Player’s Choice contest in a squeaker last Saturday, besting Jeff Rozmus by $1.20, and he did it on the strength of a major cap horse.
Palmer loves horses at 8-1 or better, and his strategy wasn’t much different from that of Rozmus’, but he hit a vaunted “Cap” horse at Aqueduct to secure the win.
Palmer scored with a 10-1 shot in the 6th at Gulfstream, a 5-1 shot in the 7th at Oaklawn Park and hit a huge cap horse, Sanzio, at Aqueduct in the 7th that paid $68.00, $18.90 and $10.00 across the board (the win price was capped at $42.00), building his bankroll to $127.70, giving him just enough to win a nailbiter photo.
Rozmus hit an 8-1 shot in the first at Aqueduct, a 10-1 shot in the fourth at Gulfstream, a 7/2 shot in the 8th at Gulfstream, and an 8-1 shot in the 9th at Gulfstream, coming with a final bankroll of $126.50.
Two excellent handicappers going head-to-head in a battle right to the wire. Palmer won $1,000 and a trophy for his sixth win in the contest, while Rozmus took home $400 for finishing second. Trevor Tilston-Jones ($200) finished third with a bankroll of $118.70, followed by Bill Drew ($100) with $95.20 and Roger Jones ($50) with $87.30.
Palmer has been a fixture at Assiniboia Downs for decades, a Winnipeg lifer who got hooked on racing back in the 1980s with a $2 show bet on a horse called Banned from Boston.
“He was running against some really good ones and I bet him to show,” said Palmer. “I think he paid ten bucks to show. I was hooked.”
He never looked back. Palmer started reading the Racing Form in the late 1980s and early 1990s, teaching himself to handicap by spending hours with programs and pace figures. He did not learn from books. He learned from being at the track, grinding through the numbers with friends, including Randy Premachuk, a talented handicapper in his own right.
“Me and Randy, I guess we learned the most off each other,” said Palmer. “Sometimes we went in the contests together. We both respect each other’s handicapping.”
Palmer is 57 and retired, having spent his working years as a warehouse supervisor before stepping away from the workforce early, leaving more time for the thing he loves most. His family is originally from Sault Ste. Marie, though he was born in Winnipeg and has been here his whole life.
These days he spends a couple of days a week at the Green Brier Inn on Main Street, where his longtime friend Shannon Davis works the windows on Saturdays. He trusts her completely with his tickets.
“She’s never made a mistake on my bets,” said Palmer. “I always go to her.”
What separates Palmer from most contest players is his ability to read pace. He sees a race before it is run, working out where the speed will be, where the duels will form, and which horse might be sitting on a great trip.
He prints three programs the day before a contest, spreads them out and puts in about five hours of work before making his picks. He also keeps a close eye on track bias, particularly at Aqueduct, where conditions can swing from one day to the next.
“I watch the first couple of races because I have to see right away if it looks cold there and the speed is hanging on,” said Palmer. “If a closer comes from 12 lengths off and wins easy, I’m looking for that horse in the next race.”
“I try to go for horses with value,” said Palmer. “I don’t like going for 3-1 or 5-1 or 7/2 horses. I think if you hit three 10-to-1 shots, you win the contest most of the time.”
It’s a philosophy that has served him well. Palmer has now won the Player’s Choice six times since 2016, a remarkable run in a contest that draws some of the sharpest handicappers in the city.
The heart of his February win was Sanzio, a $68 winner in Race 7 at Aqueduct. He wasn’t even planning to handicap the race. He had printed programs for three tracks, but Aqueduct was not among them. With 15 minutes to post, a friend sitting beside him had the Aqueduct program, and Palmer took a quick look.
What he found was a pair of lines in the past performances that most handicappers would have skipped right over.
“I noticed that he had problems at the gate in his previous race,” said Palmer. “But the race before, I saw a horse come from about 12 lengths off the pace and win easily. So I was looking for a closer.”
Palmer dug in and liked what he saw. The horse had run into trouble in his recent starts and had lost ground at a mile and an eighth in his second-last effort, a less-than-ideal trip that likely scared off the public.
“It said six to eight paths wide, and he kept coming,” said Palmer. “So I said, okay, maybe he could be a closer. And I threw out the last race when he had trouble at the gate.”
When the race went off, Palmer was not sure what he was watching.
“He broke with the speed in the first hundred yards,” said Palmer. “Holy smokes, where is he? And then I looked, and he’s right there. Three speed horses were chasing the leader, and he was drafting right behind them. Then he swung out and caught the horse late. Won by about half a length.”
Palmer collected on a $68 winner that put the contest out of reach. Barely.
The other two winners were sharp picks as well. At Oaklawn Park in Race 7, jockey David Cabrera delivered a masterful ride on a 5-1 shot that Palmer had keyed on as a horses-for-course specialist. He was 9-1 when Palmer bet him, but the odds dropped late.
“If you watch the Oaklawn race, you’ll see he got a perfect ride,” said Palmer.
The Gulfstream winner in Race 6 was a horse Palmer had targeted well in advance.
Patience was also a factor in his win. “I put a pick in at 10:30 and didn’t put another one in for two hours,” he said. “I took my time with it. That’s the key thing. Be patient.”
Palmer acknowledged that the 8-1 and up strategy does come with risk, but in his experience, there is no other way to win.
“If you get off to a poor start and start chasing, you can finish way behind,” said Palmer. “It’s always good to start with a winner early.”
The contest wins are only part of the story. Palmer has cashed some big tickets on his own dime over the years, and he can still recall each one in detail.
His biggest score was a $23,000 Pick 4 at Assiniboia Downs last summer. Last year alone he estimates he made around $25,000 on live racing at the Downs. He also hit a superfecta at Turf Paradise for $10,000.
And then there’s the one that got away, and it still stings a little. On the same afternoon Sanzio won at Aqueduct, a $37,000 win four was sitting there for the taking. He had two of the longshots in the sequence, but had not printed the Aqueduct program and only stumbled onto Sanzio with 15 minutes to post.
“I didn’t look far enough ahead,” said Palmer. “But I guess that’s the game.”
Palmer reserved some praise for fellow contest regular Randy Premachuk, who sharpened his handicapping alongside him, calling him one of the better players in the competition.
“Randy’s a really good handicapper,” said Palmer. “He’s pretty lucky too. He’s won the contest so many times. Both of us respect each other’s handicapping.”
As for what he plans to do with the $1,000?
“Probably gamble some of it,” said Palmer.