Top horses maintain positions in NTRA Polls

Horseracing Betting Lines

05/24/2010 - New York, NY (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Zenyatta and Lookin At Lucky each remain in first-place in their respective NTRA polls, Undefeated mare Zenyatta is the overwhelming selection in the national rankings and Lookin At Lucky is the undisputed leader among three-year-olds.

Owned by Jerry and Ann Moss, Zenyatta received all but one of the 17 first- place votes cast. She leads Quality Road, who got the other first-place vote, 169 points to 143. Quality Road is set to start in the Mel Mile on Memorial Day at Belmont Park.

Lookin At Lucky is third with 101 points with Misremembered holding onto fourth with 76 points.

Defending Horse of the Year Rachel Alexandra moves up one spot to fifth with 52 points and Blame has 50 points to advance from ninth to sixth.

Kentucky Oaks champ Blind Luck follows with 48 points while Kentucky Derby winner Super Saver is eighth with 39 points. Rail Trip is ninth with 36 points and Unrivaled Belle rounds out the top 10 with 34 points.

Preakness champ Lookin At Lucky picked up 14 of 17 first-place votes and 167 points to remain atop the NTRA Three-Year-Old Poll. Super Saver is second with two first-place votes and 142 points.

Ice Box, second in the Run for the Roses, is third with 130 points. He is expected to start in the Belmont Stakes on June 5.

Preakness runner-up First Dude, another Belmont Stakes probable, improves to fourth with 86 points, while Blind Luck drops one spot to fifth with 84 points.

Paddy O'Prado, third in the Kentucky Derby, jumps from eighth to sixth with 67 points. The retired Eskendereya continues to receive one first-place vote, but fell one spot to seventh with 49 points.

Jackson Bend, third in the Preakness, again received 48 points, but dropped one place to eighth.

Evening Jewel and Sidney's Candy exchanged positions in the latest tabulations. The filly Evening Jewel is ninth with 31 points, while Sidney's Candy drops to 10th with 28 points.

Wwwherald Horseracing Betting News

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SPORTS BETTING - Tennis is an underrated and under-utilized bettors' sport.

Ten years ago, at just about this time, I called Alan Boston in Vegas and left him a voicemail that went something like this (abridged version): "Hey Alan, Chad Millman from ESPN The Magazine calling. I want to do a book about wise guys, you in?"

A couple weeks later I got a message back (abridged version): "I don't know, maybe," Boston said. "Call me and we'll talk about it. But not later today. I got $1,000 on Andre Agassi to win the French Open at 40-1, and he's in the finals."

Here's what happened next (abridged version): Agassi won his tourney. Boston won his $40,000. I wrote sportsbook.

In the ten years since, how much has been wagered on the big-time tennis events? Put it this way: The Nevada Gaming Commission doesn't even track the number year by year because it's so small.

"Tennis makes up about one-tenth of one percent of our take," says Lucky's bookmaking boss Jimmy Vaccaro. "The last big golf major we probably had $100,000 worth of bets. In tennis, we might have written two big tickets."

Tennis' lack of popularity amongst the American bettoratti is no surprise, really. For starters, the biggest sports betting holidays -- the Super Bowl, the NCAA tourney -- are must see TV. People, at least the degenerates I know, plan vacations around watching those events in Vegas sports books.

But Wimbledon? Doesn't exactly reel in the whales. "Seriously, it's the nuts as an event," says Boston. "But who even knows when it's on?"

Here's another reason that helps explain why golf gets traction, something I call "The Bubbe Theory." My Bubbe is pushing 95 and has cataracts so bad that, to her, even the most crystalline Chicago day is mostly cloudy. But she still listens to the Cubs games, and she still calls me in a fit if she disagrees with something Rick Telander writes in the Chicago Sun Times. She's a sports fan. If she doesn't know you, you're just filling a niche. And niche players, even historically good ones like Roger and Raf, don't drive betting volume. Only the highest profile names attract square money, which inflates wagering totals like a shot of saline to the lips. Bubbe, and the public, loved Agassi, tennis' last cross-the-rubicon, mainstream draw. She also has a crush on Tiger. She's given me standing orders to put a sawbuck on the big cat whenever I walk through a sports book (or mistakenly tap into one via my Internet machine.) That explains why the Masters is getting $100K in action at some books while the four tennis majors might not get that combined this year.

This isn't a case of tennis being a difficult sport to bet. In fact, in Europe, it's probably the second most popular sport for gambling after soccer. Granted, as the WSJ football betting last week and The Mag's Shaun Assael examined in even greater depth last year, that might be because gamblers across the pond see it as an easy game to fix. But it could also be because, over there it holds the kind of sway the big two do over here.

Street corners in Spain are peppered with public courts and kids doing their best Raffy impressions. In some war torn parts of Eastern Europe poverty-stricken kids view tennis as an escape route, like football or basketball here. A couple years ago The Mag's Lindsay Berra wrote a great piece about Belgrade's Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic and Novak Djokovic. They learned the game as kids while bombs were raining down on their homeland. They practiced in drained swimming pools. Not exactly Nick Bolletierri conditions.

In the United States, casual fans think tennis is played four times a year. But on the tightly packed European continent, national interest in homegrown talent runs deep every weekend. Of the ATP's current top 20 players, only two, tennis betting and James Blake, are American. Fourteen are from Europe, representing six different countries.

No wonder fans from Lisbon to Bhudapest get jacked up for the net game, whether it's Wimbledon or a low-level tourney like the Estoril Open in Portugal (congrats to Spain's Albert Montanes for winning that one, btw). Chances are good that someone representing their flag will not only be playing, but have a shot at winning.

And that's all any bettor can ask for.

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