You would think that the two pick fours on today's nine-race card at Saratoga would be on races 2-5 and 6-9, if only because that's been the menu for the last few hundred nine-race cards at NYRA. But apparently you would be wrong.
According to the track program and my Formulator pp's, today's two pick fours are instead on races 3-6 and 6-9, a confusing and unfaortunate change that makes race 6 both the end of one pick four and the beginning of the other. It seems to stem from a steeplechase being the first race of the day, meaning that there are daily doubles on both races 1 and 2 and 2 and 3. This doesn't explain, however, why the pick fours can't be in their expected spot or why this ill-advised change was made at all.
This change also seems to have affected NYRA's generally excellent Internet wagering site, where (as of 12:42 p.m.) the pulldown menu where you click the race you want to bet jumps directly from race 1 to race 5. So if you bet by mouse, it might be wise to log in a little early and make sure you can get into the page you need to in order to bet on races 2, 3 and 4.
