Nominal Affection

I play poker for a living, but I've always liked the horses as a hobby. One time years ago, Red Ashey, Jeff Stuart, Dave the Bookmaker, and I leave Shreveport together to drive to Lexington, Kentucky, to bet this one special horse called Nominal Affection. Keeneland (racetrack) has two meets a year, a 15-day meet and a 17-day meet, separated from each other. They get all the class horses at these meets and they have the Keeneland Sales there, too. Right at the backdoor of the racetrack sits Calumet Farms, and those other big, famous racehorse breeding farms.

So, we get there and we all love this horse Nominal Affection. We had thought for sure that he would be going off at 4-to-1, but he went off at 6-to-5. If we had known this would be the case, we never would have driven that far. Now, he's coming down the stretch and he's neck and neck with a gray horse called Native-something, and I mean they're battling all the way. Nominal Affection barely noses out Native at the wire, so we win our bets – but that's not the end of the story.

About six months later, I'm in California with my dad at Bay Meadows racetrack. A race comes up, and here's that Native-something horse – the one that lost by a nose in that classy field at Keeneland – running in a claiming race in California. He had run only one other race in between the two and had lost it. This was the first time that he had ever run in California, and he was 10-to-1 on the tote board.

"Dad," I said, "you've gotta bet this horse, Native."

"Nope, I've already done my betting," he answered. Dad is a $2 bettor. He is one of the best handicappers I've ever met in my life, but if Dad makes a $5 bet, it's gotta be at Christmas time and everything's gotta be just right.

So, I went up to the window and put $500 on Native to win. "This horse is gonna win by a mile," I thought. "He's raced against so many classier horses, and there's nothing wrong with him, I've seen him walking in the paddock. Boy oh boy, he's gonna kill this race – and I've got him at 10-to-1!" Sure enough, he won by the length of a football field, and I picked up $5,000 on the race.

"How'd you know about this horse?!" Dad asked after the race, kinda perturbed that he hadn't laid out $2 on him.

"Just a hunch," I answered.

I know a guy who has hit 317 Pick-Sixes in his life. As a bettor, he's the greatest horseman I've ever met. He had this horse that he kept back, made him lose two or three times, and then took him up to River Downs in Ohio and ran him in a race. He placed bets on this horse with just about every bookmaker in the United States. The horse won the race, but somehow got disqualified. I think they might have taken him down because they figured out that my friend, the "Pick-Six King," was trying to put something over on them.

Well, don't worry, that didn't bother the "king" at all. He waited six months and then took the horse to California, where it went off at 8-to-1 against supposedly classier horses. But, of course, he knew what he had. His horse won just as easy as pie, and he hit all the California bookmakers. (They do that stuff all the time – hold back a horse, looking for the right field – but the public doesn't know about it.)

When Joy and I went on our honeymoon, we spent a few days in New Orleans. While Joy went antique shopping, I went to the track and won $5,000 on the horses. From there we traveled to Tampa, where I went to the dog races and won another $3,800. After all our expenses were paid, we came home $5,000 ahead. When I told this story to my publisher, she said, "In what other profession can you go out for an evening's dinner and entertainment, play some poker or gamble a little bit along the way, and come home with more money than you started with?!"

"Yes," I answered, "but in what other profession can you work all day long and come home losing for the day?!"

Editor's note: The winner of four World Series bracelets, T.J. Cloutier is the co-author (with Tom McEvoy) of Championship No-Limit and Pot-Limit Hold'em, Championship Omaha, and Championship Hold'em, all of which are available through Card Player. Visit the website at www.pokerbooks.com for more details.