First-timer Coles conquers NHC

Scott Coles is 34. On Day 3 of his very first National Horseplayers Championship at Treasure Island in Las Vegas, Coles needed the winner in a fourhorse field to take down the lucrative contest.

Coles led the NHC by $5.80 heading into the contest’s final race, Santa Anita’s race 9, which had been carded for turf but moved to dirt after mid-card rain, leading to 10 scratches. Coles backed a 7-5 shot named Fiery Lady, who swooped down on two leaders at the quarter pole and made the front.

Coles, standing alongside the nine other handicappers who played the final table segment of the contest Sunday, gave Hall of Fame jockey Mike Smith some classic handicapper encouragement at the eighth pole: “Just don’t fall off.”

Smith kept his seat, and with Fiery Lady home, Coles wrapped up the contest with $367, $10.40 more than runnerup Jim Meeks, who backed second-place Helen’s Tiger in the contest’s final race.

Coles won first-prize money of $800,000, a solid three days’ work in his first NHC appearance. Coles is from Grayslake, Ill., a northern suburb of Chicago, and trades futures for a living. He said after his win he’d been handicapping horse races for awhile, but that neither friends nor family had steered him to handicapping and betting horses. His was generally a solo pursuit.

“I did this all on my own, discovered it on my own and just love the game,” Coles said.

Meeks, the runner-up, came into Sunday’s final table leading the contest and stayed in close contention throughout the late afternoon session. He trailed Coles $5.80 going into the final race, but it was going to be difficult making up ground with so few choices in the contest’s finale.

Rounding out the top 10 finishers were Matthew Vagvolgyi ($354), J. Randy Gallo ($337.40), Steven Simonovic ($327.20), Joe Perry ($324.40), Chris Littlemore ($298.40), Robert Gilbert ($297.40), Marshall Gramm ($276.90), and Frank Drew ($268.80)

Coles’s final winning move came in the eighth race from Golden Gate, where he nailed I Love Romance, who won by a neck and paid $26.40 to win, $11.80 to place. That good opinion vaulted Coles from fourth into a lead he’d hold the rest of the way.

Littlemore stayed in contention all weekend while trying to take down first prize in the NHC for the second year in a row. Gilbert was the contest leader after the first and second days.

During each of those two days, players were required to place 18 mythical $2 win-place wagers – 10 races from a predetermined set of tracks but on races of the contestants’ choosing, plus eight on mandatory races from that menu of venues.

After Day 2, bankrolls in the top 10 percent of all contestants moved on to a semi-final round in which players made 10 mythical $2 win-place bets, all on races of their own choosing. The top 10 semi-final finishers graduated to the final table, where they played the same $2 win-place on seven mandatory races, with no optional races.

Yes, it’s horse-race handicapping, but the study and preparation alone is grueling for this three-day grind, followed by increasingly intense pressure bearing down on the most successful players. Coles handled it all in his first try.