Back in March when the pandemic hit, if wagering on Harness Racing was your vice of choice, Cal Expo was the only game in town. While the track no longer has the market to itself, the northern California-located oval is very much a viable option for those seeking a good handicapping challenge. Let's say you pick up your favorite flavor of Cal Expo past performances and dig in, first wondering what to make of each trainer and driver. Sure, the statistics are jumping off the page, but is this 10-percent driver as good as that one? Of course you'll use your tried-and-true handicapping staples to uncover the winners. Horse A is dropping in class so he should be tough to beat. Horse B is getting a much-improved post-position and should race better tonight. You apply all of the knowledge gained from years of handicapping tracks throughout North America and the result will likely be a losing night. I know that because I've been watching Cal Expo for years. I remember when I first started paying attention to the Sacramento track, and despite decades of experience betting on races from $2,000 claimers to the Hambletonian, at tracks ranging from Bangor to The Meadowlands, I not only lost often at Cal Expo, I was lost. Very few of the races seemed to go the way I mapped them out in my head. Horses I was sure would be live plays didn't fire. Horses I thought had no shot sometimes won easily. What on earth was I doing wrong? If I'm being 100% honest, it probably took me a full year of watching Cal Expo before I really felt comfortable playing. For the uninitiated, Cal Expo races on Friday and Saturday nights with a first-race post time of about 4:55 PM local time. Normally the track kicks off each card at 6:20 PM but like many regions, it was forced to an earlier post time due to the pandemic. The current meet is expected to last through April. Now that Cal Expo has been open for a handful of racing dates in the 2020/2021 season, it is the perfect time to offer a crash course on betting this track, which offers a reasonable 16% takeout on Pick 4 and Pick 5 wagers. For me, what makes harness racing such a great sport for handicapping is consistency and no track provides you with more uniformity in terms of variables than Cal Expo. Because the track is located hundreds of miles from the closest Standardbred competitor, each night of racing generally features the same 10 to 12 drivers and 6 to 10 horses per race as the previous week. So the $5,000/$6,000 claiming handicap you watched last weekend will offer many of the same equine athletes (from different posts) going at it once again. With the same horses racing against each other repeatedly, replay watching is vital because you'll get the feel of each horse and what they are capable of doing. Of course, if you've been watching all meet that isn't as necessary, but spending an hour watching the cards from the previous week can pay dividends. The class system at Cal Expo works much differently than at East Coast tracks like Yonkers, Harrah's Philadelphia, Meadowlands, Pocono, and many others. The conditions look just like any other track but because the purses are lower, the jumps up and down in class don't mean as much. I treat the different conditions in ranges: Non-winners $500 in last 5 Non-winners $750-$1,000 in last 5 Non-winners $1,500-$3,000 in last 5 Non-winners $3,000-$4,500 in last 5 Open The basement is the basement and any horse dropping into the non-winners-of-$500 class is likely to wake up with a better effort, but I've seen horses move up and down between the non-winners of $1,500 to non-winners of $3,000 level like yo-yos with no direct correlation as to which week they'll put in their best effort. One underused handicapping method, which applies not only at Cal Expo but also at other tracks which card multiple races with similar conditions, is comparing the class of each race. All non-winners-of-$1,500 races are not created equal. I always keep a copy of the previous week's past performances when playing Cal Expo. If two horses are coming out of the same class but different races, I go back and check to see which race had the classier and sharper field. This could put you on a horse that is 6-1 after finishing fifth in the same class last week over a horse that is 2-1 after finishing second last week. Post position is important at most tracks, but Cal Expo has to be one of the fairest surfaces in North America. Ignoring post 10 since the best horse in the race is often assigned outside in fields with just five or six horses, every position on the gate was winning at a rate of 8.3% or better at the completion of the 2019/2020 meet in March. Unsurprisingly posts five and six had the best percentages (20.6% and 15.3%), but that is deceiving since at least 10% of the races carded have six horses or fewer with the best horses assigned outside. While I'd rather be in posts 1-5, 6-10 are not quite as bad as other locations. One lesson you'll need to learn quickly at Cal Expo is to turn the page. There are going to be horses that win which have no form. You'll go back to the program after they win and try to see the angle and it just isn't there. Don't let that bother you. Shake your head in doubt a few times. Throw your hands in the air one time in disgust. Then turn the page and move on. It seems to happen about 1.5 times for every two cards they race. The phenomenon isn't distinctive to Cal Expo. The difference at Cal Expo is that if a horse was finishing sixth every week and improves two seconds, he's a major contender because the races are only going to go so fast. At The Meadowlands you'll get horses shipping in from all over the East Coast and improving two seconds, while it may take you from 1:52 to 1:50, is not enough to beat the sharpest horses in the race. I'll leave you with one final thought as it pertains to the driver colony. Of course the top guys like James Kennedy and Luke Plano are going to put you in play more often than not and give you a fair shake, and no one has hotter hands than 19-year-old Jacob Cutting at the current meet, but just about any of the drivers are capable of a win at any time. The key to betting the lower-rated guys is to find spots where they are less likely to get in trouble, like smaller fields or races where they can get an easy lead. While he hasn't raced at the current meet yet, Rene Goulet was only winning at about 5% in March, but given the right scenario, he's proven to be a capable driver. While perhaps not a go-to track for all harness handicappers, Cal Expo provides good value for the astute player and it's certainly worth dipping your feet in the water.