New Forum/Email Pool Party Yahoo Group

Hey Folks,

As you know we have been working away at the Pool Party each week here at HANA, and elsewhere. The blog and website tends to get cluttered with all of the irons we have here in the fire, and Ross Gallo came up with a great idea to expand the Parties - with a email list and yahoo group. The text of his email he sent to all of us as HANA members (and non-members too!) is as follows.

Please consider sending an email and joining the group to here. handletalks-subscribe@yahoogroups.com . We have to change the game one bettor at a time. One track at a time. Your voice matters.

Hello All,

Hope this finds you well. (I'll explain the link above soon, I promise) Many of you know about and have been participating in an idea created by Mike Mayo and being overseen by HANA (Horseplayer's Association of North America). For those that don't, in it's simplest form, we are attempting to band together horseplayers everywhere to wager their dollars on a specific pool or race every week. We have made five attempts in the last seven weeks (skipped the Derby and Preakness weeks and will skip Belmont week as well), and have increased handle between $12,000 and $50,000 (estimated) on each wager over that time. We have played at Will Rogers Downs, Tampa Bay Downs, Mountaineer Park, Hawthorne and Prairie Meadows. We have been staying away from the major tracks for several reasons, but mostly to make it easier to track our progress in these tracks "smaller" pools. Our next play will be at Canterbury Park on Saturday May 23rd, race TBD.

HANA has been doing a wonderful job with this venture and will continue to be the lead. They have other interests and responsibilities (all about improving the game for the horseplayer), so we have decided to create a forum dedicated to the Pool Party only that will work in concert with HANA, and hopefully give you the players a bigger voice in this venture and more information than ever before. After all, it is your money that's on the line. We will be: addressing our ultimate goals, attempting to get an estimated roll call of our numbers, posting our handle figures every week, looking for your feedback and questions on all subjects, handicapping the races from week to week, as well as asking you to vote from time to time on various subjects and possibly/probably including the selection process itself, and much more. We've made some good decisions and some bad ones so far, but I know we've learned each time from the bad ones. We need you to succeed and hopefully this new forum will be another positive step to that end. For those of you who haven't already, I urge you to join HANA, it's free and when you read their mission statement you'll know you're among kindred spirits. And please send an email (blank or otherwise) to the link (also listed above) handletalks-subscribe@yahoogroups.com and you'll soon be a part of our new dedicated forum. Look forward to the coming weeks and months and working with all of you to the betterment of our game. Thank you.

Ross Gallo