Magic City Jai-Alai player RonRon surged past 100-singles game wins for the 2020 season joining Douglas now in being the only players to accomplish this feat so far in 2020. RonRon won 5 of his 6 singles games Friday to take him to 104-total wins. RonRon also won one of his two doubles games Friday with frontcourt player Juice. Douglas still stands first in singles game win percentage at 39.1% with RonRon second at 32.3% wins.
The quest for the 2020 singles championship is definitely heating up and will likely be a duel to the end between Douglas and RonRon. Currently Douglas has 118-wins with RonRon at 104-wins and closing in. Third and fourth are a ways back: Bueno with 72-wins and Ben with 64-wins. Overall the quality of play at Magic City Jai-Alai this year has been truly amazing and it’s great to see the improvement in these players since the Jai-Alai program began in 2018! Asier returns to play today after being out for a fractured wrist. He’s playing in games 1-4. Good Luck Asier and welcome back!
The Jai-5 was nailed for $2,940 at the first performance on Friday and again for the $2,000 guarantee at the 4-pm performance. The 4-pm performance was the easiest of Jai-5’s in the Magic City history based on SayHiLi.com computer simulations as all five winners were TL (SayHiLi.com’s Top Level Posts), thus making this Jai-5 a DM of 5. DM which was just recently published on a SayHiLi blog post “classified info” on Tuesday, September 15th is SayHiLi.com’s Difficulty Metric, which is a cumulative measure of Difficulty Metric for each of the five Jai-5 games. The easiest DM of 5 ticket with all 5 games having TL contenders would have cost a Jai-5 bettor $12 total to play: 16 – 1 – 123 – 47 – 2 (winners were posts 6-1-1-7-2, winning players were Ben, Anderluck, Kubala, RonRon and doubles team of Juice-RonRon). However, keep in mind how this Jackpot wager works; had another bettor had all 5-winners, they would have split 40% of what was wagered on the Jai-5 for the 4-pm performance. There was a total of $1,152 wagered on the Jai-5 at the 4-pm performance and $1,234 wagered at the noon performance.
The surprise on the Jai-5 Will-Pays was seeing $2,000 for ALL payoffs in the game 7 final leg of the wager. Now be aware this is not the first time all 8-posts have been covered for 5 of 5 payoffs, however it’s the first time since Jai-5 inception in 2019 that all Jai-5 Will-Pays were for the Jai-5 Jackpot. August 24th and October 24th of the 2019 season ALL combinations were covered for 5 of 5, however some of them were for multiple winners and thus weren’t paying the full Jackpot.
The Mighty Ocho could have been nailed by a bettor with a single winning ticket. The Mighty Ocho was a DM of 9 (DM of 8 is easiest). There were seven TL’s in the 8-game sequence, with the other game being a second level winner in game 1, Jeden. This DM of 9 was the easiest result so far in Mighty Ocho history with a DM of 11 being the previous easiest result on two occasions with 5 and 6 TL’s each time. There was only $66 wagered on the Mighty Ocho this performance, yet there were two posts, post 2 & 6, live for 7/8 consolation payoffs (result of last leg was 5-2-6, RonRon the winner in post 5). There was one time this season where the Mighty Ocho paid on 7 of 8, on August 22nd (a MO with DM of 12 with 5-TL’s). This just goes to show that the Mighty Ocho can be won with some handicapping, plus a little luck never hurts. The guarantee for the Mighty Ocho, a Pick 8 Jackpot wager is $3,000 and the wager works the same as the Jai-5 Jackpot wager.
Thanks to Magic City Jai-Alai for providing some opportunities for big jackpots with payoffs of several thousand and even more! This makes the Jai-Alai wagering much more interesting and the wagering menu appeals to a wider range of customers. Competitor Dania Jai-Alai when last open, offered no high paying challenging wagers and is most likely the only pari-mutuel plant in the country offering horses, greyhounds or Jai-Alai without even a Pick 4, Pick 5 or a Pick 6 wager which have become so popular among bettors in the last 20+ years. Would casinos be popular if there was no chance for a big payoff? We’re glad Magic City Jai-Alai understands this concept!
Don’t forget there are no more Saturday 8-pm performances (we’re sad too Stu), but the rest of the schedule remains the same.
Steve (SayHiLi contributor & Jai-Alai statistician)