The Horses are approaching the starting gate

It's only one day away until the first Saturday in May, and that means our horse racing picks are approaching the starting gate. The Kentucky Derby is not the richest race of the year, at least not in purse money.  There is a race in Dubai that carries a ten-million dollar prize. But, if you ask any Thoroughbred owner, trainer or jockey which race they would like to win at least once in their career, it would be the Derby.

Hundreds of millions of dollars are wagered on the race. It creates the largest betting pool of the racing calendar for a single event.  Opportunity. Well, like any other sport, there is a ton of pre-race hype which tends to heap a disproportionate amount of money in the direction of the favorite. Here's the interesting factoid about that, favorites in the Derby win far less than 40% of the time.  So let's drill down into the numbers. The average winning price on a favorite is about $5.40... less your $2.00 bet, for a net of $3.40.  Not bad if they could win 60% of the time. But they don't. So here's how you make money betting on the races.

It's called the All-Button. Stay with me. It is next to impossible to win money playing win-place and show (1st, 2nd and 3rd). You have to play the exotics... which are called exactas and trifectas. An exacta requires that you hit the winner and the second place finisher in exact(a) order.  In a 20-horse Derby field, lots of luck. The trifecta is even more bizarre. You have to select the 1st, 2nd and 3rd places finishers in order as well. And this is where the all-button comes in. Job one is to eliminate the favorite from our program, since he will lose two out of three times.

What we want to do is find a horse that can run second or third. In the exacta, we will hit the all-button which will give us every horse to finish first, with our selection finishing second. In the trifecta, we will hit the all-button in first and second position, with our selection running third.  Now of course, our selection can't finish second and third, so we will either hit the exacta (which we will bet a little more on) or the trifecta (which we will bet a little less on.)  The thinking is, once you knock the favorite out of the first position, you have also knocked out about 80% of the betting public in the exotics. They always use the favorite on top. So how do we find this key horse?... connections.  And by that I don't mean inside information, because in a race like the Derby, there is none... Everybody is trying. Connections refers to the combination of horse, owner, trainer, breeder and jockey. When those stars align, along with a reasonable interpretation of past performances, you find a horse that can hit the board. 



We know how to do that. I swept last year's Triple Crown (The Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes) we hit an exotic in each race.  In the Breeder's Cup (a competition of the world's best horses) a two-day event with several high-purse races, we hit one exacta that paid in excess of $800.00 for a $4,000.00 net on a $120.00 investment, plus a few more smaller wins. If you're starting  to get Derby fever, give us a call.