Suggestions for a Derby-related office pool?

[keithw84]

At my office, there are sports contests almost non-stop: Fantasy Football, College pick 'em, bowl game pick 'em, NCAA Basketball tournament, and now, a pool to pick the 8 players who win the most in the Masters! (I am trying to force myself to care about golf for that one)

I am looking for suggestions for a contest we could do related to the Kentucky Derby. Any thoughts?

[horses4courses]

At my office, there are sports contests almost non-stop: Fantasy Football, College pick 'em, bowl game pick 'em, NCAA Basketball tournament, and now, a pool to pick the 8 players who win the most in the Masters! (I am trying to force myself to care about golf for that one)

I am looking for suggestions for a contest we could do related to the Kentucky Derby. Any thoughts?

Keep it simple....every person playing draws a number corresponding to the saddle cloth #, paying whatever the entry fee is. One thing to remember is to not start the draw until you have sold all the horses - otherwise, if the more highly rated horses get drawn early, you will be stuck with unsold horses.
Remind your participants, rookie racing fans, that a 50-1 longshot won last year........everyone has chance!

Keep it quiet......technically, you are breaking the law...... ;)

[philofbelloni]

Create a tiered style pool. Structure the longshots around a $5 minimum while the fave can be as high as $30. The educated will gravitate towards the higher prices while the casual office pooler will eat up the junk at $5 a whack. The minimum tier guarantees at least $100 pool.
Use either ML odds after Wed's draw or whatever DRF estimates earlier in the week.

[toetoe]

Best of luck. I love the idea, but can it approach the popularity of ... :sleeping: , :sleeping: ... Hyper Bole party pools ?

Very sad state of affairs. :( .

[Charli125]

I have a party each year, and I have always followed horses4courses idea. This year I'm thinking of doing something a bit different because I never have enough spots so I always have to end up doing 3 drawings or so.

This year I'm planning on doing an exacta grid and having people buy squares like they do with superbowl pools. I might do winners too, but I think this is the best way to do it. Plus novices can see the will pays, and that just adds another level of excitement to it.

[toetoe]

I have a party each year, and I have always followed horses4courses idea. This year I'm thinking of doing something a bit different because I never have enough spots so I always have to end up doing 3 drawings or so.

This year I'm planning on doing an exacta grid and having people buy squares like they do with superbowl pools. I might do winners too, but I think this is the best way to do it. Plus novices can see the will pays, and that just adds another level of excitement to it.



Great idea, as it has two axes, like a score pool in a sports match. :ThmbUp: .

[Stevie Belmont]

I was a few where we used to put the names in a hat and each person picks one.

[5k-claim]

Hi keithw84,

An office that I worked at did an Exacta Grid sheet that was very popular and everyone had fun with. It requires no handicapping, so if you were wanting to set something up that let the seasoned handicappers in your office use their experience to take a few bucks from the novices, this won't work.

Create a blank exacta grid (based on the number of official entrants), and sell all of the squares on the grid. There will be quite a few squares to sell in a large field, so you could do 4 for $1.00, or whatever you want. You will end up being able to sell them.

After all of the squares on the grid have been sold, have someone in the office do a RANDOM drawing of program numbers to fill in the Column headings from left-to-right (and therefore top-to-bottom on the rows). So, the first column on the exacta grid is not necessarily Horse #1, it could end up being Horse #8, or #12, or whatever number was drawn at random. Work your way across the grid until all of the column headings have been filled in.

No refunds for scratches. Ties split equally among winners, etc.

Everyone likes it because they don't have to know how to handicap, and everyone ends up with a handful of various exacta combinations to cheer for during the race. In a tight race, half the office will still be 'alive' somehow inside the final 1/8th.

If you are wanting one that involves handicapping, I am not really sure. I always went for the 'Random Draw Exacta Grid' because I am not really all that great at handicapping.

Have fun!

[Rutgers]

Hi keithw84,


Create a blank exacta grid (based on the number of official entrants), and sell all of the squares on the grid.

Have fun!

Actually you don't want to sell all the squares.

You do not want to sell the top left diagonally down to the bottom right, because a horse can not finish first and second at the same time. (For example, unlike a superbowl box, an exacta can not be 4-4)

And the horses need to be in the same order top to bottom as left to right.

[Rutgers]

Instead of a pool, maybe try a group superfecta ticket. (or some other wager or combinations of wagers)

Do a consenus (sp?) box a la the DRF pick box.

Have each person give their top 3 choices for the Derby. (Tell people it is OK if they do not know anything about horse racing, they can read up about it in the paper or internet and make there picks on that or they can just pick names or numbers.)

Add up the points to determine the top 4 or 5. And play a superfecta box with everbody contributing an equal amount.

The downsize is you need to be able to purchase the ticket or tickets, and if the ticket does hit, it will most likely be a signer.

Like I said, you could do other wagers wagers instead like exactas, trifectas or the super high 5. You could also do different ticket structures instead of a box, just make sure everybody has want the wager is beforehand.

[PhantomOnTour]

The exacta grid is a better variation of what I was going to suggest. Take the sum of the saddle cloth numbers that fill out the exacta, and the winning number takes the pot. You would need numbers 3-39, thats 37 entries. How many people would be in the pool potentially?

[5k-claim]

Actually you don't want to sell all the squares.

You do not want to sell the top left diagonally down to the bottom right, because a horse can not finish first and second at the same time. (For example, unlike a superbowl box, an exacta can not be 4-4)

And the horses need to be in the same order top to bottom as left to right.

Hi Rutgers,

Yep, that's right. You have it exactly. You have to color in the diagonal from the top left corner to the bottom right corner. And whatever random number is drawn for Column 1 is also written on Row 1, so that it intersects on a colored in square. Although if someone really has their heart set on buying one of the colored in squares, I guess you could still sell it to them. :)

It ends up looking like any other actual Exacta Grid that you see, only with random numbers, not sequential.

And even though there is no handicapping involved, some people still try to use some strategy and "corner the market" on a horse by buying up all of the squares down one column. The only problem is that they won't know which horse they just bought until the random draw. Most people just scatter the squares they buy all over the grid.

[GARY Z]

based upon the entries to date, try a reverse,atypical Style:

Winning picks in order are:

horse finishing last

Next to last

third from last

Fourth from last


Grand prize winner is the superfecta(all of these horses finishing
in the exact order shown above).

This finish is generally more win as against picking
the exact order of horses mentioned by the other members, especially
this year.

[startngate]

The 'pick a number out of a hat' pools I have been in have always returned the entry fee for the horse that finishes last ... I have been the 'lucky loser' more times than I want to admit ... :bang:

[thespaah]

Actually you don't want to sell all the squares.

You do not want to sell the top left diagonally down to the bottom right, because a horse can not finish first and second at the same time. (For example, unlike a superbowl box, an exacta can not be 4-4)

And the horses need to be in the same order top to bottom as left to right.Sure it can..The order of finish can be 4-14 or 14-4.

[thespaah]

Her's an idea..
A value cap pool.
Each horse is assinged a dollar value. Allparticipants buy sy 5 horses each staying under a set value cap.
The winner is decided by the lowest aggregate number adding up the finishing positions of each of their horses.
So if a person buys 5 horses.. a, c,e,g, and i..And another buys b,d f,h and j....
The first person has the 1st and third finishers but his other three horses finish 12,16 and 18 that adds up to 50 ..while the other person has the 4th, 7th, 8th, 10th and 16th, the second person wins based on those numbers adding up to 45.
Ties are broken by taking the person who spent the least amount of "money" to by his "stable"..
So say the cap is $10 million and one player in the tie spent $8.9 million and the other spent 9.3 million to buy his stable the person spending the loesser amount wins.
This method incorporates about 20% hadicapping and 80% strategy.

[Rutgers]

Sure it can..The order of finish can be 4-14 or 14-4.

If you did a 10 x 10 grid and when the winning combination was based on the last digit of the program number, 4-14 and 14-4 would be the same.

But 5K-Claimer was not talking about that. He was talking about an exacta grid. And he mentions drawing program numbers. Done that way 4-14 and 14-4 are two different boxes only one of which can win (barring a dead heat between the 4 and 14). And 4-4 or 14-14 is not a possible outcome for the exacta in Kentucky(because even if it finished 1-1A, in KY they would use the third place horse for the second spot in the exacta).

[5k-claim]

But 5K-Claimer was not talking about that. He was talking about an exacta grid. And he mentions drawing program numbers. Done that way 4-14 and 14-4 are two different boxes only one of which can win (barring a dead heat between the 4 and 14). And 4-4 or 14-14 is not a possible outcome for the exacta in Kentucky(because even if it finished 1-1A, in KY they would use the third place horse for the second spot in the exacta).

Hi Rutgers,

As before, you are exactly right. I must have a knack for taking something that is pretty straightforward in practice and making it confusing with my description! I probably should have said instead to just create a blank Exacta Grid, featuring the diagonal colored in from top left to bottom right, and then conduct the random draw to fill in the horse NAMES across the columns and down the rows. Just the random names, not numbers of any kind. Each horse (whether in an entry or not) gets his own name, and his own column/row (which intersects at a colored in square).

I think we may have even tried that once, but the sheet of paper needs to be pretty big to accommodate everyone writing their initials in the squares that they buy, so because of those physical limitations it ends up being easier to use the numbers instead of trying to scribble in the complete names of the horses.

It really is more straightforward and fun for everyone in the office than what my three attempts at refining my description of it would lead one to believe. :)

[CyberBet]

http://www.backyardbookie.com/

Set up your own pools and take wagers just like the tracks do. You can set your own takeout, and hopefully donate to a charity.

I have used this at a steeple chase party once and it was pretty cool.