Betting, The Good and Bad of Derby Weekend
 

Started the weekend with the Oaks / Derby Double. Not proud of this bet. Was 5 x 5 and only played for $2. The problem was with the will pays. Not the amounts, but the fact that I bet some low payouts the same as the higher ones. In the end, it did not matter, because the bet lost.

Derby day was planned out. I had two key horses picked in the American Turf. Played Doubles to and from these two horses. Played a pick 3 keying these two in the second leg, and started a Pick 4 with these two horses.

With a $500 budget, this is how I played. The doubles were 5 x 5, for $2, 5 x 2 and 2 x 3 for $10. The pick 3 was 5 x 2 x 3 for $5. And the pick 4 was 2 x 3 x 5 x 8 for $.50. Total bet was $480.

With Obligatory winning the Derby City Distaff I got alive to the two horses I was keying in 2 Doubles, the Pick 3 and 4. This race was the highlight of my weekend. With the 9 Stolen Base winning and paying $13.60. Even though it was quite a ways away from the 12/1 ML, I felt I had found good value. The Double payed $605 and I was in profit for the day right away. Cashed in the other Double and my pick 3 in the next for $855 and a total of $1,460.00 for the day. Yep, a $980 profit, and a Pick 4 ticket that is alive. When Santin won the next race, was alive going into the Derby.

We all know the results of the Derby. And needless to say, I did not cash the Pick 4. The problem I have with it is that I am wondering if I made an error here. Would like to here opinions on this. I stuck with my budget. If I decide to go over budget by $10, yes, a measly $10, I hit everything. Yep, my spreadsheet had Rich Strike at #10. Using 10 in the Derby puts me at betting $510, instead, I bet $480.

My spreadsheet for the Derby.

I don't think you made an error. You can go on forever with that kind of incrementalism, and the hindsight of an 80-1 occurrence isn't really a fair benchmark to evaluate your game.

It's not like your budget only provided feeble coverage. If you really liked 21 and wanted to go 10 deep, or felt you needed to sprinkle in more price to catch a near-random event—even if it would have put you just a hair over budget—you would have.

That said, I asked myself the same question. Should I have put in some truly random "all" slots to catch a prime super score? Maybe, but that just gets prohibitively expensive to do with 20 horses and four slots, so you wind up with a more efficient bet like the one I played.

And that is the correct answer. I played it the right way by staying within budget. Better Handicapping in the other races could have got me 10 deep in the Derby.

i made a bad mistake as well. i bet a cold oaks derby double with the winner of the oaks that paid close to $11. my derby pick was MO DONEGAL. after watching JACKIES WARRIOR drift as far as could from the rail i knew i had less than zero chance to cash my double. the double was only coming back $101, and the horse i had was going off 11-1 in a 20 horse field.

this was more of an ego thing to me than anything else. i loved both my picks after they drew the races.

other than MO DONEGAL, i had no clue where to go with that race. i had a friend that went top and bottom exactas with EPICENTER and caught a $4000 exacta. but i am not that good to play that way.

I only made one mistake the whole weekend....making that danged ADW deposit! :rant: