Kentucky Derby Exotic Bets
For people who are looking to make a nice profit by betting on the Kentucky Derby and are willing to do a bit of extra research, one of the best ways to seek out the best chance at profit is by betting inter-race exotics. We’ll look at what they are in more detail in a moment, but basically they are bets in which you have to pick the winners of two or more races in a row including the Derby. It’s incredibly hard to pick the winner in the Derby, so it might seem daunting to have to pick the winner in other races as well. The advantage, though, is that the other races that precede the Derby aren’t nearly as tough to pick as the Derby – the field sizes are smaller, the challenges are less daunting, and the puzzle is easier to figure out. If you want to make a significant profit on the day you have to bet exotics of some point, and it’s likely easier to pick the winners of different races then it is to pick the horses that will finish in the top four or five spots in the Derby. Here’s a look at the four most common types of inter-race exotic bets that handicappers utilize:
Exotic bets are wagers on two or more outcomes tied together. This exponentially increases the payout of the bet, but it also makes them more difficult to win. The most common types of exotic bets are the exatca and trifecta. Exacta – Horses must finish 1st and 2nd in exact order. There are many types of wagers from straight win, place and show bets to exotic and multi-race wagers. Exotic bets include exactas, trifectas and superfectas and involve picking two, three or four of the top finishers. Boxing a wager means that they can finish in any order whereas a straight exotic wager involves picking exactly the order of finish. The Kentucky Derby is the Super Bowl of horse racing. And like the Big Game, the “Run for the Roses” has no shortage of betting options. If you’re looking beyond the standard Kentucky Derby. However, there are no shortage of other opportunities to take advantage of the Kentucky Derby odds, with a wide variety of exotic bets and prop bets available on the Fastest two Minutes in Sports. The most popular exotic bets include exacta, quinella, trifecta, superfecta, and boxed wagers.
Daily Double – To win a daily double bet you have to pick the winners of two consecutive races. If you want to bet a daily double that includes the Kentucky Derby you can include the race before it or the race that follows it. You can bet any dollar amount you want on the bet, though most tracks have a $2 minimum. Because you are only betting on two races the payoff isn’t likely to be massive unless there are upsets in both races. As a result, you really can’t afford to bet a whole lot of horses in both races or the cost of the bet could easily exceed the payout – especially if favorites come in. There is no better way to feel stupid than to cash a nice exotic ticket and still lose money.
Pick Three – The name of the pick three makes its meaning clear – you have to pick the winner of three races in a row. Most tracks, including Churchill Downs, offer rolling pick threes. That means that a new pick three starts on each race. That means you can bet on more than one pick three that includes the Kentucky Derby. Pick threes are a happy medium for casual bettors – they are not impossible to pick and they can be bet at a reasonable price, yet they offer the potential for a pretty solid payout and return on investment if a couple of unexpected horses make the winners circle. One of the biggest mistake that people make when betting the pick three or any of the other inter-race exotics is automatically picking the same number of horses in each race. It makes far more sense to go really deep in a race that you are uncertain of, and only pick one or two horses if the race seems more clear. By doing that you can keep your costs low and give yourself a better overall chance of winning the bet. On Kentucky Derby day you’ll likely want to go very deep in the Derby because of the uncertainty in that race and limit your picks in the other races.
Pick Four – This is the same as the pick three except you have to pick four winners in a row. Unlike the pick three, though, there are only two pick fours on a card – one at the beginning of the card, and one at the end. Pick fours can be played at most tracks for $1 or more, and the payoffs can be quite large – often several thousand dollars on big race days. The problem for casual bettors, though, is that the price can get very high for these tickets if you aren’t careful. If you were to pick four horses in each race, for example, then a $1 ticket would cost you $256. The return on investment could still be good if you win, but the risk is high and that could be hard on a lot of bankrolls if you aren’t a winner. One way to keep the costs lower is to buy several smaller tickets that cover some likely combinations instead of picking a whole bunch of horses on one big ticket.
Pick Six – This is where the big boys play. The pick six can pay hundreds of thousands of dollars on big race days like the Derby. It’s not a bet for casual bettors to mess with, though. The minimum bet is $2, so the prices can quickly become very large. Picking just three horses in each race would cost you $972, and three horses is not a lot of depth in the Derby. To properly bet this race, serious bettors invest thousands of dollars – often in a syndicate that combines the resources of many bettors hoping to combine for a big score. If you aren’t a serious bettor and strong handicapper then your time and money are probably better spent elsewhere.
Kentucky Derby Bets Odds
The Kentucky Derby is far and away the biggest race of the year for horse racing bettors both serious and casual. Interestingly, it’s also the hardest race of the year to bet on successfully because of the massive amounts of public money, the size of the field, their inexperience, the challenging distance, and the total chaos caused by the massive crowd. Because the challenge of making winning picks in this leg of the Triple Crown is so immense in this race, it is important for bettors to find ways to maximize their potential returns, and the obvious way to do that is to use exotic bets. There are two basic types of exotic bets. Inter-race exotics include the results of several consecutive races, and include bets like the pick six, pick three and daily double. We’ll look at those later on. Here we are going to look at the four main types of intra-race exotics, and how they can be used effectively by smart race handicappers in the Kentucky Derby.
Quinella – The object here is to pick the two horses that are going to finish first and second in the race. The order that they finish in doesn’t matter – if you bet a quinella with horses 2 and 3 then you win if they finish 2-3 or 3-2. This is the easiest of the intra-race exotics to win, so it pays the lowest return on your investment. Since each bet includes two winning possibilities it can pay little, and is not seen as an attractive bet by many serious bettors. The potential quinella payouts are also harder to determine in advance than other possibilities, so it can be too easy to make a bet that doesn’t make as much sense as it seemed to. For those reasons the quinella is far less attractive than its close cousin the exacta.
Exacta – The exacta is like the quinella, except you must pick the horses in the correct order. That means is you bet a 2-3 exacta and the horses finish 3-2 then you get nothing. The bet is obviously more difficult, so it pays more than the quinella – often more than twice as much. Exactas can be played on just one combination of horses, but bettors will typically play a few combinations in the same race to give themselves a better chance at success. There are several ways to do this, but the most popular are the box and the wheel. In a box you are betting all combinations of the horses you pick. For example, a 2-3 box would pay off if the results are 2-3 or 3-2, and a 1-2-3 box would pay off for 1-2, 1-3, 2-1, 2-3, 3-1, or 3-2. You can box as many horses as you want in a race, but you have to remember that you are paying for each combination, so a $2 exacta box of 2-3 would cost $4 and the same bet for 1-2-3 would cost $12. A wheel is like a box except you don’t choose to bet every combination. You might think that one horse is likely to win, and one of three horses is likely to finish second. In that case you would bet a $2 wheel of 1 over 2,3,4 which would cost you $6 and would pay off is the results are 1-2, 1-3, or 1-4. An exacta is a powerful tool because it can produce a generous payout in some situations. It can be useful, for example, with a heavy favorite. The favorite likely won’t pay much to win, but you could get a better return by betting that horse in a box or a wheel. In the Kentucky Derby you have to be very careful when you are using exactas. Because there are so many horses in the field there are probably going to be several you think stand a chance of finishing in the top two. If you aren’t paying close attention to the potential payouts then it can be easy to place so many exacta bets that you lose money even if you pick the winning combination. If you like a lot of horses in the field then you may be able to get a better potential ROI with less risk just from betting the horses to win unless they are heavy favorites.
Trifecta – The trifecta works exactly like the exacta except you have to pick the top three finishers in the right order. You can box a trifecta, and you can wheel a single horse or any number of horses in any of the three positions. The trifecta is obviously harder to win than the exacta because of the added position you have to pick correctly, but the payoffs are often high enough to compensate for that added challenge. Like the exacta, though, it can be easy to invest more than you are likely to win back if you aren’t careful. One of the big mistakes bettors make with the trifecta in big races like the Derby is boxing too many horses. A $2, five horse trifecta box, for example, costs $120. One way to get around this is to spend more time looking at the horses you are boxing and their chances. For example, of the five horses you are boxing you might feel that two of them are much more likely to win than the others. By just wheeling those two on top of the other five you can reduce your bet cost down to $48 and avoid paying for a lot of combinations that you don’t think are particularly likely anyway. It’s important when using these bets to think of all the combinations you are betting and eliminate the ones in which the cost is higher than the value.
Superfecta – The superfecta is like an exacta or trifecta except you have to pick the top four thoroughbreds in order. Obviously everything we have talked about up to this point is even more important here – the costs can be high, but so can the potential payoff, and you need to make sure that you are keeping the costs under control when crafting your bets. The more positions you have to pick in a bet, though, the more combinations you can afford to play because the potential for a large payoff is higher – especially if a longshot or two wind up in the top four. In the Derby it’s important to be creative if you are making this bet. It’s very unlikely that the four favorites will sweep the top four spots, and even if they did it wouldn’t pay much. You need to intelligently use longshots – or at least longer shots – in these bets to maximize your potential return. With a higher cost, higher potential return bet like this you also need to keep an important thing in mind if you are going to use them on the Derby. Bets with high returns have those high returns because they are hard to hit. Even the most successful superfecta bettors will show a long term profit despite frequently having losing streaks of several races and a win percentage that could be quite low. If you choose to bet these bets on the Derby and you do it well then you need to be prepared for the fact that you could lose for several years in a row even if you are profitable over the long term. You need both the bankroll and the mental stamina to survive that reality.