With his 2-for-2 record and his Sham Stakes victory and his debut Beyer Speed Figure of 101 and his six-time Derby-winning trainer, Bob Baffert, Life Is Good closed Sunday as the 7-1 individual favorite in Pool 3 of the monthly Churchill Downs pari-mutuel offering. It carries the name “Kentucky Derby Future Wager” as if it is the one and only and as if those other markets in outposts like the Nevada desert are rogue impostors.
Silly money drove the KDFW market just as it did with Las Vegas bookmakers, who are happy to take it. Life Is Good is best-priced in Nevada at 8-1. Whether it is a closing pari-mutuel or a fixed price, 7-1 or 8-1 is awfully risky weighed against the possibility of a horse missing the race, getting a poor draw, running a sloppy track or starting at post-time odds of 4-1.
Las Vegas
There was a time not so long ago when the National Horseplayers Championship was an immovable fixture the week before the Super Bowl.
“In hindsight I’m happy it wasn’t held this past weekend,” said Keith Chamblin, chief operating officer of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association. “We may have had some cancellations because of the storm in the northeast.”
Weather is the least of the NTRA’s challenges in staging the nation’s biggest tournament for racehorse handicappers. Moved three years ago to the week after the Super Bowl, it was supposed to happen this month at Bally’s Las Vegas. That was before the pandemic forced a postponement to Aug. 27-29.
If races are supposed to grow more important as the Kentucky Derby gets closer, why is Saturday such a glaring exception? Simple, really. Neither the Withers in New York nor the Sam F. Davis in Florida has ever produced a Derby winner.
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Horseplayers scheming for years to cash in on that ample trend might have an easy way to do it now. But betting against Life Is Good, or any of a few other 3-year-olds, is not as much a get-rich-quick scheme as it is another method of hedging or even bridge jumping.
Borrowing a page from some foreign bookmakers, Circa Sports has taken the seven shortest-priced horses in its Derby futures and offered yes-no options on each of them. The “yes” prices match their odds to win May 1. The “no” prices are what players can lay to bet they will not win.