Midland: Expanded Derby future wager is a better bet

It was more than 20 years ago when I created the first Future Wager, working at Churchill Downs in my twenties. We landed on 24 betting interests at the time, simply because that was as high as the tote systems could go. Now, thanks to Bill Mudd and his team at Churchill Downs, for the first time ever the Kentucky Derby Future Wager now offers 40 betting interests, and that's a game changer for the wager.

When players looked at the 24-interest future wager, they often would ask 'where's the value?' in the wager, meaning there was none. But the secret is that the value is in the field – at least in the early pools. The problem is that as horseplayers we're not accustomed to finding value in this way – in 6-5 and 5-2 shots where you have to tie up your money for several months at a time. Plus, you need to bet larger sums to make it worth your while, but the value is definitely there. 

For this first pool, Churchill Downs added a second twist: pushing the future wager start back a month to the earliest start ever, before the Breeders' Cup. To understand this impact, we took a look at last year's Caesars Sportsbook Future Wager from this time last year, as of Oct. 31, 2021. 

The Caesars odds at that time listed 36 horses shorter than 125-1 and another 18 horses at 125-1. From this list of 54, only seven horses listed made the Kentucky Derby field:

• Classic Causeway, 50-1
• Cyberknife, 75-1 
• Messier, 50-1 
• Simplification, 85-1 
• Smile Happy, 125-1 
• White Abarrio, 100-1 
• Zandon, 125-1 

So this tells us that based on last year, from a top-38 list around Halloween, about four or five horses made the Derby. This means that in betting the 'field', which is set with a morning line of 3-5 in this first future wager field, you will likely have about 15 of the 20 horses running in the 2023 Kentucky Derby. While it is no sure thing to have the winner, it is basically a sure thing to have many Kentucky Derby chances, and most likely the majority of the field in the starting gate.

Is that worth 3-5? Well, in horse racing terms, a $3.20 win result isn't that exciting, but looking at it a different way, a stock market return of 60% in just over six months is a pretty good deal. The only problem, and not a small one, is you need to bet a lot and tie your money up for six months.  But, for example, a $1,000 win bet on the field at 3-5 would net $1,600 and a $600 profit in May. Or a $10,000 win bet would return $16,000.  I'm not suggesting that you do this, but explaining why some gamblers do it.  This might drop the odds well below 3-5.

As we go forward, more information will be known going into each pool.  So the field prices will come up each time, and the individual interests will start to drop.  But this is where the strength of the pari-mutuel system comes in.  While win betting a six-horse field is usually uninteresting, win betting a 20-horse field is great. So win betting in a 40-interest race is even better and we should see some really exciting prices.  It may take to the second or third pools where it is a little less about dart-throwing on a horse that has run once or twice and more about handicapping and projecting a horse's improvement after the Breeders' Cup or graded stakes for 2-year-olds in November and December.

What will really make these pools fun this year is the huge odds on some of the longer shots.  In this first pool, there are 24 horses lined at 99-1 and another six lined at 60-1, and certainly many of those will go off at much higher odds than the morning line.  If you can pick one or two horses at big odds and pick up some wins in the Derby prep season, it would be really exciting to have a future wager on a horse at 80-1, 99-1 or even 200-1. The challenge is finding the ones that can improve at those odds, but then again, at those prices you don't have to wager much to make the potential return exciting.