Well, seeing as you've got Alabama Shakes on your side now, I see resistance is futile.

I'd love to hear whose future odds you think are better value than El Areeb's.

Alabama shakes may be on his side, but Alabama Stakes is not. I'm just trying to learn better vocabulary to try to keep up and understand all the big words that Byk throws around.
It does seem amusing that he would say anything negative about a hoss taking the NYRA path.
Back to your penultimate post....examples of purposefully pedantic you alliterative Bastid

That was funny:-)

They all suck! But I don't think that was your original point.

A similar price on Practical Joke is probably slightly better value. Isn't 11:1 on Classic Empire better theoretical value?

My original point was that I thought he was the best value of the pool, not that future wagers in general are particularly good bets.

I'd have to see Practical Joke run a race as a 3YO first, and the foot issue for Classic Empire makes him impossible to back with any confidence IMO.

I'm not betting either one, and have zero confidence in Classic Empire, but he could EASILY be the favorite, and I think you can make a better case that he is value at 11:1 than your horse at 20:1.

I grabbed petrov and Irish in pool 2 some mastery in pool 3..all free bets from.local casino sooooo wtf

The two horses I'm most impressed with in this crop are that Oscar horse that won the BCJT and Unique Bella. Too bad neither are aiming for the race.

Of the ones on the future list, I like American Anthem, but his odds suck.

Oh well.

Maybe they’re both right. This is clearly a math problem, as BTW said. But there IS going to be a lot of estimation and speculation involved, as Ateam maintains.

Even so, it’s useful to put numbers on a scenario that leads to Ateam's contension that “El Areeb seems far and away the best value at 20-1. Whether or not you particularly like him in the Derby (I personally think he's legit), the 3YO competition in New York is such that two more blowout wins in the Gotham and the Wood are a reasonable possibility. If that happens, he'll be 6-1 tops in the Derby.”

So, Ateam wasn’t insisting that 20-1 is in itself a good bet. I think he was saying that 20-1 looks good compared to a likely 6-1 in the Derby. To see if that’s true, what we want to know is the expected value (ie, the mean value) of EA’s Derby day odds.

First, assume EA does start in the Derby, which is by no means certain. We can come back to that.

For the sake of argument, BTW was willing to give El Areeb a 50% chance of a blowout win in the Gotham and a 30% chance of a blowout win in the Wood. The chance of 2 blow outs is 50% x 30% = 15%. Ateam said that would lead to “6-1 tops”, so let’s say 5-1. So that's a 15% chance at 5-1. What about the other 85% of the time?

What’s the chance that EA wins both races, but not all that emphatically? Let's give that a (IMO very generous) 15% chance. What would his odds be in that case? I’m guessing 8-1.

That still leaves 70% of situations to deal with. Let’s say EA finishing in the top 3 of both races (but not winning both) would occur 50% of the time, and leave EA at about 20-1 in the Derby. And let’s say the remaining 20% of the time that he starts in the Derby, it’s off performances in the Gotham and Wood that are so uninspiring that EA is 40-1 on Derby Day.

His average odds (expected value) then would be:
(15% x 5-1) + (15% x 8-1) + (50% x 20-1) + (20% x 40-1) = 20-1.
So, under what I consider generous assumptions, El Areeb looks to have an average odds prospect of 20-1 in the Derby, assuming he starts.

Under those assumptions, there’s no apparent value in taking the Future Wager. And when we add in the not-insignificant chance that EA does not even start in the Derby, it makes the Future Wager bet on El Areeb considerably worse than waiting until Derby Day to make a bet.

Now, Ateam may disagree with the probabilities or odds I chose. I know they are crude estimates, but I thought the odds I used gave EA the benefit of the doubt. Ateam should be able to point to which odds or probabilities are out of whack, and show how, with his own estimate, the expected value on Derby Day is indeed lower than 20-1.

For example, Ateam might say that even with poor showings in the two preps, EA will be no worse than 30-1 (not 40-1, like I used). And that would lower the expected value of his Derby Day odds (if he starts) to 18-1. Other adjustments could bring it still lower, but I’ll be surprised if any reasonable scenario can get the expected value low enough to offset the risk that El Areeb doesn't even start in the Derby.

I am very interested in ILIAD, if he can get 10 f, watch out,the other two I would consider are one liner and Gunnevera, Don't know about health issues McCracken and classic empire, if healthy these two must be considered,right now these are my top 5 , can't wait to see ILIAD in Saturday's race at Santa Anita, he reminds me of Goldencents a little, GOD BLESS EVERY One

Iliad is a half-brother to a multiple stakes winner who routinely won or placed in stakes between 10f and 14f. If he can ration his speed a bit more, perhaps some of this stamina will be displayed in subsequent starts.

Battalion Runner might be OK. IMO he could be Todd's best horse since Outwork. I think Romans horse from Saturday is better then a lot of people think. I see a lot of internet guys comparing him to other Romans plodders. I think he is more then that. Don't get me wrong he got a dream trip/setup Saturday, but he still finished. The race before he got a horrible wide trip and still ran well.
Irish War Cry ran to bad to be true. He is better then that. Chads horse from that race I thought ran huge first off the layoff. He made that huge move and couldn't sustain it. He might have distance limitations though.
Honestly no one blows me away in this crop yet. I'm not even a fan of Mastery. Maybe American Anthem?
Who can you have confidence in? 2 of the top horses are hurt or have minor issues. Then 2 horse out of the next tier lost badly this weekend. Not a fan of Girvin at all. Who does that leave you with? Oh yea and my horse Mo Town skipped races in NY that he was supposed to be pointing to and then ran like ****. Who knows....

If a horse gets taken from Bob and wins the Derby it will be the greatest injustice in the history of the sport.

Iliad winning the Derby several months removed from Baffert's barn would be nothing compared to War Emblem winning the 2002 Derby after being transferred to Baffert's barn a couple of weeks before the race.

Why?

Mastery looks ready to roll this weekend!

The San Felipe and the Tampa Bay Derby are going to be huge - Tapwrit looks to me like TAP's best prospect thus far - expect a huge effort Saturday. Exciting weekend.

Agree Dan.

Granted the Tampa Bay Derby appears to be a dreadful race, so maybe Tapwrit can win, but what about him seems good beyond possibly being able to win a weak race?

Connections?
Pedigree?
Price?

I like Hennings horse.