5/4 (CD): 145th Kentucky Derby Day

[Dunbar]

Originally Posted by philcski

I don’t disagree that horse by horse the impact is relatively small... but that’s because it’s a 20 horse field. Let’s take a 3 horse field instead:
Horse A: 4/5
Horse B: 2/1
Horse C: ?

At a proper ML matching takeout, it should be 2/1. At the 138% ML, it’s 1/1, so a huge difference.

My point is on the most important race in the world, where the participants have been known for weeks, shouldn’t we have a pretty tight ML?

Too funny, philski. I just did a search, and we had a very similar discussion about a poor Derby ML almost exactly 11 years ago!

http://www.derbytrail.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22079

Has anything changed in 11 years?! Check it out.

Anyway, I was curious how this year's 138% compared to some of the other CD stakes races this weekend. Here's what I came up with:

Turf Classic 131%
Pat Day Mile 134%
Amer Turf 136%
Alysheba 131%

and, somewhat weirdly, the Ky Oaks, 99.8%

With a 17.5% track take, the apparent odds from the morning line should add up to 121%. So the Ky Oaks ML odds would appear to be even further off than the Derby ML odds.

At any rate, I agree that the ML should be a set of odds that actually add up to what one might see when the betting is done.

Looking forward to grousing about this again 11 years from now!

--Dunbar