Kentucky Derby 2011: Betting Made Easy, Relatively – SB Nation St. Louis
Sat, May 7, 2011 @sbnstlouis 
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Kentucky Derby 2011: Uncle Mo’s Exit Makes Dialed In Tentative Favorite
Uncle Mo’s late scratch from contention from the 2011 Kentucky Derby left the race without one of its few clear favorites and strengthened considerably Dialed In’s position as the last juggernaut standing in a relatively wide-open field, but since Uncle Mo’s disappointing lead-up to the derby and subsequent exit there’s no longer any dominant horse preparing to run away with things.
The New Jersey Star-Ledger likes Dialed In, for instance—considers him “the best horse in the race”—but concedes that things will still need to break right for him to pull away in a crowded field of horses, many of which have their own possible advantages. Each of their predictors has his own second-place winner—Archarcharch, for his closing ability; Nehro, for his continual improvement; Stantiva, for his flexibility in an uncertain environment.
All that rationalization makes it clear that nobody’s quite sure what will happen in the 137th Kentucky Derby, which isn’t especially unusual. The difference between this year and years past is that most people aren’t even pretending they’re quite sure any more.
May 07 8:00a by Dan Moore
Kentucky Derby 2011: Betting Made Easy, Relatively
The 2011 Kentucky Derby is here, and our own Matt Gardner has put together a guide for betting on horse racing that was nearly easy enough for me to understand. Gambling on horses has a lot of barriers for entry, from the means of predicting outcomes to things as simple as the terminology, the way the odds, the theories behind betting, and Gardner does a great job of attempting to explain it to people like me here.
An article like this isn’t necessarily going to help you win money while betting on the Kentucky Derby, but it does a far more important thing, as far as I’m concerned: It keeps you from looking like an idiot. In all things, I attempt to look like someone who is minimally competent; this article should be enough to put you in that position while people are talking about exactas, trifectas, and other betting instruments that could reasonably pass for devices in a 1950s Sci-Fi serial.
For more Kentucky Derby 2011 coverage, check out our official preview and predictions.
7:00a by Dan Moore