Some Kentucky Derby Picks, although maybe I should just stick to betting on American Idol

I have bet on the Kentucky Derby just about every year for the last 25 years. The only winner I can ever remember having was Giacomo last year at 50-1. Accordingly, I have had zero requests for my picks in today’s Kentucky Derby.

Here they are anyway.

There are 20 horses. The early betting favorites at tradesports are: Brother Derek, Barbaro, Lawyer Ron, and Sweetnorthernsaint in that order.

I’m betting on Sweetnorthernsaint, the fourth favorite, currently at about 8-1, Keyed Entry who is now at 40-1, and Jazil who is at 30-1.

At Tradesports you can also bet on a horse not to win. I’m betting on Brother Derek, Lawyer Ron, A.P. Warrior, Point Determined, Private Vow, Bluegrass Cat, Cause to Believe, and Storm Treasure all to not win the race.

I have had my best gambling success in a long time betting on American Idol, also at Tradesports. You can bet on who will be the overall winner, and also on who gets voted off each week. In four of the five weeks that I bet on who would get voted off, I made a hefty profit. Only When Kellie Pickler got voted off was I on the wrong side. Part of my secret is being in touch with the youth of America. Perhaps a bigger part has been exploiting the information at DialIdol. Somebody has set up a website where you download an automatic dialer and then send the information on how many busy signals you receive on different contestants back to the website where they are tallied to predict the winner. Over 500,000 phone calls were tracked last week, with those calls correctly predicting that Paris would be voted off. Now the markets at Tradesports are incorporating the DialIdol info much more efficiently as word has spread (which is why I’m willing to write about it here). As you can imagine, the producers of American Idol hate this website (see his blog entries from mid-March when he got a cease and desist order) because it ruins a lot of the suspense, although the ratings certainly haven’t suffered.

[Added after the race: None of the horses I wanted to win did win, but none of the ones I wanted to lose won either. So I broke even on net, making it my second most successful Kentucky Derby ever.]