I used to look forward to the Derby card thinking about the countless opportunities that awaited on a program filled with “tourist” money. The influx of wagers from part-time bettors and those who played just once or twice a year helped fill the pools with potential payouts that wouldn’t appear on your average race card. However, this year my sense of anticipation was tempered by the fact that I did not have the time to explore the card the way I wanted to, and instead of attacking the day at Churchill with two fists I remained tentative. Pick your spots! That is the philosophy I have been living by of late. The only problem is sometimes I pick the wrong spots. On Derby Day I picked the Derby as my “get alive to” race despite the fact that I did not have a great opinion regarding the race. The place I started was the pick five: I went with a caveman ticket for $96. On a day like this, such a ticket for 50 cents would likely pay a lot, and I liked a few horses in the sequence: Race 8: I liked only two horses in this spot: No. 2 Stonetastic (3-1) and No. 8 Taris (5-2). I thought Stonetastic was the fastest horse in the race but I questioned the distance. Her best races had come at six furlongs but in her last two races, which came at 6 ½ furlongs and seven furlongs, she had gotten clear leads and never looked back. This was a better field, but with her talent she was a clear contender. The Taris was both fast and very suited to the seven-furlong distance.  I thought No. 10 Wavell Avenue was a bit overrated, and at 2-1 was being overbet. Despite her BC win she was a play-against for me. Stonetastic got the lead and set the pace while Taris tracked three lengths back and three wide through the turn. Taris challenged and passed Stonetastic in upper stretch and drew clear in deep stretch for an impressive win. Race 9: Once again I used only two horses: No. 3 Converge and No. 13 Azar.  I really liked the Chad Brown-trained Converge (6-1), who I thought would sit a perfect trip breaking from post 3. His first two races were very good and showed the type of athleticism I like to see in young horses, and he had an excuse in his last race, breaking slowly, getting squeezed early, and then steadying while in tight in the stretch. He was an improving 3-year-old who had done little wrong in his career. I liked the efforts of Azar (18-1) over the turf and felt he would relish the return to the grass after a brief attempt by his connections to see if he were a Derby contender. The post might be an issue, but he was tactical and the price was right. Unfortunately for me the both chased and flattened out. Camelot Kitten (18-1), the other Chad Brown horse, won. He got a good trip and just beat out a game Beach Patrol. That knocked me out of the pick five. I didn’t think much of it at the time and decided to not play any more multi-race wagers because I didn’t feel like I was on top of the card the way I wanted to be. That said here was the rest of my ticket: Race 10: Again I used only two horses. No. 6 Sharp Azteca (13-1) seemed like a potentially dominant miler coming off of two very impressive wins at Gulfstream, and No. 10 Cocked and Loaded had a good 2-year-old campaign and now was running for the second time at 3. I thought he might have potential upside at a good price. In a race that appeared to have a lot of speed, Sharp Azteca outdueled Imperial Hunt (who had never trailed in his two previous starts) for an impressive win at a mile. Race 11: I went four deep, using No. 3 Bolo (5-1), No. 8 Divisidero (6-1), No. 10 Tourist (5-1) and No. 12 Big Blue Kitten (2-1). Bolo was a classy horse with a good track record on turf but not as accomplished at the 1 1/8-mile distance as some of his rivals. Divisidero was a talented 4-year-old making his third start off a layoff and stretching out to a distance that was more suitable than his two previous starts this year, which were at a mile. I’ve always been a fan of Tourist, and although he is probably better at a mile he’d run okay going longer before. Big Blue Kitten always shows up and I wasn’t going to let Chad Brown beat me in the race right before the Derby. Divisidero had a clear trip, was closer than usual to the front, and despite never changing leads outfinished World Approval (10-1) for the win. Race 12: The original goal was to be able to watch the Derby while being alive to multiple horses and not having to place a bet. Hence, I went six deep. I used No. 9 Destin (18-1), No. 11 Exaggerator (5-1), No. 13 Nyquist (2-1), No. 14 Mohaymen (11-1), No. 15 Outwork (26-1), and No. 17 Mor Spirit (12-1). On class, Nyquist looked tough, but he was still coming off a race where he drifted out late and changed to his wrong lead, so I was not convinced he could go the distance. That said, he was the undefeated favorite and a champion, so I was not going to leave him off of my pick five ticket. Destin was a steadily improving horse whose last race in the Tampa Bay Derby was impressive. He coming off a layoff, but he was one of the few to get a 100 Beyer Speed Figure routing, so he merited contender status. The same can be said of Outwork, who followed up his Tampa Bay second to Destin with a game win while forwardly placed in the Wood Memorial. I thought Mor Spirit finished nicely in the Santa Anita Derby, despite not taking to the off track, while Exaggerator showed an explosive move to dominate that affair. Exaggerator had also shown an improving pattern in his speed figures without having too big an effort, so I believed he had something left in the tank. As things turned out, Nyquist was impressive in victory and I ended up with four out of the five horses in the sequence. The pick five ticket paid $24,152.45. I did play Taris and Sharp Azteca to win, so I did make a profit. However, on this day I found yet another way of getting beaten by Chad Brown. It doesn’t hurt so much because it happened early in the sequence, and it’s not like I intended to use Camelot Kitten or even Beach Patrol. So what is my lesson? Had I watched the replays of Camelot Kitten’s previous races there is no way I would have left him off my ticket. In fact, I would have been waiting for his next race. With a little luck, he could have had four wins from five starts going into the Woodford Reserve instead of two wins and two seconds. In his loss to Airoforce in the Bourbon, he had a very wide trip and was probably tons the best while the winner had a perfect trip. The race after that was the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf.  He broke well but steadied trying to get position on the first turn and was hung four to five wide the entire race. It was an impossible trip and he had no chance. At Keeneland, on April 13, he ran a good comeback race and was ready to win but got run down by a horse named Tasit, whose impressive late run and gallop-out mark him as a horse to watch out for. A couple of bad trips and the BC loss sullied Camelot Kitten’s PP’s enough to make him seem like a marginal contender. With the addition of blinkers, he broke sharper and was able to secure an inside position, allowing him to save ground. He was due. I didn’t even look at the pick five payout for days. I had no idea it paid that much because most of the horses in the sequence seemed logical. With just a little more work they would all have seemed logical. Pick your spots. My smallest win bet of the day came on Sharp Azteca. At 13-1 he should have gotten one of my biggest win bets. I liked him enough to use him and just one other horse on my pick five ticket. I also used a few horses on my pick five ticket because I was a fan. Live for today! Using the reason that “I am a fan” is not projecting today’s performance. On that logic I could have eliminated Azar in race 9, Tourist in race 11 and Mohaymen in Race 12. Had I done that the ticket would have looked like this: It’s still a caveman ticket but now I have more flexibility. With that flexibility I may have decided to play more to win on horses I knew I liked.  All told I didn’t have a bad Derby Day, but I could have had a great Derby Day.