Weekend Winners Club

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March 9, 2023.  The 5^th but not final Kentucky Derby futures pool opens Friday March 10^th and will close Sunday the 12^th.  Pool 5 also includes Kentucky Oaks potential contenders.  There are 39 individual entries in each Pool, so necessarily over half of them will not even make the field in either race.

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Follow along with this week’s free Grid for Pool 5 so you can make your picks.

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For the first time in this series of Derby Pools, the ML favorite is not the field (all others not shown), because Baffert has once again assigned several of his best horses to Tim Yakteen, meaning they now appear in the Pool, but not all of them.

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Forte is the slight favorite and that is unlikely to change this week, after winning his fourth straight stakes race in the Fountain of Youth G2 to open his 3yo career, but the Yakteen/Baffert horses have some good value.

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At least we have several Baffert horses to bet on for the first time in the futures pools, because they are now Yakteen trainees. Mysteriously missing is BC Juvenile runner-up Cave Rock, but he has been working. Cave Rock won his maiden and two G1 races before getting edged out in the BCJ by Forte.

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Two of the fillies and 2 colts are racing this weekend, all at Tampa.  You will note that they are highlighted in the Grid.  The two fillies are running in turf faces and the 2 colts are in dirt races.  Most of the rest will be pointed towards the big G1’s at the end of March and early April.

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The filly Oaks market looks a lot more attractive in Pool 5, with the top PF’s going to a Pletcher trainee with a 30-1 ML, albeit untested at two turns. Others look good at nice odds, including the field at 15-1.  But you can find some good value in the Derby pool, and there will be one more pool at the end of the month.

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You can get the Grid for all your favorite tracks and races here.

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