Wynn Las Vegas' Johnny Avello
2013 Kentucky Derby watch
With only 227 days to go, Wynn Las Vegas’ irrepressible sportsbook manager and oddsmaker John Avello is officially opening the casino’s 2013 Kentucky Derby future book Wednesday morning.
Avello starts off with 160 current 2-year-olds, with John Oxley’s unbeaten Uncaptured the 30-1 favorite after winning his third stakes over Woodbine’s Polytrack surface. But if trainer Mark Casse, who has a Churchill Downs division run by son Norman, has the early favorite, Todd Pletcher has the numbers, with six horses in the top 10, headed by Starlight Racing’s Hopeful winner Shanghai Bobby, who is 40-1.
Below are the 10 horses whose opening odds are less than 100-1, with trainers and sire listed in parentheses, followed by starts, 1-2-3 finishers and last race. The complete list appears in pdf form at the end of the Q&A with Avello.
30-1 Uncaptured (Mark Casse, Lion Heart)* 4–4-0-0*1st Woodbine’s Swynford
40-1 Shanghai Bobby (Todd Pletcher, Harlan’s Holiday)* 3—3-0-0*1st G2 Hopeful
50-1 Tizracer (Pletcher, Tiznow) 2—1-0-0*1st Belmont maiden by 10
60-1 f-Dreaming of Julia (Pletcher, A.P. Indy)*2—2-0-0*1st $85K stakes by 16
60-1 Micromanage (Pletcher, Medaglia d’Oro)*1—1-0-0*1st Saratoga maiden by 5
60-1 Violence (Pletcher, Medaglia d’Oro)*1—1-0-0*1st Saratoga maiden by neck
65-1 Know More (Leandro Mora, Lion Heart)*2—1-1-0*2nd G1 Del Mar Futurity
75-1 Fortify (Kiaran McLaughlin, Distorted Humor)*2—1-1-0*2nd Del Mar Futurity
85-1 Jocosity (Pletcher, Sharp Humor)*3—1-2-0*1st Saratoga maiden by 7
85-1 Tesseron (Josie Carroll, Tapit)*1—1-0-0*1st Woodbine maiden by ½
The Courier-Journal asked Avello about making his first Kentucky Derby line 7 ½ months before the Churchill Downs classic.
How do you decide on the earliest favorite?
I start logging the 2-year-olds probably in May as soon as I start seeing some starts. I don’t log them all. I log the ones I think could be potential candidates. I look at who I think is the better horse, or horses, out of that list. I kind of rank them from best to – and I don’t want to say worst – because there are a lot of horses out there, the horses that are 200, 250, 300-1, they also are potential candidates to win. Basically (the favorite) is looking at a horse who has shown the most versus one that hasn’t shown as much – so far, because it is awful early…. (But) last year I think there were at least seven horses who made it into the starting gate from the initial Derby opener. (They were I’ll Have Another, 200-1; Union Rags, 60-1; Alpha, 50-1; Creative Cause 125-1; Hansen, 250-1; Take Charge Indy, 150-1; and Sabercat, 350-1 – ed.)
How did you decide to make Uncaptured, who has only race on synthetic, the favorite over Shanghai Bobby, who has only raced on dirt?
What I’ve seen of Uncaptured so far has just been amazing. I know it’s Poly; I know it’s Woodbine, but I’m pretty impressed of what I’ve seen. Shanghai Bobby, he’s been running shorter distances (including starting out at 4-1/2 furlongs).
How did you decide to open Uncaptured at 30-1?
Well, we’re a long way away. Somebody has to be the favorite. Now, how high could I have made him? I think 50-1 is too high, and 20-1 too low. So I set a price kind of in the middle. I’m trying to give some value on a horse, but I don’t want to give too much or too little…. If they don’t touch him at that 30 price, then he’s probably going to get raised. That’s what I have to do during the course of the next 7 ½ months. Horses who are getting bet are going to be lowered, and horses who aren’t getting bet will be raised. And what they do on the track, of course, will influence the prices, too. We don’t necessarily have to take a bet on a horse to lower him. If I see one of the horses on my sheet have a tremendous race, he’s going to get lowered even before he gets bet. Not ridiculously, just accordingly to where I think he should be. There’s no sense giving 250-1 away on a horse when he should be 150 or less.
Part of how I open up the numbers is based on how I see a horse finish up a race. They are babies, and there’s a long way to go and they can certainly do better as time goes on – maybe. But when I see horses early in their career struggle a little bit at the finish, then I tend to probably move the odds up a little higher, as opposed to seeing a horse finish stronger.
How does doing Derby futures compare with the Super Bowl, Final Four, Westminster dog show?
Doing the NFL, baseball and basketball futures is relatively easy. I only have 32 teams I have to worry about (in NFL). I do it based on what they did the previous year, and what they should have done. Then you sprinkle in some of the new players that maybe came on board. I can do futures in a half-hour on pretty much any major sport. To do this, I have to research every single horse – and I can’t skip one. I can’t say, ‘Well, I remember that horse’s race.’ Because maybe I don’t. I can’t remember all these horses. I have to go back and look and see not only the previous race, but all their horses to that point.
The dog show is a little different. I have to research a type of dog and not a particular dog. I usually do a whole breed. But there are going to be dog’s in a breed that are some of the top dogs. I’d say researching the dogs, I’m probably looking at the top 10 in seven categories – about 70 particular dogs. The Oscars, I’m only doing five or six in a category.
They’re all a little different to do. No doubt, the Derby takes the most work. The dog show takes me a total of 15 hours. NFL futures take no more than an hour. I do that three days before the Super Bowl because I have the crowd there that wants it for the next year.
The Derby (for the next year) starts in May. I have a list of Derby horses and I release it in September and everything in between. So I’ve compiled a list, and I have to go back and research every horse again, see what they’ve done, if they got hurt, if they are training. It takes a lot of time, a three-month project just getting it open… You’re probably looking at 70 hours involved in it so far.
… Another major difference is, when I do a future book on the NFL or any of the major sports or even the Oscars – though the Oscars are for entertainment only – I still make those odds where the house has a small ‘hold’ percentage. So if you bet every team for the same amount, the house is still going to make some money on it. In this particular case, the hold percentage is negative. That makes it quite different. Because there’s no hold for the house early. We hope the hold comes in later on.
The hold is like the takeout at the track. On this particular Derby future, I don’t have that. Whereas the takeout would be 16 percent at the track, this is a minus 50-percent.
How do you research it?
This is my process: When I come in every morning, I circle every race that I think we need to watch. As that race goes off, if I’m there, I’ll watch it. If I’m not, I have my staff just write down the result on that sheet and when I get back I’ll watch a replay or look at the charts to see what happened. Then I’ll decide whether I want to add a horse or take a horse off or raise it. Now, some races I better watch. It’s a big race, maybe a stakes, because right after the race I need to make some adjustments. But early on like this, there are so many more horses to be added, just making sure one of my staff is at least telling me the result and I can go back and research it any time in maybe the next hour and make adjustments.
Is the Derby future book a money-maker for Wynn?
Yeah, it is. Now I can tell you there are years with the Derby future I’ve done really well, some years where I’ve broken even and some where I lost. Funny Cide was a big losing year. Fusaichi Pegasus, I lost that year. Charismatic was a good year. I’ll Have Another was a big year. If there’s going to be a real hot horse who stays hot for a long time and that horse ends up winning the Derby, you can almost bet that horse will be a loser for me.
Who are your current favorites in other sports?
(This is a very condensed answer, but I was curious) Green Bay and the Forty Niners are 6-1 for the Super Bowl. Indiana is the 7-1 favorite for the NCAA basketball tournament – they’ve gotten a lot of play early. Alabama is 5-2 and LSU 4-1 to win the college football championship. For the World Series, Texas is the 4-1 favorite, with the Reds and Nationals 6-1.”
Below is the complete list of the 160 3-year-olds that start Wynn Las Vegas’ 2013 Kentucky Derby future book:
