Louisiana Derby Late Pick Four Betting Strategies

Saturday is Louisiana Derby Day at Fair Grounds, and it’s one of the final big days of their meet. The late Pick Four is an all-stakes sequence with some of the most accomplished horses around.

It starts in the ninth, and I’ll attack it with a $13.50 ticket. Here’s how I’ve put it together.

The first of two singles

The Grade 2 New Orleans Classic kicks things off, and there’s a runner I’ve liked for quite a while in here. He’ll likely be a pretty heavy favorite, and he’s my first key horse of the sequence.

That’s No. 2 Olympiad, who earned his first graded stakes score in the Grade 3 Mineshaft last month. Simply put, anything close to that effort would make him very tough to beat. When Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott gets horses on the right track, they tend to stay there. I don’t think regression is coming, and I think he looms very, very large.

Buying the Muniz Memorial Classic

This Grade 2 event is a confounding turf race. It’s tough to figure out who’ll take the lead early on, and whichever runner does that has a real chance to steal it if they get comfortable.

Because I have two singles on my ticket, I can afford to spread, and that’s what I’m doing. I’m hitting the “ALL” button here and using the entire nine-horse field. I’m hoping for a price, and if one comes in, the potential value of this ticket will go up considerably.

Echo Zulu’s back

I can’t get cute in the Grade 2 Fair Grounds Oaks. No. 1 Echo Zulu was head and shoulders above the rest of her division last year. She returns in this spot, may not face any opposition up front early on, and would crush this with anything close to her efforts from a season ago.

Echo Zulu’s 3-5 on the morning line. I think she’ll get bet down considerably from that number, but I also don’t think any of these runners can warm her up.

Going against Epicenter in the Louisiana Derby

We’ll finish things off with the Louisiana Derby, which rewards 100 Kentucky Derby points to the winner. The field of nine includes one of the most highly regarded 3-year-olds in the country, but that runner isn’t on my ticket.

No. 6 Epicenter is certainly good enough to win. However, as I mentioned in my preview of this race, I don’t think he’ll be alone up front, and he already has enough Kentucky Derby points to secure his spot in the field.

With that in mind, I’ll go three deep. Closers No. 3 Call Me Midnight and No. 9 Rattle N Roll may benefit from the likely race shape, and No. 2 Zozos might provide some value for the tag team of Brad Cox and Florent Geroux. If we beat Epicenter, I think this sequence could pay shockingly well, even with two other heavy favorites as singles.