How to bet 2026 Kentucky Derby Future Wager Pool 1

Pool 1 of the 2026 Kentucky Derby Future Wager may seem like a lottery. But there are a few strategies that are worth considering.

• $2 Exacta: #40 All other colts and geldings with ALL ($78)
• $10 Win: Your favorite non-Breeders’ Cup runner.

These columns have previously advocated using the “all other colts and geldings” option as an exacta banker for the early Kentucky Derby Future Wagers, with the proviso that we should see how things play out as the number of betting options expands from 24 to 40 over the past three years.

All others exacta banker still worthwhile despite 40-option Future Wager

For now, I’d say the strategy is still worth a shot – especially since this year you have an option to take the exacta for $1 if you wish.

If you’d followed this strategy from the 2014 Future Wager Pool 1 (then held in late November), the first time Future Wagers were offered while contenders were still juveniles, to 2022, you would have been successful six times in those nine years. It would have cost $414 over nine years and returned $767.20.

The expansion of options to 40 obviously means there’s a greater chance the Kentucky Derby winner will be among the named options. But in the three years since this began, only the 2025 Derby winner Sovereignty was available as a single option in Pool 1. Both Mystik Dan (2024) and Mage (2023) were not available for Pool 1, though Mystik Dan was an option for Pool 2, which comes at the end of November.

To consider whether this is still a valid option, I’m going to look at the 20 Derby winners prior to Mage to see what the chance was that they would have been available had there been 40 options on Breeders’ Cup week. And the answer? Not many.

Before Sovereignty, the only Derby winner among the previous eight to have broken its maiden by late October was Rich Strike, and that was in a maiden claimer. Three hadn’t even raced. All eight would most likely not have been named options for Pool 1.

The 2015 and 2016 Derby winners, Nyquist and American Pharoah, were both Del Mar Futurity winners and would clearly have been named options had there been a 40-horse late October Future Wager Pool in those years. But going back prior to them, I’d suggest California Chrome, Orb, Animal Kingdom, and Smarty Jones would have almost certainly not been options, while there would be doubts over I’ll Have Another, Mine That Bird, Barbaro, and Funny Cide. The most likely to have been included would have been Super Saver, Big Brown, Street Sense, and Giacomo.

That suggests that had Future Wagers been available in late October between 2002 and 2021 for the following year’s Derby with 40 options, between 12 and 16 would have been won by the “all other colts and geldings” option, making the suggested exacta a worthwhile bet.

An important factor when considering the exacta recommended above is that there is no “all other colts and geldings-all other colts and geldings” option available. Instead, if an “all other colts and geldings” option wins the Derby, the exacta is paid out on that option first, with the best-placed horse that was a named option second.

As an example, none of the first three home in the 2024 Derby were named options in Future Wager Pool 1; the exacta was paid out on fourth-place finisher Catching Freedom, paying $143.30 for a $2 exacta, still a nice profit on $78.

Be wary of Breeders’ Cup Juvenile runners

If you don’t fancy spending $78 on an exacta, and you’d rather find a single horse, my main suggestion would be to avoid Breeders’ Cup Juvenile (G1) runners.

It’s well documented that only Street Sense and Nyquist have done the Juvenile-Derby double. What’s less known is that most Derby winners don’t even contest the Juvenile. Aside from Street Sense and Nyquist, only five Juvenile runners have won the Derby – and three of those were in the 1980s.

In addition, the Juvenile runners are the best-known horses in the Derby market right now and are thus at short odds. Given the historical record, I’d be very reluctant to back Ted Noffey or Brant at less than 20-1 unless you have a super-strong positive view on their Derby chances.

If you want to back an individual horse in the Future Wager, I’d suggest you find a horse on the way up that’s not running in the Juvenile, preferably one at reasonable odds.