After the Cinco de Mayo release this morning, Don Covello, myself & Josh Shore went to the Sports Book to see if we could figure out a way to get a set of the Hard Rock Derby Day NCV chips without losing too much money.

After about an hour or so of having Josh crunch the numbers for various races it did not look too good. Josh even went up to bet the $250 needed to get the 3rd chip in the set, but had a false start (pun intended ) when the last horse in the race was scratched a minute before the race & the ticket writer let him cancel out the tickets.

I then decided to buy a couple of Daily Racing Forms so that we could go through them & maybe come up with something. After a while of that I just decided I was going to bet $150 a horse ($50 each to win, place & show) on the 11 Churchill Downs races on Saturday & $100 on the Derby itself for a total of $1,750 which was needed to get the three chip set in the promotion. Josh then headed home & Don & I spent another hour going through the form & picking horses.

The red Derby Day chip below is 1 of 200, the blue Second Crown chip is 1 of 500 & the white Third Crown is 1 of 1,000. Only 200 complete sets are possible. I was told that tomorrow MIGHT be the last day to make the bets & get the red chip below. They will decide if they will extend the promotion to the Preakness & Belmont next week. I was also told that there is a good chance that any chips left over after the Belmont could be sent back to be destroyed. Time will tell on that.

I have set up a page on my Web site for those who want to "sweat" the action with me & see exactly how much this set ends up costing me! The Derby Day 2005! link is at the bottom of this post. Andy - Las Vegas