by Peeb of YSM Racing Club
What is the Virtual Kentucky Derby on Photo Finish™ Live?
Ah, the Virtual Kentucky Derby. A majestic annual stampede of digital hooves, where the crème de la crème of 3-year-old long-distance dirt runners thunder across the virtual track for glory, prestige, bragging rights - and a massive paycheck. It's the race in Photo Finish™ Live. The digital crown jewel. The event that every breeder, buyer, and bandwagon fan eyes with glinting ambition. Win this, and you’ve not just made history — you’ve made everyone else bloody furious.
I'm going to run you through 10 hints, tips, golden rules, things to look out for, whatever you want to call them. All backed by data, in probably one of the deepest dives done into PFL's centrepiece race.
Why Should I Listen to You?
At the risk of sounding coy and cocky - when it comes to the VKD, the YSM Racing Club know what we're doing.
Three VKD wins, 13 podiums, 19 finishing in-the-money, and more VKD starters than any other stable out there. We're also one of a very elite club who have bred and then sold a foal who has gone on to win the VKD.
Oh, and we shut out the podium in Season 26. That’s right. 1-2-3, baby. And yes, the champagne tasted like tears. To go with that time we did it in the Twin Spires Gallop two seasons earlier. I don't like to talk about it much.
Section 1: Identifying and Acquiring the Winning Horses
1. Know What You're Aiming For
The first step of fixing a problem is to admit that there is one.
Or to at least understand the challenge that is facing you.
Peeb’s Golden Rule # 1 – get yourself straight in your own head about what makes a good horse. Get a good understanding for race math. Layer on any other beliefs or theories you have, and are pretty convinced of. Try and back it with data. I’m a big believer in data driven insights, I don’t like anything being anecdotal.
So I’m fairly religious in my belief that race math and the horses stats tell most of the story.
The biggest factor you can’t see? Peak age. It’s so hard to see, that’s its almost worth not looking for it (if you can crack the code, it's a huge edge for Majors Day. Massive). Failing that, just try to create or buy what you think should make a good horse, and end up in the lap of the Gods on VKD day.
How do you identify a good belief system in what makes a good horse?
AI Paddock is a good place to start, and this is a gem of an article about how the stats you seen translate into performance on the track.
https://aipaddock.com/understanding-optimal-distances
Through a pure VKD lens, if you take the 24 winners (26 VKD editions so far, but Elvis won it thrice, the little slag), convert their grades to numbers linearly (I used the Zane scale, but any linear progression will do), and review the average stat profile of a VKD winner, you get exactly the shape you might expect to see for a horse who prevails at 10 furlongs.
Strong Stamina and Finish, Start has been junked, Speed also important to maintain. Of the last 15 bred winners, 8 of them had Finish that was the strongest or joint strongest of all of their stats, compared to 6 for Stamina.
Perhaps most surprising is Heart being the joint third most important stat. Some think Heart is absolutely vital to winning the VKD – with Heart only being the strongest or joint strongest stat 4 times in the last 15 winners, the data doesn’t necessarily back that up, although it is important to remember that everything is relative to the cohort of 19 other horses you line up against on the day.
Temper is a shining example of that. It’s been notoriously hard to breed and retain Temper in horses, predominantly down to the fact that pretty much all of the best Gen 0 horses had low Temper. Not since The Downgrade back in S7 has Temper featured as the horses strongest stat, but pay caution to junking it. A horse with S- temper has only won 5 out of 26 Derbies, and green rated temper has never taken it down.
You could spend hours delving into this one point – and you should. Establish your belief system, then systematically and religious attempt to breed and buy into that belief system.
9 points left to keep you on track.
2. Know Your Competition
You're not racing against the entire population of horses. Not even Left Dirt ones. You're racing against your 3-year-old cohort — the ones foaled in the same season as yours. That’s your battleground.
Want to start strong? Track the top LD-pref broodmares when they foal, and sniff out their babies like a pedigree bloodhound.
But — and this is a big ol' but — predicting winners as foals is about as reliable as the schedule being released on time.
Breeding has a twist of chaos. Of the 22 bred VKD champs:
9 came from broodmares of the same Global Grade.
11 came from mares who levelled up a grade.
2 somehow downgraded in grade... and still won. May their owners forever walk under horseshoes.
So yes, it's fair to say that it’s hard to spot the Broodmare of a VKD winner before the event. Which by nature, can make winning the VKD a numbers game - breed enough good to reasonable quality mares or buy enough foals, a few of them should ending up being competitive But increasing your chances is also a networking game...
3. Don’t Accept the Marketplace as the Best Place to Buy VKD Winners
Here's the harsh truth: no one sells a future VKD champ on a public listing. Nobody even lists a horse on the public market that has a shot of winning the VKD.
Of 22 bred VKD winners, 17 were bred and retained in-house.
In fact, the last 16 winners in a row were bred in the same stable for whom they won the gold. A staggering statistic.
You're going to have to identify those horses yourself. You cannot rely on marketplace to be a good cross section of the quality of horse available to you.
Use of third party tools, or praying that the PFL native tools improve (they may have done already, but I'm a devout third party tool user these days) is paramount - you need to have a filterable database of all horses to drill down into anything meaningful that helps you identify the strongest potential foals in a cohort.
You're then going to have to slide into DMs, charm some stables, and unpopularly, you are probably going to have to pay well above the going rate for a horse that has a decent shot. All worth it if you can prise those championship foals from the dead, lifeless fingers of the owners.
A great hedging tactic here is to focus on fillies - if she's a dud, at least you can breed her and go again.
Forget "Buy Now" — whilst identifying and buying horses in PFL, you should be sweating and covered in elbow grease. It really is a case of getting out what you put in - don't take short cuts, don't be afraid of working hard.
Section 2: I’ve Got a Competitor Who Could Qualify – What Now?
4. Plug Away and Qualify by Any Means Necessary
Top 20 horses on points make the dance. That’s it. It doesn't matter if your horse arrives at the VKD in a limo or a wheelbarrow.
The average VKD winner qualifies 10th.
11 out of 26 have come from the bottom half of the standings.
8 of those were 16th or lower.
Two have even finished on the cutline or below.
Only 5 winners have come from the top 5 in standings.
Lesson: Just. Get. In.
This race is a 20-horse rumble. On the day, anyone can win - we'll come to that later.
It’s important to note that the qualification landscape has changed quite considerably from S28 onwards. Many more races, tiered points based on entry level, the cut line is getting ever higher. Relying on quadrants and relative finishing leaderboard position is fine, but just be aware it will take you more points than ever before to qualify for the big one.
That said, there are also more ways than ever to qualify. Use the new pathways, perhaps with cheaper entry fees, to test your horses who maybe didn’t show as much as you’d have expected as a 2 year old. Non-winner and under-earnings pathways can be cheap and reliable places to pick up points. Once your confidence is up (and your bank balance), hit those Premier Races to bolster or even guarantee that elusive leaderboard position. One Premier win and a smattering of points from other races should be enough to get you in, but manage your budget carefully, as they cost more than a few shekels.
5. Preferences Matter
Points 5 and 6 below could have been placed in Section 1 for identifying horses that could win - and these do really matter for that. But these also become really important things to consider during your qualification campaign, when deciding whether to press on or throw in the towel.
Think your half star left, one star dirt horse is going to bring home the roses? Think again.
VKD winners average 5.21 stars out of 6 in Turn + Direction preference (Left and Dirt).
No horse has ever won with under 4.5 Direction + Surface stars (except the mythical outlier The Downgrade in S7 — a glorious anomaly, the only true off-preference VKD winner, taking advantage of slim competition early in the game. I doubt this will ever be repeated).
Breeding across archetypes? Please don’t. Not unless you enjoy heartbreak. Or the long way round.
Stay in your lane — literally. As above, qualifying is a risky endeavour, and sometimes can actually cost you money to end up being qualified for the VKD. Your 1.5* Left 1.5* Dirt horse could potentially pick up enough points to qualify if you try hard enough - but is it worth the investment? The jury is out.
6. Don’t Be Overly Concerned by Global Grade
Same as above, this point applies to considering your purchase / breeding options.
Of the 22 bred-era winners, 13 were not the highest Global Grade in their field.
And no SS- horse has yet won the VKD. Although maybe that would be different had we not retired Kingman early ;)
So, while high Global Grade is nice, it's not your golden ticket. You don’t need to be the best on paper — you need to be the best on the day. Half way through the season and worried that there are loads of SS- on the cutline? It's not too relevant.
Section 3: You’ve Qualified. Now What?
Congrats, you’re in. Now you’re in the lap of the Gods. What are your chances of success?
7. Defying the Weather Gods is Hard… But Possible
Weather is one of the more divisive topics in the PFL world when it comes to Major Day. A 3 star firm horses could crush for an entire qualification campaign, only to see the main event go Sloppy. Is it a death sentence?
16 of 26 winners matched the weather with their Condition star preference.
6 managed to win with off-condition preference.
4 of those were on Yielding tracks — the great leveller.
So yes, the odds are ever in your favour if you hit your nut weather roll, with only 23% of winners coming off-preference. But it isn't necessarily game over for those who don't.
Historical weather VKD breakdown split by number of times each condition has occurred:
4 Fast
6 Good
4 Yielding
5 Soft
7 Sloppy
The last two have been Fast, and S29's version has rolled 100% chance of rain after a recent stream. I used to joke that people use Twitter to find out if it's raining where they are instead of looking out the window. Irony.
8. The Distance You Qualified With Doesn’t Matter... Sort of...
Squeezing into the VKD by the skin of your teeth is fine and I would definitely advise it – you miss 100% of the shots your don’t take, but these lottery tickets are hard earned.
The racing algo doesn’t know how you got there, it doesn't know that you've cherry picked every 12 furlong race. It definitely didn't know that for three previous VKD winners, who won their first and only 10 furlong race in the biggest race of them all; Jumex in S12, Walcott in S24 and Hurricane Run in S26.
That said, there is little doubt that form over 10 furlongs is a desirable trait.
Out of all of the 22 bred winners of the VKD, the average # of won races over 10 furlongs by the end of their career was 4.73 races.
This trend has weakened over the last 8 seasons; only Sunwhispher in S25 and Licenced To Ill in S27 ended their careers with 3 or more wins at 10 furlong.
Take the data with a little pinch of salt – perhaps horses used to race longer careers earlier in the game.
But it just goes to show that every one of the 20 runners is live and kicking when the big race comes along, whether or not they're a 10 furlong monster or not.
9. The Morning Line Oddsmaker Doesn’t Know Shit
The field is set. Your competition is revealed. Your heart sinks when you see your horses ML is 16x, or higher.
Don't fret, and don't lose the faith;
Only 5 ML favourites have won the VKD.
That’s a 19% hit rate, less than 1 in 5 times has the ML Oddsmaker successfully predicted the winner of the VKD.
Ask anyone who felt like they had an absolute guaranteed Major winner on their hands, and judge yourself by their haunted look into the middle distance. Favourites flop, just like real life. It's happened to us loads of times, Langer Dan being the latest ML (and Pick Pool) favourite not to bring it home for us on the big day.
10. The Community Bettors Don’t Know Shit Either
This devout community would be able to see past the ML oddsmaker though right? This educated and experienced bunch of degens and miscreants would be able to sniff a VKD winner from a mile away? I bet they prey off idiot new wagerers who don't know what they're doing. Right..?
Horses who closed the betting as the Pick Pools favourites have produced 7 of 26 winners of the VKD.
They’ve been 0 for the last 11.
The race has clearly got harder to predict, and progressively wider and wider open for those lucky enough to race in it.
Only two horses have won when being both ML and Pick Pool favourite.
Arrow of Time (S14) (he had the gumption to do this whilst we were all physically stood in a bar at KD150. Painful memories...)
Thistlecrack (S17)
So much for “the wisdom of the crowd”. It just tells you how wide open this race is – even those who have been around forever and a day can’t predict the winner.
That’s It – Time for the Uplifting Conclusion & Sign-Off
Winning the Virtual Kentucky Derby isn’t easy. It takes hustle, strategy, statistical masochism, and a tiny pinch of madness. But it is possible — we’ve done it. Thrice. And no matter your budget, your stable size, or your bloodline fancy, there's always a way in.
Follow the rules, break a few, and trust your gut. Just maybe — next season, it’s your turn to shut out the podium.
See you at the rails,
Peeb – YSM Racing Club