Las Vegas offers seminars to prepare for Kentucky Derby

We are only eight days from the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs. Every Las Vegas race book will be rolling out the red carpet to horseplayers for the first leg of the Triple Crown.

Here’s a highlight of Derby festivities in Las Vegas next week.

Five handicapping seminars are scheduled — all of them May 6 — and are free to the public.

The first seminar will be in the Sam’s Town race book at 4 p.m. It will feature Jerry Jacovitz of Jerry J’s Power Page, Jon Lindo of The Lindo Report and Ralph Siraco, host of the Race Day Las Vegas radio show.

The newly renovated Boulder Station race book will host three handicappers at 6 p.m. They are Gordon Jones, author of the classic handicapping book “Gordon Jones to Win,” his daughter Joanne Jones, formerly an analyst on HRTV, and Tony Vega, race book supervisor at Boulder Station.

The South Point will host its seminar also at 6 p.m. It will feature house handicapper Patrick McQuiggan, who authors his Southern California handicapping sheet exclusively for the South Point, noted Southern California clocker Toby Turrell and John Kelly of eog.com, the popular gaming website.

The Sunset Station race book will feature Brian Blessing, host of the SportsbookRadio.com weekday show; Steve Davidowitz, the horse racing writer for Gaming Today and author of “Betting Thoroughbreds”; Dave Valento of trackphantom.com handicapping sheets; and myself.

And finally, Jacovitz will hustle up to Texas Station for another seminar, at 6:15 p.m.

For those horseplayers who cannot attend any of the seminars, South Point’s will be streamed live at southpointcasino.com. Go to “Casino” and then “Race Book” for the link.

The South Point also will host a Kentucky Derby ballroom party, with doors opening at 9 a.m. May 7.

If you like betting a little to win a lot, then Station Casinos’ Twin Quinella is for you. On May 6, the Oaks Twin Q will offer $10,000, up from the normal $5,000 jackpot. Then on May 7, the Derby Twin Q will be $20,000. The Twin Q remains one of the best horse racing promotions in Las Vegas.

Treasure Island will host three one-day tournaments May 6 to 8 in its race book. The top finishers will win a berth to the 2017 Daily Racing Form/National Thoroughbred Racing Association National Handicapping Championship. Each contest will be limited to 75 entries.

Most race books are having a Derby promotion, but there are far too many to list. Ask the manager of your favorite race book for details.

And finally, I have agreed to handicap the complete Oaks and Derby cards for brisnet.com. The two files will be made available next week at brisnet.com/derby. Each file will cost $20.

Richard Eng’s horse racing column is published Friday in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. You can get his Southern California picks by emailing him at rich_eng@hotmail.com. Follow him on Twitter: @richeng4propick