Swinging for the fences in horseracing is not a bad concept but you have to pick your spots. Betting the ponies is a truly inexact science but to try to grind it out and make cash with little return on an investment is a losing strategy in the long run.
Back in day it used to be a ticket on the Irish Sweepstakes or a high-roller trip to Vegas to try to break the bank at roulette. In the horse racing game today if you are looking for the pie in the sky the ticket is the Pick Six in some cases.
Swinging for the fences in horseracing can mean the Pick Six but it’s not everybody’s cup of tea. One has to have the padded bankroll to be patient and tie up cash for an entire afternoon.
First and foremost if I were professing to be the best Pick Six player in the world, I wouldn’t be writing this column. I’d be in Tahiti or someplace similar shading myself with some beautiful companions collecting those umbrellas that come out of those exotic drinks. The truth of the matter is that I have hit a few ‘small’ Pick Sixes in my career but was never lucky enough to get that life changer. Now I usually only take a shot at the carryovers or go for the jugular on the big days like the Breeders’ Cup.
A little about the history of the Pick Six starts and ends with the prototype that began it all at Aqua Caliente in Tijuana, Mexico. The big players in Southern California were immediately attracted to swinging for the fences south of the border.
Aqua Caliente’s most popular feature was the ‘Fabulous 5-10,’ where patrons could win as much as $100,000 or more by picking the winners of the fifth through the tenth race and in the 1980s this bet eventually became the Pick Six.
Caliente’s legendary executive director, John Alessio is the man responsible for the 5-10, and to understand how much a visionary he was, consider the fact that Santa Anita and Hollywood Park wouldn’t even offer the daily double until 1962.
I once read a scribe from Los Angeles and he started his daily column with the fact that the Pick Six is not that tough today. A more asinine statement may never have been uttered. It’s hard enough picking one winner with extreme confidence of the kind that your life depends on it never mind 6 in a row against some heavy, well-bankrolled syndicates.
With that said it could be irresistible not to take a shot when a huge carryover is in play. First off, if you did not play that day when nobody hit the ‘6’ it’s free money. The kitty is already swollen and one winning ticket on a carryover day can bankroll a player for a year or more.
Even the most successful syndicate I personally know of hits only a handful of carryovers in any given year. They are apt to make $1.2 million one year, and lose $800,000. There are no guarantees when one is swinging for the fences. But a small player can take on the big guys and still live to tell about it.
The first strategy about swinging for the fences in horseracing that comes to mind is don’t get greedy. If a carryover presents itself and you have a friend or two that likes to dabble, get them involved. Try to designate a captain that can make the final call on the ticket. If one guy puts in 50% of the ticket and say the other 2 partners are equal parts at 25%, the majority player should have the final call in a perfect world as long as he is a player.
How much to invest or bet is the obvious starting point? A $2 Pick Six ticket is a ticket made of 6 straight singles. If you wanted to bet 2 horses in each leg of the wager it would cost a player $128. Two times 2 for each bet, then times 2 again because it is a $2 wager.
The key to success is locking in winning singles, surround them with logical horses and a few stabs, and hope to get lucky. A common single is the most likely winner on any given day, and some refer to this leg as a ‘free Bingo square’. The benefit of singling a prohibitive chalk is that he’s a short price because he stands out; the negative is that there is no value to the single, as most of the pool will have the same horse.
If you are down to a couple of possible singles on the card and one has current form and one is from a solid barn but coming off an extended layoff, give the edge to the current good form.
Only the strong survive in this pari-mutuel game but you can’t just go with the flow. Never forget you are betting against the rest of the bettors and thinking abstractly or outside the box is a good thing.
If there is a hype horse or a popular classy runner returning to the races and overlays his field, don’t be scared to take a shot against him. The majority of horses don’t come back from a layoff the same way they went out and are likely being bet on past accomplishments. You don’t have to eliminate those class plays, but just spread in that kind of a race.
Serious Pick Six players that are swinging for the fences in horseracing know when to ask themselves ‘what is this horse doing here’? If a runner ships in from a minor circuit, but is from a good barn and has solid form, this is the type of play that can pay dividends in a carryover situation.
Wait as long as you can to put in that Pick Six ticket. Try to get a good concept of where the winners are coming from early in the card. That can only help when evaluating styles and what horses may have an edge on any particular track.
Finally try to stay alive for the first leg with a couple of selections, take a stand against shaky or false favorites, and don’t forget about the saga of the South Dakota gem.
Graham Stone and his betting partner Will Dixon have been playing horse together for a while. Before the October 2003 Breeders’ Cup, the last bet they made was in the Kentucky Derby in May. All Stone and Dixon did was wager 8 bucks on the 2003 Breeders’ Cup Pick Six and watch it materialize to the tune of $2.7 million.
Stone singled four of the winners: Six Perfections, who took the Mile at 5-1; Islington, who won the Filly and Mare Turf at 5-2; High Chaparral, who shared the victory in a dead heat with Johar in the Turf; and Pleasantly Perfect, the 14-1 upsetter in the Classic.
He then used two horses the Sprint to get 22-1 shot Cajun Beat. He used two horses again in the Juvenile to come up with 26-1 shocker Action This Day.
To make things even more dramatic for Stone is that he was watching the Breeders’ Cup with his kids and was getting more nervous with each result.
After Pleasantly Perfect won the Classic in the last race of the Pick Six Stone went to the Santa Anita website. He first concentrated on the results which read the Pick Six paid $18,000. He was a bit disappointed before realizing that payoff was for five of the six winners.
He scrolled down further and saw that the Pick Six paid $2,687,611. He called his wife and told her about swinging for the fences.
