Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Side-by-side Betting with Trifectas

In my previous articles I have shown how to structure a side-by-side bet using an exacta. Let's now extend this to a side-by-side trifecta bet. Why would we want to do this? Because the trifecta payouts are much larger and more profitable. Let me give you an example from last Friday, March 19. In race number 3, our side-by-side bet keyed on Larry Payne who was riding the #7 horse. Our exacta side-by-side bet was to box 6,7,8. The cost for this $2 exacta box was $12. The result was 8-7 with Payne placing. The exacta payout was $85.60.

The trifecta side-by-side bet was structured as follows: 6,7,8/6,7,8/ALL. There were 10 horses in this race so the cost of this $2 trifecta bet was $96. Since this size bet is usually out of the range of many bettors bank roll a $1 trifecta for the same bet was $48. This $1 trifecta paid $905.10. The minimum trifecta bet at Remington Park is $1. This turned out to be a 7-1 return on the exacta and a 19-1 return on the trifecta.

With a large enough bank roll to manage these size bets the return can be very rewarding.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Remington Park Quarterhorse Side-by-side Results

Over the weekend March 12-14 the side-by-side results continued with remarkable payouts. 10 races out of 30 were side-by-side results. That's one out of every three races. The average side-by-side $2 exacta payout was $103.68. Here is a summary of the results.

Friday, March 12

Race 1 Result 2-1 (#1 was the ML favorite)..........Payout $121.60
Race 4 Result 5-4 (#4 was the ML favorite)..........Payout $72.60
Race 5 Result 7-8 (#7 was the toteboard favorite)...Payout $67.80
Race 9 Result 7-8 (Hard one to pick, I missed it)...Payout $141.20
Race 10 Result 1-2 (G R Carter rode #2)..............Payout $23.40

Saturday, March 13

Race 4 Result 3-4 (G R Carter rode #4)..............Payout $145.40

Sunday, March 14

Race 1 Result 6-5 (#5 was one of 2 favorites).......Payout $250.20
Race 4 Result 9-10 (Larry Payne rode #9).............Payout $76.20
Race 7 Result 3-4 (#4 was the ML favorite)..........Payout $52.00
Race 9 Result 4-3 (G R Carter rode #3)..............Payout $86.40

Read the previous two blog articles to see what a side-by side bet is and how to structure one. For those of you who like to check things out go to equibase.com for Remington Park results.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Side-By-Side Quarter Horse Bets

In my previous blog article I demonstrated that side-by-side results for win-place had a high occurrence. Infact almost one-half of the time, on opening weekend at Remington Park, ended in side-by-side results. This is a statistical occurence waiting to be taken advantage of.

I will enumerate several steps to take in order to structure these bets.
1 - Identify a 'high probability to win' horse to key on. In my last article I pointed out jockeys and trainers that can be keyed on, also ML favorite and tote board favorite.
2 - If there are high odd horses on either side of this keyed horse then that's what you want. The payoffs will be larger. (Having a hangup about odds can ruin this bet.)
3 - Is there more than one horse to key on in this race?
4 - Depending on your bankroll, start with exactas, then trifectas, and superfectas.

Let's use examples to illustrate. The first thing I do is go to the newspaper or the internet and lay out on a piece of ruled paper the post number of each horse in the race and order them by morning line odds. Here's an example.

Race 6 Post Position ..6..9..8..10..(1)..3..4..7..5..2
Morning Line ..7/2..4..9/2..5..6..10..12..15..15..15

Let's assume that one of the jockeys I mentioned in the previous article is riding horse #1 above. An inexpensive way to play this side-by-side bet is to use an exacta box 1,2. The morning line odds on #1 is 6/1, the ML odds on #2 is 15/1. I would play a $5 exacta box and it would cost $10. Another bet on the same race would be to key on the ML favorite #6. A $1 exacta box would be 5,6,7. It would cost $6. If either or both bets won your payout would be outstanding. You might even want to quit for the evening. Yes, Remington Park has all evening racing this meet.

UPDATE: Last night I went down to Remington Park. I used my side-by-side betting strategy using only exactas. Would you believe, 5 of the 10 races had side-by-side results. Race 1, result was 2-1 and the $2 exacta paid $121.60. Note that #1 was the 5/2 ML favorite. #2 had a ML odd of 15/1. Race 4, result was 5-4 and the $2 exacta paid $72.60. Again #4 was the 5/2 ML favorite and the #5 horse 15/1 ML. Race 5 result was 7-8 and the $2 exacta paid $67.80. The #7 horse was the tote board favorite. Race 9 result was 7-8 and the $2 exacta paid $141.2. The #7 horse was again the toteboard favorite. Race 10 result was 1-2 and the $2 exacta paid $51.60. G. R. Carter rode the #2 horse.

To check these results for yourself go to equibase.com and look at the summary results for Remington Park for March 12.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Playing the Quarter Horses at Remington Park

This last weekend March 5-7, the Quarter Horse meet began at Remington Park. I enjoy being right down at the rail and watching them go flying by at 50 to 55 miles an hour. What a thrill! So far this last weekend there was a lot of futurity qualifying going on. 250, 300, 330, and 350 yards was where most of the action was. In most of the races there 8, 9, or 10 horses. This meet every race has 10 cent superfectas available. A real opportunity. I'm going to give you some of my opinions on how you can take advantage of these 10 cent supers.

Over the years I've found a few things to watch for that makes quarter horse racing just a little different. First, getting out of the gate cleanly is everything. Times are measured in hundreds of seconds between winning and losing. Another feature to take into account is that quarter horses like to keep up with the horse next to them. Many large exactas are collected by boxing horses next to each other in the gate. A high odd horse may perform way beyond his expectations just by competing with the horse next to him. With this bit of information exactas, trifectas, and superfectas can be constructed to take advantage of the situation.

The next thing to take into account are specific jockeys and trainers. At Remington Park you do not want to leave out two trainers, Eddie Willis and Rodney Reed. Eddie Willis horses always seem to be live and ready to roll. The same is true for Rodney Reed horses. The jockeys you never want to overlook are Hall of Fame jockey G. R. Carter and Larry Payne. Therefore in your betting strategies you can use their horses to key on.

Now why bet 10 cent superfectas? One answer is that you can get a lot of combinations at a low or at least reasonable cost to the bettor. Some times the payoffs can be huge. For this last opening weekend here are the average payouts on 10 cent superfectas.

Friday, March 5 $313.94
Saturday, March 6 $150.61
Sunday, March 7 $518.47

The largest payout was $2506.33 and the smallest was $5.18.

There were 28 races and G. R. Carter won 4, Larry Payne won 7, Eddie Willis horses won 7. There were 13 out of 28 races where win and place were side by side. For example, race 4 on Friday #7 won and #8 placed and in race 6 #2 won and #1 placed. A side by side betting strategy over the weekend could have been very profitable.

In my next blog article I will show you how to structure these side by side bets.

May the racing Gods be with you.