One of My Favorite Trifecta Bets

After years of watching hundreds, if not thousands, of races there is a pattern that occurs quite frequently. It is a pattern that the horse player can look for and spot by doing some homework ahead of time and then watching the tote board from 16 minutes before post up to 2 minutes before post. During this time you record the tote odds for each horse every 2 minutes. This is how you confirm the pattern.

The homework you do ahead of time is to look at the morning line (M/L) of the races at several tracks several hours (or even a day) before a race goes off. What you look for is a race that has 2 superior horses in the race. Looking at the M/L you may spot a race where these two horses have ,say, an M/L= 6/5 and 8/5 respectively. You also notice that the other horses have M/L at 3/1 and higher. Usually these races are allowance or stakes races where the quality of the horses is superior. You can further go to the Daily Racing Form (DRF) online or the printed version and see who these two horses are and look at their past performances (PP) compared with the rest of the horses in the race.

As you watch the tote board and record the odds you want to see if these two horses continue to be the two favorites up to 2 minutes before post time. Now here is a favorite trifecta bet that I have won hundreds of times over the years. Let's assume that there are 10 horses in the race and that 3 and 8 are the heavy favorites. The trifecta bet would be placed as follows: 3,8/ALL/3,8 (and 3,8/3,8/ALL as a hedge).

Let me explain this bet. Over the years I have found that there is a high probably that either 3 or 8 will win. Further it is likely that these two horses will duel for the lead around the track with one of the two winning out in the last quarter or eighth of a mile to the finish line. There is also a good probably that the second horse will weaken toward the end and one of the longer shots will come on to place second. To discover whether this pattern is true, I suggest you test this out a few times before you ever bet it. See for yourself.

As a hedge bet you can use 3,8/3,8/ALL in case the second horse doesn't tire out and stays with the winner to take second.