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Originally Posted by Poindexter
Anybody that does not see the value in pick 4's only need to look at yesterdays late pick 4 at Santa Anita(a 50 cent parlay was $2475 and the 50 cent pick 4 paid $16,295). Here is another way of looking at it. When dealing with a 15.3% win takeout(I believe that is what southern California uses) your payoff on average in the win pool is .847. You need to get an increase of roughly 18% to get you to break even. A 4 horse parlay with a 18% premium would be 1.18*1.18*1.18*1.18 or about 1.94%. So if you can get 94% above a parlay in a pick 4 pool you have essentially nullified the takeout. When playing pick 4's with full fields(35+ runners), it is not unusual to get double the parlay and thus nullifying the takeout. I ignored breakage, but the bottom line is that a lot of the obstacles of high takeout imo can best be overcome with strategic play of pick 4s & pick 5's. I would imagine you can make similar arguments for superfectas, however, I also find picking winners in 4 consecutive races a more desirable task than picking the first 4 finishers in a single race.........
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While it is true that a P-4 can exceed double a parlay it is also true that 23.68% is the take for CA tracks. While you might get some great payoffs you are more apt to get poor payoffs, that's simple math. Ignoring that fact by comparing payoffs to the useless metric of a 4 horse parlay doesn't make the bet a great bet.
