My conclusion on betting pick sixes

[Poindexter]

This latest mandatory payout at Gulfstream Park a couple of days ago really frustrated me because I latched onto 2 winning singles and instead of playing tickets that gave me a really good chance of hitting I went another direction with what if one wins and one loses let me give myself a chance to win at that. Now the logic of that is not outlandish. The chances of both winning were about 20% while the chances of just 1 winning was about 50% so on the surface that logic makes sense. The problem is that when you use that approach, to make your play reasonable from a cost perspective you spread yourself so thin, that anything worth hitting is probably going to eliminate you as what happened on Saturday.

Now changing your approach off of the results of a single pick 6 is a silly notion, and I realize that singling 2 horses typically at best will get you a 25% chance of hitting or as low as a 15% chance (if you can't find 2 singles that good you probably should not single 2 and probably wait for better opportunities). But this one was sort of an eye opener because for once I got home my singles, every horse that won had to used in a spread situation, yet I was so all over the place in my attack, that I failed to cover the basic notion, how should I attack this assuming my 2 singles win. I just came up with a $140 straight ticket and left it at that. Little thought, little energy on it. Instead I focus most of my energy into well one wins and one loses how do I protect myself. I realize that in using this passive approach I am always spreading myself too thin and the song remains the same.Typically 5 out of six, sometime 4 out of 6. But rarely 6 of 6, and when I do hit the 6 of 6 I get back maybe $1500, $3000. Big Deal. Every time a hittable $15,000 to $50,000 pick 6 comes in, it is would of, could of, should of. Not only that I can't tell you the number times I have screwed up, had this sick feeling in my stomach because I should have been 4 for 4 after 4 races and was certain I had enough coverage to get home and sure enough, still would have lost (the point being that when you cover yourself too thin it is so easy to blow a pick 6).

Truth be told this for me is an Aha moment. I realize that I have been doing this all wrong. The 20 cent pick six with a huge carryover on a mandatory payout is an incredible betting opportunity. But I realize, given my bankroll (I will bet up to $500 but certainly not going much higher than that), that I can try and play a pick 2 or a pick 6. For my bankroll I can formulate plays that can get through the 4 spreads in the low to high 80's percentage wise (depending on how difficult the 4 spread races are) and I just have to worry about hitting the 2 singles. So most of the time I will hit when the 2 singles hit and more importantly when the bombs start going off in the sequence I am still going to have some good life rather than being dead or virtually dead.

My conclusion, right or wrong is that I am much better off focusing on 2 singles and living or dying with them and amply spreading and covering the other races.

Let's say hypothetically I play 100 of these at say $400 a pop, the 2 singles hit on average 20% of the time and I hit the spreads only 80% of the time. that means $40,000 invested I will hit on average 16. My breakeven is about $2500 per hit. That seems very easily attainable with carryover pick sixes. Truth is I hit nowhere near 16% of my pick six plays. Why because I am so busy worrying about not losing, I play using strategies that makes me lose. The ultimate irony. I win the battle a lot of times, avoiding going down because maybe 1 of my 2 best singles goes down and I am still alive but ultimately I typically will still lose the war. More importantly when I do win the war it will typically not pay that much anyhow. Truth is that I have come to the conclusion that to hit a good pick six you have to do everything right. That is only because I have made it that way. If I play properly, I need to hit a pick 2 and by doing so I will hit the pick 6 the majority of the time I do.

By the way, this is for my bankroll. If I was play 2 or 3 k s a pop there is no way I would single 2 horses. I will worry about the strategy when I get there.
I have a bunch of scores to make first.

[rrpic6]

Poindexter: I can sense your frustration of Handicapping vs. Ticket Structure. It is also my #1 problem. Though I've hit over 100 Pick 6's in my lifetime, the ones that got away can still haunt me. My rule of thumb used to be that I have a Bankroll for that day and if I lose it all, I'm good with it. Sometimes it was $120, once it was $5000. I'd then structure a Cave-Man ticket with any horse that merited a chance in each leg. If it was within my daily budget then I played it. If not, I would try to tinker with that ticket. That's where the frustration entered. Too many times an eliminated horse would win. Finding solid SINGLES is a goal, but not necessary. I like that NYRA now has a .20 Pick Six with no Jackpot. Thinking I'll jump back in the pool with them.



RR

[classhandicapper]

I don't know which races your key horses were in, but if they were in consecutive races you were probably better off just betting a cold double, 1st and 3rd races of the sequence, a Pick 3 covering the contenders in the middle race and so on.

The whole point of exotic wagering is to leverage two value oriented opinions inside one pool into greater value than a simple Win bet. The idea is not to make a big score or hit the ticket. The idea is to create excess value. Of course with Pick 5s and 6s you'll need the bankroll and mental toughness to sustain the inevitable long losing streaks that come from tighter tickets. And with Pick 6s the values change with carryovers. But to be honest, most people (myself included) should not be in those pools to begin with when most of the time you can structure bets that match your opinions in other pools without opening yourself up to those other issues. Most people lose more or cost themselves money trying to make a score or foolishly comparing exotic payoffs to parlays while playing a higher take bet badly.

[BarchCapper]

And it is hoped that you had something on the win end for those two singles, especially if they were decent prices! I hear/read that lament often from those who frequent the multi-race exotics - they sometimes forget to straight bet the 8-1 shot they singled in those exotics!

[thaskalos]

Originally Posted by BarchCapper

And it is hoped that you had something on the win end for those two singles, especially if they were decent prices! I hear/read that lament often from those who frequent the multi-race exotics - they sometimes forget to straight bet the 8-1 shot they singled in those exotics!

I'd like to meet the guy who singles 8-1 shots in these expensive pick-6 wagers.

[Poindexter]

Originally Posted by classhandicapper

I don't know which races your key horses were in, but if they were in consecutive races you were probably better off just betting a cold double, 1st and 3rd races of the sequence, a Pick 3 covering the contenders in the middle race and so on.

The whole point of exotic wagering is to leverage two value oriented opinions inside one pool into greater value than a simple Win bet. The idea is not to make a big score or hit the ticket. The idea is to create excess value. Of course with Pick 5s and 6s you'll need the bankroll and mental toughness to sustain the inevitable long losing streaks that come from tighter tickets. And with Pick 6s the values change with carryovers. But to be honest, most people (myself included) should not be in those pools to begin with when most of the time you can structure bets that match your opinions in other pools without opening yourself up to those other issues. Most people lose more or cost themselves money trying to make a score or foolishly comparing exotic payoffs to parlays while playing a higher take bet badly.

The value is not in the singles the value is in the pools. The singles in fact are typically poor value, because many others are singling the same horses. You can elect to single less likely winners but to hit 2 of them is something like a 4 to 6% chance at best. I will suffer enough trying to hit 2 singles that will win in the 15 to 25% range. I will save the other horses for the pick 3's etc.

Remember you have 6 million dollar pools, million dollar carryovers which amounts to a microscopic takeout and you can hit for 20 to 30 K and barely move the payoff. There is nothing in racing like it. On Saturday pick 3 parlay just over 10 K, pick 6 just over 17k. That is a 70% premium not even taking into account how much your bets will chop off of the payoffs if you actually did a pick 3 parlay. This is your value. The singles are just an end to a mean.


RR, not going to argue about whether singles are needed. It is all personal choice. The more you single the more you can spread the less you single the less deep you can go in other legs. Since the 20 cent bet came into play I have been running away from singles, when I used to play $2 pick sixes I had to have singles. Without reiterating the op, I just feel like I have been so focused on not absolutely singling horses it has made my play poor (less singling and more cutting). There is a balance between how much coverage you need (horses you need in each leg), what approach you should take once you figure that out and having a chance to actually hit these things with a regularity and doing this is an affordable way(obviously you are well versed in all this). I certainly do not play caveman tickets (way too expensive and impractical, go 10 deep with an A you might be okay even if the A wins at 8/5 and in fact it may turn out you need him, go 10 deep with a caveman ticket and get home an 8/5 and your ticket just lost 75% of it's value). I just feel like a light bulb has gone off and that I have been spreading myself too thin. That to hit these things with regularity I have to stand by my singles and play deeper. My approach is more complex than this, but as an analogy it would be like I have been playing trying to hit 2 of 4 top choices and then I finally realize that 2 of 4 top choices is too hard to hit and when they do hit it is too hard to get those boxcar payoffs. Now I am going to shift to requiring only 1 of 4 top choices to win but as a trade off , to be able to afford this I now have to single my 2 best horses and live or die with them. Just having the structure alone will make this a beneficial move for me. If I don't have 2 good singles, I will gamble for a small amount (under $100) and hope to get lucky.

[Poindexter]

Originally Posted by BarchCapper

And it is hoped that you had something on the win end for those two singles, especially if they were decent prices! I hear/read that lament often from those who frequent the multi-race exotics - they sometimes forget to straight bet the 8-1 shot they singled in those exotics!

I should be so lucky as to every have an 8-1 win for me at the thoroughbreds let alone singling one or two of them. No my singles were 3/2 I think (won in a head bob) and 2/5. No bragging rights there. Did hit the super high 5 with the 3/2 shot. Gee let a $17,000 pick six slip away and hit a $300 high 5. How fun.

[Nitro]

Originally Posted by Poindexter

My conclusion, right or wrong is that I am much better off focusing on 2 singles and living or dying with them and amply spreading and covering the other races.

To be perfectly honest I just don't understand the attraction of getting involved in the horizontal betting.
I've said it before and I'll say it again:

Originally Posted by Nitro

There is an alternative that many successful players utilize that eliminates a lot of the guesswork when playing multiple races.

Instead of playing the Pick-Whatever and being forced to play a predetermined sequence of races, why not do yourself a favor and simply Parlay the races that you feel most comfortable with?

You would also have an opportunity to pass or play those races based on the value that they might offer.
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[Poindexter]

Originally Posted by Nitro

To be perfectly honest I just don't understand the attraction of getting involved in the horizontal betting.
I've said it before and I'll say it again:

Let me know when they start offering 3 % takeout (roughly the takeout on Saturday's pick 6 I believe-I forgot what the actual carryover was) on win betting. I will parlay and round robin more than you can possibly fathom. But since the takeout is 15 to 16% and the sharpest players are getting rebated and I am not I don't see how anyone in my position would do anything as senseless as trying to parlay instead of attacking a 6 million dollar pick 6 pool with plenty of uninformed money in it with a net effective take of about 3%.

[Nitro]

Originally Posted by Poindexter

Let me know when they start offering 3 % takeout (roughly the takeout on Saturday's pick 6 I believe-I forgot what the actual carryover was) on win betting. I will parlay and round robin more than you can possibly fathom. But since the takeout is 15 to 16% and the sharpest players are getting rebated and I am not I don't see how anyone in my position would do anything as senseless as trying to parlay instead of attacking a 6 million dollar pick 6 pool with plenty of uninformed money in it with a net effective take of about 3%.

There’s no need to worry about “take-out” if you really understand what’s meaningful when it comes to making wagers repeatedly. I know you’ve seen my previous post about this topic, so I won’t go into that again. Personally, I believe players should concern themselves more with what they can control (reduction of losing bets) versus any take-out (which is out of their control).
Post #94
http://www.paceadvantage.com/forum/s...usiness&page=7
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[AndyC]

Originally Posted by Poindexter

The value is not in the singles the value is in the pools. ..........

Show me a player who chooses their horses for a P-6 based on the perceived value of each horse and I will show you a losing P-6 player. Excluding horses that should be 2-1 instead of 6/5 is lunacy. It's great for DDs, P-3s and possibly P-4s.

[BarchCapper]

Originally Posted by thaskalos

I'd like to meet the guy who singles 8-1 shots in these expensive pick-6 wagers.

Agreed - not likely. I'm probably thinking about the times I've heard it with regard to some of the pick-3/pick-4 multis.

I don't play multis (other than occasional doubles) - but I do enjoy listening to others analysis of them, and am always interested the reasoning behind horses they choose to single in those wagers, and then often getting to listen to the post-mortems, and the "should've"s. (Like right here where Poindexter has been kind enough to open up this window of discussion into his own wagering.)

[sammy the sage]

Originally Posted by thaskalos

I'd like to meet the guy who singles 8-1 shots in these expensive pick-6 wagers.

You have...at least on this message board...he's a moron in your book tho...ce la vie...

[classhandicapper]

The value is not in the singles the value is in the pools. The singles in fact are typically poor value, because many others are singling the same horses.

I agree that some horse that a lot people are going to single is probably not going to add value. I was thinking more along the lines of singling a couple of 7/2 shots I would gladly make large win bets on because I hate the favorite.

You know your budget and your ability to handle losing streaks. IMO, if you can’t build a ticket that makes sense mathematically that you can handle financially and emotionally you should go into another pool.

Do yourself one favor and stop comparing PICK X payoffs to parlays. In a parlay you are putting massively more money through the windows. That’s why it pays less. The “take” on the PICK X is the “take” and it’s usually higher than WPS. That difference is how much extra people are losing overall on these exotics relative to WPS (on non carryover days). Other than the carryover, the only advantage of exotics is the leverage you can get from combining 2 value oriented opinions inside one pool into greater value.

[classhandicapper]

Originally Posted by AndyC

Show me a player who chooses their horses for a P-6 based on the perceived value of each horse and I will show you a losing P-6 player.

The issue isn’t whether it’s mathematically correct to think about the value of the individual “combinations”. The issue is whether you can sustain all the losing financially and emotionally if you use too tight of a value oriented approach trying to maximize ROI. That could mean a lot of years of losing, a straight jacket, and a visit to the poor house before you are rewarded, if ever.

There is a flip side though.

Show me a Pick 6 player that isn’t thinking about value at all and I’ll show a losing player. I might even be able to show you a few that could be winning in doubles, picks 3s, and pick 4s with value oriented thinking instead of chasing dreams and losing in the Pick 6.