Those who follow this blog regularly no doubt noticed that I had no selections up this past Saturday for Gulfstream Park's Rainbow Six. I thought I should take a moment to explain why; an explanation which would also allow me to give some insight into my own personal approach towards playing this wager.
Saturday morning I worked out a Rainbow Six ticket that was in the nowhere man’s land of simultaneously being too expensive while also not offering enough coverage.
To clarify: I usually play Gulfstream Park's Rainbow Six on the cheap, generally in the fifteen-to-twenty dollar range. I can do this because this is a ten cent wager at Gulfstream Park. If I were playing the Pick Six elsewhere, say, at a NYRA or SoCal venue, where the wager is two bucks, then these same tickets that cost twenty dollars at Gulfstream Park would cost four hundred dollars; which, by the way, is why I don’t play the two dollar Pick Sixes.
Playing the Rainbow Six for approximately fifteen-to-twenty dollars makes for a fun play because it gives enough coverage where you'll often get some action from the ticket, while at the same time not putting your whole gaming budget into one wager. But when you stray too far from that range, you find yourself an area where the wager has to payoff more than once a year in order to be profitable; which in turn means adding more horses (at more money) in order to get the coverage you would need to be satisfied with the wager.
For the record, and as an example, here’s the ticket that I was looking at Saturday:
RACE 8) 3, 5, 6
RACE 9) 5, 6, 7
RACE 10) 3, 8, 9
RACE 11) 3, 9
RACE 12) 1, 3, 6, 7
RACE 13) 3, 4, 11
Since these are Saturday's races, we already know the results; but let's try to put that aside for now, and put ourselves in a place prior to the running of the opening leg. What we're looking at is a $64.80 ticket (3 x 3 x 3 x 2 x 4 x 3 = 648 combinations; multiply that by ten cents to get the total cost; if this was a two dollar bet, the ticket would cost $1,296.00).
Now a $64.80 is well beyond our normal price range; but that's not the problem. The problem is that it's a $64.80 ticket that still has holes. For example, in Race 9, The Orchid, we're leaving out a Morning Line 5-1 shot that won The Sunshine Millions Filly and Mare Turf her last time out. In Race 10, we've left out another Morning Line 5-1 shot that's a multiple stakes winner, and is two-for-three over the Gulfstream Park main track. In Race 11, we've left out the horse with the best last race Beyer Speed Figure. In Race 12 we've left out one of only two horses in the field who actually had a win at the distance being run Saturday. And so on.
That’s a lot of holes.
Now, obviously, once the ticket was whittled down into a price range that I would play, it still didn't have any of those horses on my ticket; along with not having some other horses that I liked a lot more. That is to say, the final ticket had even more holes in it.
So why is that preferable?
The difference is, if I put in a twenty dollar ticket and the multiple stakes winner who's two-for-three over the main track beats me; oh well, onto the next race. But if I put in a sixty-five dollar ticket and get beat by that same horse, then it’s “how do you spend that much on a ticket and then not spend a few dollars more to include an obvious contender?” So realizing that ahead of time, you spend the few extra dollars to included that obvious contender. And then you spend a few more extra dollars in order to include the other obvious contenders that you had originally omitted. And then before you know it, your sixty-five dollar ticket is now close to two hundred dollars, if not more.
Hopefully, all the above makes sense. The bottom line is, once you go beyond the amount where you're just making a fun wager, it makes no sense to not then go all in to eliminate all the obvious events that would cause you to lose.
For the record, the ticket that I actually played Saturday was:
RACE 8) 6
RACE 9) 5, 6, 7
RACE 10) 3, 8, 9
RACE 11) 3, 9
RACE 12) 1, 3, 6, 7
RACE 13) 3, 11
Total Cost: $14.40. I didn't post it here because, by the time I made the final cuts, it was too close to Post Time for Race 8 to provide any real analysis. As you can see, I made the very foolish decision of dropping Dreaming of Julia from the Gulfstream Oaks; but it didn't matter, as the original ticket would have only yielded four-out-of-six winners anyway. Oh well, onto the next race.
Friday is the final day of the Gulfstream Park meet. Good Lord willing, I'll have something up here before Post Time; and by the Grace of The Almighty, it'll be something that will be worth having when the final race is over.
By the way, for those interested in learning more about playing the Pick Six, here and here are a couple of websites that can give you some good insights. Also be sure to check out Steven Crist's blog over at DRF.com, where he frequently discussed his Pick Six plays, and the strategies behind them.
Peace and Love,
Jimbo
No comments:
Post a Comment