How Pick Six can turn a 1 dollar horse racing bet into $100,000
Where else can you put up a single dollar and have a chance at a return of 100,000 times your bet. The lottery offers odds like that but there is no skill involved in picking those numbers, it is pure luck. Horse Racing is different, there are several bets you can make which have the potential of huge pay offs it you select the right horses. The best handicappers are always trying to parlay their knowledge of the ponies into a jackpot that could set them up for life.
There are so many bets you can bet on a race that is often hard to decide what offers you the highest reward and the lowest risk. The exotic wagers at most tracks will give you the biggest pay off but even the basic bet on a horse to win can reap big rewards if the odds are right. The top price paid for a long shot on a simple bet to win was $2,922 in December of 1989 at Aksarben. Power to Geaux who for that race was going off at odds of almost 1500-1. Before that the biggest price paid on a $2 bet to win was at Latonia Race Course in Kentucky in 1912, $1885.50 on Wishing Ring. While those types of payoffs are rare, they are possible. Had you put $20 on the nose of Power to Geaux, you would have cashed almost 30 grand.
How do you turn a $1 bet into $100,000? Typically, the wager with the biggest reward is the Pick Six because it is the toughest to hit. When you wager on the Pick Six, you must pick six winners in six consecutive races. On days when no one hits the Pick Six at a particular track, there is a carryover to the next racing day allowing the jackpot to grow. Already this year, there was a Pick Six jackpot paid out at Beulah Park in Columbus worth almost a half million dollars, the biggest jackpot in Ohio history. Beulah has started a twist on the Pick Six known as the Fortune Six where the bet is just .25 cents and the jackpot is only paid when there is a single ticket with the six winners. Since so much money was wagered at Beulah this year on the Fortune Six, many other tracks are expected to adopt it.
Even without the twist put on the Pick Six at Beulah, we have seen huge jackpots around the country.
Nothing in horse racing generates a buzz like a Pick Six carryover. Santa Anita has had 16 carryovers already this year and once the prize pool got up to over $2 million dollars. Churchill Downs also had huge crowds after the Derby was run because of a Pick Six carryover that was close to one million dollars.
What is the best way to try and hit a Pick Six? The savvy gambler will usually put together a combination bet that includes several horses. To win you have to pick six straight winners, so to improve their chances the smart gamblers might combine a couple of favorites with some of the long shots. Often, gamblers will poll their money so that they can make a bigger bet on the Pick Six hoping to strike it rich and split the profits. They will typically pick two or three horses from each race and then box the bet so that they have all of the possible combinations covered. For example, say they like the 1 and 5 horse in race 1, 2-3-8 in the second race, 4-9 in the third, 2-8 in the fourth, 5-6 in the fifth and the 7-9-11 in the sixth. They have selected a total of 14 horses to play in the Pick Six for a ticket that will cost them $144. If you decided to play three horses in each race the bet would go up to a total of $729. The more chances you have to win, the more the bet will cost you but your odds of cashing the ticket go up. If no one hits all six, you can be paid for hitting just four or five of the winners.
Tags: