First of all I totally disagree telling this guy not to play exactas and trifectas. It appears empirially that you get more bang for your buck on these than just straight win bets. Apparently the parimutual pool is not as efficient for exotics as it is for win/place, show bets.

Anyone can study it for themselves, multiply the odds on the two exacta horses and it comes out pretty close to the win odds they went off at. But if you had bet them to win/place only the win bet would pay off at the win odds, the place bet would be worth much less.

The same reasoning is probably true for pick 3s etc, but in my opinion you have that much more info. to deal with whereas in an exotic you only have to cap one race. If you can figure out how one race will play out, then you have much less info. to parse through.

Look at the dubious logic being exuded here:

"If one cannot pick winners, one is going to have an even harder time ferreting out horses that will hit the board..."

This sounds logical but is it? (sorry to pick on Grits here). The end conclusion of Grits is that you should stick to win betting because...."you cannot pick winners."

What the hell sense does that make? It's not a question of being able to spot winners anyone can spot winners, it's how many of them you want to play and what price are you getting.

And why woud it be harded to spot a horse to hit the board than a winner? Does that make any sense? Three horees will hit the board why would it be harder to spot one out of three horses? I dont see any logic in this.

Try to be as coldly logical as possible:

The guy above who said you should stick to one track makes perfect sense. Why? Because the more tracks you are dealing with the more info. you have to sort and the more info you have to sort means you are getting closer to simply random betting, i.e. straight gambling.

THe only logical thing is to try to use as much info as possible in order to avoid making a bet that is just a simple gamble. If you had no info. at all, and you just throw mony down on any horse, that is a simple gamble. Presumably with skill you can win at this game.

This is the hope. Logically the only way then to win is to have more info, or to better analyze the info. Or both. By adding more tracks you are geting back toward total random betting or gambling.

That much makes sense.

So do exactas/ trifectas...

Unless it's your birthday and the horse's name is Storm in May.

If you're playing Gulfstream, play Mark Guidry. :eek:

If you're playing Santa Anita...stick your hand on a hot stove.

I'm real sorry you picked on me too, Easy Goer. I truly am because I don't feel like being picked on tonight. How many winners did you hit today? Or better yet, how many exotics, based upon the mindset that one only has to HANDICAP ONE RACE and just throw in 2 or 3 others to hit. How many times today did you pick the RIGHT THREE out of 9 to 12 horse fields????

Now we're talking trifectas, not exactas, and tris will eat your damn money sideways, honey. And when you see your horse on top win, and you've keyed him, wheeled him, rolled him, prayed over him and you've got the wrong thing to run behind him, you say, ......"sonofab!tch, I had the winner, but I just missed." Well, just missed ain't cashing. And doing that repeatedly, gets you poor.

IF you can't pick winners, based on your handicapping skills and I ain't talking only chalk here, you will not be able to put together trifecta wagers, consistently, which will keep you in the black. And THAT is the goal in this game.

Now, that's all I need to say about win betting tonight. OK, we're cool.

(And empirially is not a word. The correct word is empirically.)

I'm no big expert on this, but the first thing I look at is the conditions/purse for the race. Why is this horse entered in this race?

Where did the guy say he couldnt pick winners? Show me:


He never said he couldnt find winners. Did He?

Great logic. You assume he cant spot winners, he never said that.

If he cant spot winners, then the next logical thing is: Bet to win..

Easy Goer, good morning.

I hope that fjh will continue to wager and enjoy the game. His comment here does not seem to indicate success.

And fjh, I'll give you another thought in wagering to win, and this may be helpful. I hope so.

Download or purchase the hard copy of pps of your choice.

HANDICAP ONLY THE THREE PUBLIC CHOICES IN ANY RACE. Do not look at any other horses in each race. Don't bother with anything else, just those three.

After handicapping these, choose from the three, the horse you think mostly like to win.

Do this exercise, mythically, for several days, weeks even.

I believe you may be able to attain a more successful rate of return than continuing to approach the game only through wagering exotics.

As I said, exotic wagering is quite expensive for someone new to this game, and you are chasing your losses, trying to win it back, most often . . . three jumps out of the gate.

Much good luck, fjh!

Before you start throwing money every which way but loose. There is nothing wrong with capping with no money involved at all for beginners. Also when I first started I watched which trainers spotted their stock better than others. Like it was said before somtimes in the pick 3's it isn't about picking the winners as much as it's picking the least likely winners. Watch the conditions of the race most good trainers will enter horses who barely qualfiy for the race.

Now we're talking trifectas, not exactas, and tris will eat your damn money sideways, honey. And when you see your horse on top win, and you've keyed him, wheeled him, rolled him, prayed over him and you've got the wrong thing to run behind him, you say, ......"sonofab!tch, I had the winner, but I just missed." Well, just missed ain't cashing. And doing that repeatedly, gets you poor.


So true. I think I could count the number of tris I've hit on one hand and still have a few fingers left. A genuine money burning bet, for me anyway, especially the tri-box. Often get 2 of the 3 and some longshot SOB comes in to piss on my parade.

I appreciate everyone's input...gives me a lot of food for thought.
I really have had very little success picking winners. The
"handicapping" generally leads right to the chalk. When I go with it, it bombs. When I go against...you can quess.
As I said I'm fairly new and know I have much to learn and have to develope my own methods. I'm fortunate in that I'm close to Monmouth so I will be attending more races this year.
I'm also fortunate to have discovered DerbyTrail....the people here are genuinely helpful and friendly.

If Monmouth is your track, BET THE SPEEEEEEED!
Seriously speaking, check the charts for the tracks that you like to play daily just to see if there were any biases on those days. For example if you plan on going to Monmouth on Saturday check the charts for Wed.,Thurs & Fri. to see if the speed was holding up, or maybe they were closing on those days. If you can get replays of the races that is even better. If you know that speed is holding up, that gives you an advantage handicapping the races. You might not toss a horse that will be on the lead for one that is a dead closer.

Forget All That You Have Read. If It Looks Like A Horse, Bet It! Supers Tris Exactas, Bet It All! With The Advice They Are Giving You, You Will End Up Like The Old Lady In Ohio, Oh Look I Cashed $2.00 To Win On That Horse! Go For The Big Score All The Time. If You Lose You Will Learn What Not To Do Later.

If only they had 10 cent trifectas...I would kill!

This site is a great tool and has made me a better handicapper but I think handicapping books have helped me the most. . .

Start with Brad Free's Handicapping 101 or one of Beyer's books and then once you've developed some handicapping ability, move on to more betting oriented books like "Exotic Betting" or "Six Secrets of Successful Bettors."

Those old ladies in Ohio, including Kentucky, New York, and SoCal, the family matriarch types, they never bet to win,

they only bet to show.

These same old ladies, often own the breeding farms of the horses that you're betting all your hard earned money on.

I've got that one on my nightstand. It's very informative and easy to understand.

A nice thread to read & some ideas
I'll just add this one.. Before I ever started playing Daily Doubles, (as my brother -in-law allways played). , I allways thought "" its hard enough to hit One win horse, now you want me to pick Two in a row ""? With some practice, I find a Daily Double a nice bet. Find a nice 5-1, 6-1 horse who can win and pair it with a fav. in the other race, you have a nice hit.
Money Management is the first step.

Huh? I can't figure out what you're talking about! You want to multiply the exacta odds in an exacta box and compare that to win/place? What's that going to tell you? The win bet is going to come in a lot more often than the exacta bet. Maybe you can give an example of what you're trying to say.

It's not impossible that the exacta pool is less efficient than the win pool. In fact, I think that's likely. That doesn't make it an automatic better choice for a novice, or even a champ, for that matter. First, in general you have to overcome a much bigger takeout when you bet exotics. There's a humongous difference in beating the 15.4% WPS takeout vs the 20.2% exacta takeout in Calif. Second, your capping has to be very near perfect on 2 of the horses instead of just one. Of course, your capping has to be pretty damn good on ALL the horses in a race to even come close to being a winner, but in an exacta you are saying that 2 of them have a distinct overlay advantage on the rest of the field.

If the inefficiency is big enough, it can make the exacta pool attractive, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it to a beginner.

--Dunbar