Pick 4 methodology

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I’m publishing this based on a request by SCAV regarding my Pick 4 methodology.

I’ve come to learn that how you bet is as important as what you bet. I’ve had significant success with Pick 4’s, with numerous 4 digit pays. The key to my plays is multiple tickets. I use Bet-smart.com’s Pick4Pro to develop the tickets. I consider Bet-smart part of my “edge.”

Betsmart is basically a complex macro-driven spreadsheet. http://bet-smart.com is sold by Steve Martin, and I will not send out copies of this licensed software (I have made some modifications to it – in the odds-line creation realm—which I could send to licensed users).

Pick 4’s, of course, require being right, four times if played on a single ticket. On my multi-ticket plays, I view it as being “not very wrong” once in four times as long as some of my top picks win. The software (if I understand it correctly) takes the oddsline that the user inputs and calculates combinations based on probabilities that the user inputs. This lets me go deeper in legs if my top choices win others.

I’ll use Saturday’s ticket as an example. It lost because of mis-handicapping leg D—I made the winner, #6 my fifth choice at 7-1 with the lowest odds favorite of the sequence. If I’d made the 6 horse in the nightcap 4-1, then I would have hit for ~$1800 on a $151 play. Here’s my odds-lines (the total probability of a race [SIGMA (1/(odds+1) for math nerds] relates to how much a race is used):


If I’d gone out to 1200:1 I’d have hit it but put $529 in bets down to do it (only ~5/2 return) and that would be poor value in my opinion.. I was live to $450, 1400, and 4000 payouts but they didn’t get there. If I’d better-handicapped the Whitney I would have given the speedballs no chance (or certainly worse than 5-1 chance) and rated them worse and I could have hit for $383, but even that would have been a loser if the #1 wasn’t dropped from parimutuel in leg A. You can see above that I allowed four top choices in a given ticket because only one of my top plays was a likely favorite. If there are favorites on top then I set the “Max Level 1 Horses” to 2 because Pick 4’s with 3 or 4 favorites seem to pay too short. I’d rather not win than cash and lose money. Here is the $135 play along with relative weightings.


Now, playing 7*7*6*4 would cost $1176 (and still lost!), but insisting on being really right cut the play cost to $135.

Users can also use morning lines and modify slightly if they want.

This is really meant to open a discussion. I’ll gladly field questions….