How To Pick Six

Back in day, it used to be a ticket on the Irish Sweepstakes or a high-roller trip to Vegas to try to break the bank at roulette, but in the horse racing game today, if you are looking for the pie in the sky, the ticket is the Pick Six.

First and foremost, if I were professing to be the best Pick Six player in the world, I wouldn’t be writing this column. I’d be in Tahiti or someplace similar shading myself with some beautiful companions and collecting those umbrellas that come out of those exotic drinks. The truth of the matter is that I have hit a few ‘small’ pick sixes in my career, but was never lucky enough to get that life changer and now usually only take a shot at the carryovers.

A little about the history of the Pick Six starts and ends with the prototype that began it all at Aqua Caliente in Tijuana, Mexico.

The track's most popular feature was the "Fabulous 5-10," where patrons could win as much as $100,000 or more by picking the winners of the fifth through the tenth race and in the 1980s this bet eventually became the Pick Six.

Caliente’s legendary executive director, John Alessio is the man responsible for the 5-10, and to understand how much a visionary he was, consider the fact that Santa Anita and Hollywood Park wouldn't even offer the daily double until 1962.

I once read a local scribe from Los Angeles and he started his daily column with the fact that the Pick Six is not that tough today. A more asinine statement may never have been uttered. It’s hard enough picking one winner with extreme confidence of the kind that your life depends on it never mind six in a row against some heavy, heavy hitters.

With that said, it could be irresistible not to take a shot when a huge carryover is in play. First off, if you did not play that day when nobody hit the ‘6’ it’s free money. The kitty is already swollen and one winning ticket on a carryover day can bankroll a player for a year or more.

How much to invest or bet is the obvious starting point? A $2 Pick Six ticket is a ticket made of six straight singles. If you wanted to bet 2 horses in each leg of the wager it would cost a player $128. Two times 2 for each bet, then times 2 again because it is a $2 wager.

If you have a smaller bankroll, you have to isolate more singles. A 2 x 2 x 2 x 3 x 1 x 1 ticket goes for $48 and that’s not a bad place to start for a casual player.

The key to success is locking in winning singles, surround them with logical horses and a few stabs, and hope to get lucky. A common single is the most likely winner on any given day, and some refer to this leg as a ‘free Bingo square’. The benefit of singling a prohibitive chalk is that he’s a short price because he stands out; the negative is that there is no value to the single, as most of the pool will have the same horse.

Another single possibility is in a race where you think the favorite is a false favorite. It’s never simple coming up with double-digit mutuels, but if you have a few knocks on a chalk, that race becomes a real possibility as a single.

If you are down to a couple of possible singles on the card and one has current form and one is from a solid barn but coming off an extended layoff, give the edge to the current good form.

Only the strong survive in this pari-mutuel game but you can’t just go with the flow. Never forget you are betting against the rest of the bettors and thinking abstractly or outside the box is a good thing.

Even the most successful syndicate I personally know of hits only a handful of carryovers in any given year. They are apt to make $1.2 million one year, and lose $800,000 the next, so there are no guarantees. But a small player can take on the big guys and still live to tell about it.

The first strategy that comes to mind is don’t get greedy. If a carryover presents itself and you have a friend or two that likes to dabble, get them involved. Try to designate a captain that can make the final call on the ticket. If one guy puts in 50% of the ticket and say the other two partners are equal parts at 25%, the majority player should have the final call in a perfect world, as long as he is a player.

f there is a hype horse or a popular classy runner returning to the races and overlays his field, don’t be scared to take a shot against him. Most horses don’t come back from a layoff the same way they went out and are likely being bet on past accomplishments. You don’t have to eliminate those class plays, but just spread in that kind of a race.

Serious ‘Six’ players know when to ask themselves ‘what is this horse doing here’? If a runner ships in from a minor circuit, but is from a good barn and has solid form, this is the type of play that can pay dividends in a carryover situation.

Wait as long as you can to put in that pick six ticket. If you can get a view of where the winners are coming from early in the card, that can only help when evaluating styles and what horses may have an edge on any particular track.

When it comes down to crunch time and narrowing the ticket, run the option play. Have the ticket in theory made out, but look at the first leg horses on the track if you can and search for negative body language or maybe a horse who is getting bet well below his morning line.

Finally, try to stay alive for the first leg with a couple of selections, take a stand against shaky or false favorites, and don’t forget about the saga of the South Dakota gem, Graham Stone.

All he did was wager eight bucks on the 2003 Breeders’ Cup Pick Six and watch it materialize, to the tune of $2.7 million.

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