The Breeders’ Cup card featured four races with favorites that were offering less-than-appealing prices when betting them to win. Since we didn’t want to play win bets on a 6-5 favorite, we found a way to construct trifecta bets around the favorite to look for a bigger payoff. After the jump, we’ll show you how we hit a few big scores on Saturday…

KEYING THE FAVORITE

It’s never easy to hit a trifecta, but if you can construct your bets under the assumption that the favorite will hit the board, you just need to figure out who the other two horses will be. This is where handicapping needs to come into play, but it’s easier to formulate an opinion on three of fourteen to hit the money than on one of fourteen to win.

Our strategy worked well for us on Saturday, but the following conditions must be in place to realize any sort of return on this investment:

· There must be a relatively large field in the race (over 10 horses, more is ideal)
· There must be at least three to five horses capable of winning, including the favorite
· The favorite’s low odds must be artificially inflating the odds for some of his competition (i.e. second choice on the board at/above 5-1)
· There must not be any more than two or three horses incapable of winning

We chose five horses besides the favorite, and worked Trifecta Wheels around the favorite. In other words, we’d have the favorite keyed (in first on one ticket, in second on another, in third on the last), with the five horses we liked surrounding, above, or underneath for a total of three $20 trifecta bets ($1 bets * 20 combos) per race. As long as the favorite and two of our five hit the board, we’d win. Here’s what the tickets would look like:

· FAVORITE with A,B,C,D,E with A,B,C,D,E (ticket one - favorite locked in first)

· A,B,C,D,E with FAVORITE with A,B,C,D,E (ticket two - favorite locked in second)

· A,B,C,D,E with A,B,C,D,E with FAVORITE (ticket three - favorite locked in third)

On Saturday at Belmont, we hit race two for $118, race four for $114.50, and race seven for $252 using this system. Of course, it helped that in those three races the favorites hit the board but did not win, which increased our hits, but still… $180 outlay with $304.50 in profit? We’ll take that any day.

Breeders’ Cup Archive [Oddjack]