This morning, ESPN had a graphic that said a $2 SuperFecta paid more than $29000. So, if I played the ponies, what would I have had to do to win more that $29K? There was also a series of numbers after the payouts. What do they mean?
I think to win that one you would have to have picked the first, second, and third place winners in the correct order.
There’s another one that you only have to pick the top three, in any order–but it doesn’t pay as much.
You would have to pick the first four finishers in the correct order.
That is a trifecta.
The quinella is a bet on the first two finishers in any order. I am not aware of a three horse equivalent.
The quinella equivalent for a trifecta is a “trifecta box” – a bet on every possible combination for the trifecta. There is sometimes also a “superfecta box”, which is the same for the four horse superfecta combination. The boxes obviously pay nowhere near the same as the exact order finishes.
The exact-order counterpart for a quinella is the “exacta”
Missed the edit window:
There’s also a “wheel”, where you pick one horse to finish in a certain position, then place bets with the rest of the horses in the field to fill out the superfecta / trifecta.
Most of the time you can put as many horses in a box as you want. For 20x19x18x17 x $2, you could have bought a $232,560 $2 superfecta box for the whole field and won that $29,000.
Actually, box bets pay exactly as much as exact order finishes per dollar bet because they are exact-order bets, just lots of them.
Take a three-horse trifecta box for example, with horses 1, 2, and 3. Although with modern ticket machines you get only one ticket, in reality it’s a bet for [ul]
[li]1-2-3[/li][li]1-3-2[/li][li]2-1-3[/li][li]2-3-1[/li][li]3-1-2[/li][li]3-2-1[/ul][/li]Six bets in all. Now, when you make box bets like that, they will let you bet a dollar each way instead of the usual $2 minimum, but your payoff is halved from what the charts show, since those are based on a $2 bet.
F’rinstance, for the Derby I asked for a “four horse exacta box, 2-7-8-16, a dollar each way” bet. That means those four horses in all possible combinations of two for a buck each, $12 total. Street Sense and Hard Spun (7 and 8) came in first and second. The chart says the payoff was $101.80 but I collected $50.90 because of my dollar bets, a profit of $38.90 Curlin (2) came in third but that did not matter with my bet. Had I bet those same horses in a trifecta box, a buck each way, my cost would have been $24 but the payoff $220. Woulda, coulda, shoulda.
Of course, which I sort of enumerated in my next post, but I had on my mind the 50 cent and less boxes that my father in law was telling me about earlier today, where you could still make a $2-ish bet but not see the same return.
A lot of tracks will let you make a 10 cent superfecta box. So if you bet the minimum four horses, it costs you a buck.
I should say a 10 cent trifecta box costs $2.40.
Factorials stupid!
Is insulting yourself against GQ rules?
Don’t you mean superfecta?
Trifecta is the first three horses to win, in exact order.
Superfecta is the four horses to win, in exact order.
It’s like winning a pick four (with more than ten numbers) versus a pick three. Usually a very high payout indicates at least one lower odds horse in that order.
I’m not sure about the derby, but I recall some places at least that if you box the bet the payout is not as large, about half of the straight pick.
That ain’t right.
We don’t have those bets over here. There are many combinations though, and one of the most popular is a “Yankee” This is a wager on four selections, consisting of 11 separate bets: 6 doubles, 4 trebles and a fourfold accumulator. A minimum two selections must win to gain a return.
Simple accumulators are also popular - these can be any number of races, and these are often the bets that make the news when they come up, because the odds against forecasting the winners of three, four or more races are pretty astronomical. There was a scandal a few years ago where a bookie refused to pay out on one because the winner had exceeded his limit of £10,000 or something. For the most part, the bookies love a big winner because; a, they insure against the loss, and b, they get loads of good publicity.
There is no sin in backing three horses in one race. Many sportsmen have done this and are still walking about, though sadly deficient in shoe leather. There was nothing exactly criminal in backing three horses in a race where there were only three runners. It is, to put it mildly, foolish, but it is not sinful.
Edgar Wallace — The Brigand
And from****Educated Evans**** ( plus a sequel )
“Of course, it may be as you say, Mr. Challoner,” said Educated Evans philosophically, “and it’s very possible that Lakes did shop the stable by winning when he oughtn’t to have been trying. I won’t say it was from Lakes that I had my information if I did, you wouldn’t believe me.”
“I wouldn’t,” said “The Miller,” “because you’d be lying.”
“It’s very likely,” admitted Educated Evans. “Perhaps Lakes was gettin’ even with him, the same as I was. And to think that that perishing horse-sweater was backing another one all the time! That’s dishonesty if you like. Downright thievery, I call it! But fifty to one! What a beauty! And all out of my own deductions. From information seen with my own eyes.”
“Micky Mulcay has lost a lot of money,” said “The Miller,” who also had sources of information, a little more reliable, however, than those which were tapped by his companion.
“I wish he’s lost it all,” said Educated Evans viciously. “All except eighteenpence—you can get a couple of yards of good rope for eighteenpence anywhere.”*
Just also note that is paramutual betting, you also ADDITIONALLY selecting the winning ponies could effect the payout. Depending on how it is calculated for Superfecta (which I don’t know), if there was only 1 winner for the $29000 above you each might get half of $29000 each. This paramutual betting system causes some very weird things sometimes.
At some tracks it is right (or was).
I bet a box trifecta at a track in Cahokia Il 25 years ago and picked up $114.
The track only allowed $2 bets but they did have $6 boxes which is the equivalent of making 6 $1 bets.
The trifecta paid $228 while the boxed trifecta paid $114.
At this point, I think I could win a fortune betting on the 2007 Derby. Anyone else want in on that action? 
“perimutuel”