The pick 6

The pick 6 is winnable. Certainly in RSA with fractional betting. It depends on the budget and how one constructs the tickets. One single perm is not efficient because it lumps together horses with different probabilities of winning. A perm is good for a PA but not for a Pick 6 or Jackpot. Unless you've got the balls to play Field by Field by Field by Banker by Banker by 2 horses and hope the dogs arrive early and the bankers romp home.

There are better and more efficient ways of constructing a pick 6. The six legs of most pick 6es exhibit the following characteristics:

1-3 favorites but mostly 2 (let's call this F)
1-3 mid-priced runners (ie 3-1 up to 8-1 let's call this
0-3 but mostly 1-2 outsiders (ie 10-1 and above let's call this O)

so you have the following look:

FBBBBO
FBBBOO
FFBBOO
FFBBBO
FFFBBO

Anytime two outsiders appear you are looking at a possible carry forward especially if they arrive early.

Yesterday's Durbanville pick 6 looked like this:

FBBFFF and paid R9900 the only "strange result being a Daughter's Legacy paying R8.40 ranking as a B but being close to an O result.

That kind of pick 6 does not pay much i.e 4xF and 2xB. If however you construct tickets that have the look outlined above say FFBBBO you are always in the sweet spot of the decent paying pick 6es especially if you also include two outsiders like so FFBBOO. That doesn't mean it will happen today. It is the pick 6. It cycles through different formats. You have to be patient. There are no rewards for greed, impatience and forcing the issue. Structure correctly, play within the discretionary playing budget and collect your percentage thank you very much.

The question is, is it possible to in advance make allowance for the fact that most pick 6es have an O, a smattering of Bs and 1 or 2 Fs?
The answer is yes. And the cost of playing it that way is up to 90% less than a perm which means the smaller player has a decent chance at a decent percentage.

Below are some examples of budget pick 6 multiple tickets and I will put together some for Clairwood too just to show how it works.

1 DOUBLE FB FB FB FB SINGLE
2 DOUBLE FB FB FB O SINGLE
3 DOUBLE FB FB O FB SINGLE
4 DOUBLE FB O FB FB SINGLE
5 DOUBLE O FB FB FB SINGLE
6 DOUBLE O O FB FB SINGLE
7 DOUBLE O FB O FB SINGLE
8 DOUBLE O FB FB O SINGLE
9 DOUBLE FB O O FB SINGLE
10 DOUBLE FB O FB O SINGLE
11 DOUBLE FB FB O O SINGLE

or if you are ultra conservative:

1 Single FB FB FB FB FB
2 Single FB FB FB FB O
3 Single FB FB FB O FB
4 Single FB FB O FB FB
5 Single FB O FB FB FB
6 Single O FB FB FB FB
7 Single O O FB FB FB
8 Single O FB O FB FB
9 Single O FB FB O FB
10 Single O FB FB FB O
11 Single FB O O FB FB
12 Single FB O FB O FB
13 Single FB O FB FB O
14 Single FB FB O O FB
15 Single FB FB O FB O
16 Single FB FB FB O O


Every single one of the above tickets except the first has an O or two so you know in advance should the O arrive you have a ticket that covers it. You can in fact take ENTIRE fields and slice them into F, B and O without leaving out a single horse. That isn't always necessary but it is doable.

Okay onto Clairwood using the above two sets (see attachment for better color coded view) The banker 9 at the back may get stiff competition from the 10 with Myeni up so maybe include that:

1 13,10 x 5,2 x 2,6,8,4,5 x 4,5 x 13,10,12 x 9
2 13,10 x 5,2 x 2,6,8,4,5 x 4,5 x 5,6,7,4,17,3,1,8,9 x 9
3 13,10 x 5,2 x 2,6,8,4,5 x 1,6,8,10,7,9 x 13,10,12 x 9
4 13,10 x 5,2 x 9,11,12,7,10,14 x 4,5 x 13,10,12 x 9
5 13,10 x 1,3,6,7,4 x 2,6,8,4,5 x 4,5 x 13,10,12 x 9
6 13,10 x 1,3,6,7,4 x 9,11,12,7,10,14 x 4,5 x 13,10,12 x 9
7 13,10 x 1,3,6,7,4 x 2,6,8,4,5 x 1,6,8,10,7,9 x 13,10,12 x 9
8 13,10 x 1,3,6,7,4 x 2,6,8,4,5 x 4,5 x 5,6,7,4,17,3,1,8,9 x 9
9 13,10 x 5,2 x 9,11,12,7,10,14 x 1,6,8,10,7,9 x 13,10,12 x 9
10 13,10 x 5,2 x 9,11,12,7,10,14 x 4,5 x 5,6,7,4,17,3,1,8,9 x 9
11 13,10 x 5,2 x 2,6,8,4,5 x 1,6,8,10,7,9 x 5,6,7,4,17,3,1,8,9 x 9

All the above for 10% = R539 a saving of 63% if you played the equivalent perm of 10% for R1 478. And the beauty is you can UP the percentages for the individual tickets you like eg Ticket 1 is R12 for 10%. I may up that to R36 for 30%. You CAN'T do that with a perm because an extra percentage DRAMATICALLY increases your playing cost. You are stuck with the percentage you can afford.

The point is you can even eliminate the tickets that have two Os and insist on one O only thus further reducing your cost. In a perm every horse you eliminate to reduce your cost reduces your chances of winning if that horse wins. Here you are leaving no horse out of 4 legs and in the other two you have a banker and a double banker. They have to win of course if you want to win the pick 6 but if they don't and you played R6 on all the above tickets you are only out of pocket for R70 or so yet if they arrive AND a bomb arrives you have good chance of winning.

The breakeven point would be the minum percent you play multiplied by whatever it takes to make a 100% so if your lowest ticket is 1% and you spent R70 then the pick 6 must pay R7000 for you to break even. There is a way to calculate the potential worst case scenario payout for a pick 6. Multiply all the runners with the lowest odds (the favorites) by the pool and then divide the pool by that amount viz.

0.5 x 0.3 x 0.3 x 0.3 x 0.3 x0.3 x R500 000 pool = 607.5 and R500 000/607.5 = R823 pick 6 payout if all the favorites win but all the favorites winning is a rare eventuality and you don't want the pick 6 anyway if all the favorites win, right? I don't!

Okay let's assume one dog arrives and the bankers win:

0.5 x 0.3 x 0.3 x 0.3 x 0.05 x 0.3 x R500 000 pool = 101.25 and R500 000/101.25 = R4938 okay that is five favorites and one roughie also unlikely. Let's look at a more likely scenario

Banker up front wins but that is everybody's banker in the first leg so 60% of the tickets go through (Double Banker=0.6)
then a mid-priced runner wins (B=0.15) and another (B=0.15) then a favorite (F=0.3) then a dog (O=0.05) then the banker at the back (Banker = 0.6) therefore we have 0.6x0.15x0.15x0.3x0.05x0.6=60.75 tickets left and R500 000/60.75=R8 230 Hmm not that great a payout but this is only an estimation. Or maybe with such strong bankers in the first and the last it may be better to play the jackpot.

If another outsider arrives then we have 0.6x0.15x0.15x0.05x0.05x0.6=10.15 tickets R49 261 payout. That's more like it but what are the chances of two roughies arriving today? You decide and pick your tickets accordingly.

The second set is the same as the first except you don't have a single and a double banker. You banker at the back with the 9 and maybe add the 10 with MYeni up.

The first leg would then be

10=F
13,2,8,1=O

see attachment for the layout.

Hope this helps and we win the big one today!

LRGJ

Attached files ClairwoodPick6.xls (20.5 KB)Â

Very glad to see that others are also following the path of mathematic probabilities and I fully 100% agree with you. What I would love to do is use your software with my selections rather than based on the odds and then we see how accurate we can get LJ, for this reason I will send you my selections every day for a week and we can see the outcome of our experiment,

Email me to get the daily selections from me so we can see if this is feasable. Me and my subscribers won the P6 today 6 x R5k but for R16k so not even doubling our money so perhaps we could make this more efficient.

Regards,

Sean

Hiya Sean

Sure no worries.

LJ

I hope some of you got to play the pick 6 today.

My personal pick six tickets for today at Clairwood ( I had 8 multi-tickets) won at odds of 3.52 - I added the 10 at the back but doubled up with the 6 and 4 in the 3rd leg as can be seen from the spreadsheets I attached this morning. It wasn't a fantastic payout but I showed a profit at 3.52 odds so like the saying goes "a winning ticket is better than no ticket at all", no matter the percentage.

I had an interesting discussion with a colleague today who is a very good handicapper. We were talking about picking winners versus value and we had a lively debate. For me the upset leg in any pick 6 is the "value" leg because it is unexpected and knocks out more than 90% of all tickets. So if the pick 6 keeps exhibiting those characteristics i.e having 1-3 Faves, 1-3 Mid-Priced runners and 0-2 Outsiders why not construct plays that reflect that? It then becomes a question of knowing how to do that and then adding your selections either based on the odds or your own preferences.

Incidentally I have written a book about the pick 6 called Winning Pick 6 Strategies which contains a whole lot more info about the pick 6 than I wrote today. If you are curious there is a free chapter downloadable from my site and a free downloadable Xcel spreedsheet you can use to plug your selections in to to help you generate multiple tickets.

Free chapter:

www.horseracingpicksix.com/Chapt1.zip

Free Spreadsheet:

www.horseracingpicksix.com/Sample.xls

Hope the free Xcel sheet and Chapter help with creating your pick 6 tickets!

LJ

The following is my selections for the Vaal Sand

Leg1 = 4,5
Leg2 = 7
Leg3 = 4,5,2,8,3
Leg4 = 1,11,3,7,8
leg5 = 6,4,11,2,1
leg6 = 3,2

I have tried to use your excel spread sheet but to no avail.
Can you please indicate as to how to use it with the above selections?

Hiya Zesto

I'd use a different sheet given the number of total selections you have. Your total cost as it stands is R500. The following is a suggested construction based on your selections:

1. 4,5x 7x 4,5,2x 1,11,3x 6,4,11x 3,2 =R108
2. 4,5x 7x 8,3x 1,11,3x 6,4,11x 3,2 =R72
3. 4,5x 7x 4,5,2x 7,8x 6,4,11x 3,2 =R72
4. 4,5x 7x 4,5,2x 1,11,3x 2,1x 3,2 =R72
TOTAL=R324

With the above you save R176 which is about 35% of a saving on your original cost.

I took the back-end of your selections and put them in separate tickets presuming that you ordered your runners in order of preference for the win. See the attachment for a better color coded view of what I mean.

In the top left hand box of the sample sheet you downloaded is a red flag just hover your mouse pointer over it and there is an explanation of how to use the sheet. Into the top rows 2,3,4 you basically input your top selection into F (favored), then your second set of selections say 2-3 runners plus your top selection into the yellow boxes marked FB and in the O boxes (blue) you add the dogs. It is not necessary to have dogs in all the races. In the first box that has no FB or O you add your single/double/triple banker(s) for the day in whichever race it is. Remember to cut that entire column and put it in the correct race order.

With such a small original cost why not just play it as it stands by taking a percentage?

Attached files Zesto.xls (15 KB)Â

Hi midastouch can you forward me that spreadsheet to 0833559721@mtnloaded.co.za

Thanks