The Superfecta Monologues

I've been re-focused on horse racing since my sports betting options became limited.

My previous horse betting endeavors have been very focused on the market. By searching for value bets, I would receive excellent payouts for my winners.

One drawback to this approach is its time consuming nature. Playing a pari-mutuel betting pool requires making your wagers at just the right moment, usually right at post time.

In other words, waiting around for 25 minutes between each race. Sometimes waiting just to end up not betting anything.

I decided to go in a different direction this week and play some exotic wagers. Now the exotics have a steeper takeout (25%), but offer some big payouts, as well as bigger rebates.

I started playing superfectas this weekend and I think I'm in love with this wager. (OK, maybe not "in love", but we may be going steady for awhile.)

First off, you can play a superfecta for as little as $.10. So you can box 4 selections for a whopping $2.40. Assuming a 10 race schedule, you could play the entire race card for only $24. Pretty much any punter can afford that.

Even for that small amount you can walk away with a very hefty payday.

Second, playing supers is all about handicapping, not markets (pools). It's impossible to predict payouts on 4 leg exotic bets. You're just shooting for winners.

Therefore, you can go ahead and place your wagers early in the day. This frees up all of that time I used to watch the pools build up before post time.

Now, playing supers is a high variance affair. You could easily go 100 wagers without hitting any winners. It reminds me of tournament poker - you might not cash for a long time, but it only takes one big winner to fund you for a long time.

Add in the rebate around 9% and it becomes a very attractive strategy. (For you math geeks, getting a 9% rebate on a 25% takeout would be the equivalent of 36% rakeback.)

So if I'm any good at handicapping, I might be blogging about horses more often.