What Are The Odds Of Winning A Trifecta
To win the bet, those three horses must finish in that order. Trifecta Box Bet. A common way to play a Trifecta is to box three horses. A $1 box using #1,#2, and #3 would cost $6. The three horses you selected must finish in the top three spots for you to win. A four-horse $1 box would cost $24. Often a better way to play is called a Trifecta key.
A typical trifecta costs just $2, and the returns can be enormous. When longshot Giacomo won the 2005 Kentucky Derby, for example, the trifecta payout was an incredible $133,134.80. There aren’t many other ways to win that kind of money from such a small stake. The trifecta is a tough challenge. Even in small fields it can be hard to strike a trifecta that’s worth taking. When you do bet, ensure you have SENSIBLE value on your side, not just a wild pitch at value by throwing in useless longshots. Your banker has to possess a potent winning chance. It must be at good odds, at least 4/1 in the morning.
The heavy rain in the days preceding the 2017 Kentucky Derby turned the track into a sloppy, muddy mess — a combination that turns predicting the outcome of the event into a virtual shot in the dark. With no standout favorite to make things easier, that task was made all the more hard.
The Win/Place/Show bets are only a very small piece of the puzzle. Yes, spotting overlays with win bets is going to be a reliable source of money for the skilled handicapper, but the big money is in the exotic bets. The exacta, trifecta, and superfecta are single race bets that involve predicting the order of finish for more than one horse. A 2/1 fraction suggests that for every 2 failures, there’s one chance of success, giving you a 33% probability; 3/2 means a 40% chance, 2/3 works out to 60%, and 10/1 means a 9% chance, and so on. Standard Win Bets and Payouts The minimum standard bet for horse racing is $2.
But that doesn’t mean nobody did it. On the contrary: William Hill revealed after the race this winning ticket. As you can see, the unnamed bettor made 20 $1 trifecta bets, and hit on the eventual combination with one of them, netting him more than $8,200
If only he had the super trifecta…
Horse racing isn’t as popular as it used to be. That’s obvious. However, the Kentucky Derby continues to set records for the amount of money wagered. And the handle on the big race is why bettors should consider placing some exotic bets on the race.
Parimutuel horse racing
Before big horse races like the Kentucky Derby, bettors can place a futures wager with most legal US sportsbooks. This will only pay if the horse wins the race. Betting on individual horse races is different from betting against a sportsbook or casino.
Wagering on an individual horse racing is by parimutuel betting. This type of betting is different than a traditional sportsbook bet.
The word parimutuel is French and means “to wager amongst ourselves.” Basically, all the money bet on the big race for the Kentucky Derby is put into one large betting pool comprised of all money wagered. Winning bets are paid by the racebook or racetrack from the entire pool of money wagered.
The track, Churchill Downs, will take a percentage of the money bet on the Kentucky Derby off the top of the betting pool. The rest of the pool is split among winning bettors. Let’s use some round numbers for an example:
- Money wagered: $1,000,000
- Track take: 20% or $200,000
- Betting pool paid to winners: 80% or $800,000
In the example above, there’s $800,000 to pay out to the winners. The pool of money for winners at the Kentucky Derby is so much larger than a normal horse race. The most popular horse race in the US has a lot of bets made all over the world. Every parimutuel bet goes into that pool no matter where it’s made.
The variety of wagers is large and can be complicated for new bettors. Thankfully for bettors, there’s so much money wagered that the money being split among winners is often more than a race on a random Tuesday afternoon.
ALSO READ: Wagering On The Kentucky Derby? You Can Place Legal Bets On Your Phone In 31 States
Get exotic
The Kentucky Derby has a larger than normal pool of money from bettors. A lot of the money in the pool for bettors to win is made by casual bettors that have little chance to win. This leaves money available to bettors that even do a little research to cash in with
The best way to take advantage of the Run for the Roses might be to add some exotic bets to the mix. These wagers are a bit more complicated than the traditional Win (1st place), Place (2nd place), and show (3rd place) bets.
There are exotics available for single races and multiple races. Since most bettors are only watching for the Kentucky Derby, we’ll focus on the single race exotic wagers:
- Exacta: Pick the first place and second place finishers in order
- Trifecta: Pick the first place, second place, and third place finishers in order
- Superfecta: Pick the first place, second place, third place, and fourth place finishers in order
These exotic are similar to parlays for horse racing. They involve more horses than a Win, Place, Show bet on a single horse. These bets pay more but may cost more to bet.
Some bettors play straight exotic bets where each horse must finish in the selected place. Bettors choose to “box” the horses so any horse can finish in any place. There isn’t a discount to boxing horses, this is just a way to simplify the process of placing multiple bets.
What Are The Odds Of Winning A Trifecta Picks
For example, a bettor can place an exacta for the 1 and 3 horses to finish first and second, respectively. Each horse must finish in the specific position for the bet to win. If unsure, the bettor can place a second exacta on the 3 and 1 to finish first and second, respectively.
An easier way to do this would be to box the exacta with the 1 and 3 horse. The two horse exacta bets cost the same regardless of how the example wager is placed. A $2 wager made twice will cost $4.
The process of boxing horses is simple with a two-horse example. However, it’s very helpful when more horses are included in an exacta, trifecta, or superfecta box. The more horses involved with each exotic boxed bet will make each wager more expensive to place.
Big payouts
Payouts for exotic bets can be huge for the Kentucky Derby. Each exotic betting pool pays out differently based on how much money was bet. The payouts are made by taking the total money wagered in the (exacta, trifecta, superfecta) pool and subtracting the track takeout, then dividing the remainder of the money by the number of winning tickets.
The exact winning price is almost impossible to predict. There’s one thing to know: more money is paid when there’s at least one horse with longer odds in the winning exacta, trifecta, or superfecta. The higher the longer odds horses finish the greater the payout tends to be.
This makes sense since fewer people are wagering on these horses. In this case, there will be fewer winners on any of the exotic bets and each winning exotic will pay more money to the winners.
Betting on the Kentucky Derby
We have a handy Kentucky Derby Betting Guide. This is a great place for new bettors to start understanding how to bet on the Kentucky Derby.
Once odds are posted they will change based on the amount of money wagered on each horse. The odds will change right up until the gates open and the horses run for the roses.
What Are The Odds Of Winning A Trifecta Betting
Handicapping horse racing isn’t easy for anyone. A little research can go a long way. There’s so much dead money in the parimutuel betting pool for the Kentucky Derby that throwing a few bucks on the big race isn’t a bad idea.