#TheAction: The Horizontal Bet

06.05.2017

Basic Action: A horizontal bet is just a fancy way to describe a bet that’s made across multiple races. These bets are also commonly referred to as “multi-race” wagers because, in order to win, you must pick the winners in consecutive races. The bets to know are the Daily Double (picking two winners in a row), Pick Three (winners in three consecutive races), Pick Four (four consecutive races), Pick Five (five consecutive races) and Pick Six (six consecutive races). 

Advanced Action:  As you get into wagering on horizontals like Pick Fours, Fives or Sixes, your potential payouts become incrementally higher. However, the odds of hitting these kinds of bets are generally low, unless you’ve got the budget to “spread” in races during the betting sequence. When you spread, you’re picking multiple horses in a given race or in several races. For example, if I played a Pick Three with the 3 horse as my pick to win in the first race, the 6 horse to win in the second race and 2,4,5,7,8,9 to win in the third race, I’ve spread out my wagering to give myself six potential chances of winning the Pick Three (assuming the 3 won the first race in the sequence and the 6 won the second race). 

You can also spread in multiple legs of the sequence, like picking the 3 horse to win the first race and then picking the 4,5,6,8,10 horses in the second race and the the 2,4,5,7,8,9. Since you’ll then have five chances to win in the second race and six chances to win in the third, there are 30 possible outcomes for your ticket to hit, and hence a $1 base ticket will cost $30. Most racetracks now offer multi-race wagering at base bets of as low as $.50 cents. Still, the more horses you add to each leg of the sequence, the more pricy your ticket will become. 

The best time to play a multi-race wager is when you have at least one strong feeling about any one horse in any one of the individual races in the betting sequence. For example, if you love the 2 horse in the first race and the 8 horse in the third race, you can then try to parlay (combining and building upon) those opinions into a higher payout by trying to connect on three straight races (by trying to identify a winner in the second race of the sequence) or even playing a Pick Four, in which you’d try to extend your parlay into a potentially massive payouts. If a particular sequence looks “chalky”, or seems like the winners mostly be short-priced favorites, it’s a sequence you should generally avoid for horizontal wagers. 

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