The New Way to Bet Pick 4’s

There was a time I thought the Pick-4 was the best bet in racing. Even if the take is 25%, it is only taken on the original bet, whereas if you play a parlay, the take is assessed for each event. This should ensure the Pick-4 pays better than the parlay.

It is not that the Pick-4 has become a consistently poor bet, but it is more and more often not returning at a value level. Let’s start with an assumption:

For the Pick-4 to be value, the payoff has to be at least 1.5 times the parlay.

Admittedly the 1.5 number is arbitrary, but the Pick-4 must at least pay more than the parlay for it to be a worthwhile bet. After all, the straight mathematical probability of even four 2-1 horses winning consecutive races is a little over 1%, meaning in theory we should expect at least a $200 payoff (which also happens to be a bit less than 1.5 times the parlay).

I calculated Pick-4 payoffs against the parlay for the first two months of the Aqueduct meet and found the following:

  1. There were 74 Pick-4’s in that time period (I didn’t count the Pick-4 payoffs where there were dead heats for win).
  2. 15 (20%) of the Pick-4’s paid less than the parlay.
  3. 27 (36%) of the Pick-4’s paid less than 1.5 times the parlay.

If it was easy to determine when the Pick-4 would underpay, this wouldn’t be a problem. We would just bet those Pick-4’s with a high probability of returning our value number.

Unfortunately, no pattern seemed to emerge. While you might expect Pick-4’s with low priced horses to underpay and those with longshots to overpay, there was no predictability. A $19,000 Pick-4 severely underpayed , and a $159 Pick-4 severely underpayed based on the parlay. The average payoff for the underpaying Pick-4’s (excluding the two that paid over $19,000) was around $1,400, about the payoff the parlay for three 4-1 shots and a 9-2 shot would return. As best as I could see:

  1. Sequences with mid-price horses and no short-priced favorites were usually solid overpays;
  2. Sequences with a race where the crowd is confused are often solid overpays. For example, if there are five horses between 3-1 and 9-2, the crowd will have to spread thin to cover

I looked at the early and late Pick-4 to see if one or the other was more likely to underpay. Of the 27 underpaying Pick-4’s 17 of them were the late Pick-4 and 10 were the early Pick-4, so while it wasn’t a powerful pattern, it was a clear trend toward the later Pick-4 underpaying. I believe this is likely for a couple of reasons, First, the late Pick-4 has a much larger pool and more of the lower probability combinations can be covered. Second, the later Pick-4 has the better races of the day (7th and 8th) and these may have stronger, more confident favorites.

I looked at the highest paying (over $5,000) overall Pick-4’s. There were 13 in that time period, 9 in the early Pick-4 and 4 in the late Pick-4. Again, not a definitive pattern but a clear trend that the early Pick-4 is more likely to produce boxcar payoffs.

So what is a bettor to do? As a broad generalization, I’d suggest that the Pick-4 is not a good bet given the high percentage of underpays. But if you can’t give up the bet I’d offer the following advice:

  1. If you have a single in your sequence, make some mental calculations because in the end whatever you bet into the P4 is essentially a win bet on your single. For example, if you have a single at 5/2 and you invest $20 in P4 ($0.50) tickets, that means you should expect the P4 to pay at least $280 to break even against the win bet. If your single is 5/1, that amount goes up to $480. Plus, you don’t have to worry about hitting three of four and getting knocked out by a horse you would never use.
  2. Consider leaving out the low paying combinations (the four favorites for example). Yes, you’ll hit fewer but you’ll invest less and have a greater possibility for an overpay.
  3. Swinging for the fences runs through everyone’s mind, and while the boxcar tickets come in about 17% of the time, they are hard to hit with small investments. In some cases anything less than an “all” in one of the legs would have produced disappointment for most players.

Which brings me to the title of the article: The New Way to Bet Pick-4’s:

Pick four to six races where you feel confident and where your choices are not ultra short-priced favorites and construct 1 to 3 Pick-4 sequences. Bet $10 to win on the first horse in the sequence, it it wins, pocket half the collection and parlay the rest to the next horse, and so on. 

In this way the races do not have to occur in a row, which means you don’t have to use the 12-horse maiden state-bred race that is mandatory in the normal Pick-4 sequence.

Let’s go through some hypothetical calculations.

Example 1

  • Leg 1       7/2
  • Leg 2       4-1
  • Leg 3       5/2
  • Leg 4       5/1

If you hit all four legs, and bet according to the suggested pattern, this is what it looks like:

  • Leg 1      bet $10, collect $45
  • Leg 2      bet $22, collect $110
  • Leg 3     bet $55, collect $192
  • Leg 4     bet $96, collect $577

The $2 parlay would have paid $945, the Pick-4 anywhere between $700 and $1,500. With the new way, you collect $173  on the win tickets you didn’t invest into the parlay in addition to the parlay collection of $577 for a return of $750 on your initial $10 investment, not that far from the parlay amount and almost certainly ahead of a $0.50 Pick-4 payoff.

Let’s say you lost the second leg. You are still $13 ahead (minus your initial $10) and can use that to start a new sequence. Say you lose the third leg. You still come out $68 ahead and can use all or part of that to bet the fourth leg. And if you win the first three legs but lose the last, you come out $164 ahead. On a $10 investment that is over 1,600% ROI. In the normal Pick-4 bet, if you lose any one of the legs you lose everything you invested.

Example 2

  • Leg 1     1/1
  • Leg 2     4/1
  • Leg 3     2/1
  • Leg 4     3/1

In this sequence with some really low priced horses, you would collect $150 on the $10 four race parlay plus $72 on reserved win bets. The $2 parlay would be $240 and the likely Pick-4 payoff would be between $200 to $400. Even with a really low paying sequence you are still likely to do 2-3 times better with the new parlay bet over a $0.50 Pick-4 ticket.

You’ll probably miss the boxcar Pick-4 payoffs with this method, but how many of those are you hitting? The bottom line is that you’ll lose less and have much steadier profits. And if you don’t have four horses you are willing to bet to win, make it a Pick-3 using the same strategy.

You can also bet two separate tracks, meaning you bet $10 on each of two horses in the first leg, if one of them wins bet two horses to win in the second leg and so on, but the point is that you are looking for four races in a card where you are confident you have the winner. The great thing about betting this way is that you never lose more than your base bet (in my example $10 but you can make it whatever you want) in the sequence, and if you lose a race, you just start over again.

There is an old racetrack maxim that says bet a little to win a lot, but don’t bet a lot to win a little. With this new Pick-4 approach, bettors are in a great position to bet a little and win a lot.