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Monday, November 10, 2014

Dissecting the Breeders' Cup Saturday Pick 6 Standards

Horseplayer Maury Wolff and our friends at TimeformUS had a look at the change in the Breeders' Cup Pick 6 payout policy, which resulted in the first carryover into the next (non-Breeders' Cup) card, instead of paying out the pool on five out of six.

Wolff writes-

"After the penultimate race of 2014 Breeders’ Cup Saturday, will-pays flashed across screens and it became clear there was about to be a first in BC history: There would be a Pick 6 carryover into Sunday’s (non-Breeders’ Cup) card. Instead of completely distributing the Pick 6 pool on BC Saturday to those who had 5 of the 6 winners, $1.3 million of the pool was carried over to the Sunday card. The impact on those who managed to hit 5 of 6 despite Saturday’s results? Instead of winning around $375,000, five winning tickets got only about $114,000 each.

Why wasn’t the pool distributed on Saturday?

Last year, the BC quietly changed its longstanding policy regarding distribution of the Pick 6. I read about it in some fine print in a DRF story. Since there were many perfect tickets last year, it didn’t get any attention. This year, the same policy was in effect, and again I saw only one mention of it. Most of the regular horseplayers I have talked with were unaware of the change. It seems unlikely that many fans who play only on racing’s big days knew about it."

To read the rest of Maury's piece, please click here.

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