Thinking Through Pick n's

Good day everyone!

This week on Chris's podcast, I broke down how I try and do better making pick 'n' tickets today, from yesteryear. 

Most of this is influenced by Inside the Pylons and the arguments that ensued on the twitter for so long. The warm and cuddly one gave as good as he got, of course, and it was a fascinating discussion. 

ITP has five hours of discussion on Chris's podcast explaining it better than I could, so I recommend listening if you haven't. But, here's another example that I hope shows, i) building proposed value in a pick 3 and ii) how you're not upset when you miss, because you, in effect, built it to miss (a lower price). 

In Ralphie9's debut yesterday as a guest analyst at Mohawk - where he gave out the pick 5 that paid a whopping $3k for a buck - I wasn't in the same vein. I did not like the pick 5, primarily for the 4th and 5th legs. 

But in the first leg, there was a horse I liked, and in the third leg there was a favorite I did not like. 

The first leg was a perfect pick three key horse, in my view. She was coming off a race where she finished her mile well signalling she was in form, but she was dead on the board at 13-1 the whole time. Around her, the horses who were taking money had a lot of question marks. 

I was going to bet win and exotics, but I wanted to find some gravy for this meal. 

I looked at the double onto the chalk in leg two, but I don't like playing those because any sizeable double in those smaller pools just ups your takeout. Plus they get hammered late so often you never know which way they're going. 

Since I did not like the chalk in three, but did like the chalk in two, there was probably enough for a pick 3. I took two price horses in the third leg. And after I got there, the payoffs were fairly solid (although less than I thought, because of the smaller pick 3 pools this can happen), around $200 for a dollar. 

The favorite I disliked won by an inch, after a perfect trip at 4-5, and it beat my $200 horse. Other than losing by an inch, I didn't care. Why, because I specifically targeted that horse out, to make my ticket pay something worthwhile. 

When ITP and others who have played like this for a hundred years with success get their backs up with the word favorites "defensively", this is kind of why. I'm not upset I didn't use the favorite defensively in the third, because *not* using her was the sole reason for taking my pick 3 ticket. 

The reason I brought up three (legs) being a "magic number" is because it's pretty easy to explain, and it's pretty seamless to do in our heads. Many of you, I bet, would make the exact same pick 3 ticket above when you were presented with the same opinion. When we add 4th legs or 5th legs, it can mess us up. We can get into, "holy hell, I can't miss this ticket, so I better throw more horses in" territory. 

For those that are unhappy with their pick n play, using the ITP "hurdle" method in only three legs, not five, in my opinion, can be a worthwhile exercise. 

It gets us into some good habit forming, and helps train our minds. We are looking to drain opposing money in each leg, while we keep it simple in our working memory. 

And when we get beaten by a chalk we don't like, we simply don't care. We control the tickets we make, and when we create them to avoid a chalk, it's a feature not a bug. It's exactly how we designed them. How can we be mad at that?

Have a very nice Tuesday everyone. And, hell of a hit Nick! Great debut on the telecast.