Congrats QuikSand

[bbor]

Man spends $8 to win $2.7M Breeders' Cup Pick 6
Bill Finley
Special to ESPN.com

ARCADIA, Cali. -- One of two partners in the winning wager in the Breeders' Cup Ultra Pick Six stepped forward yesterday, detailing his strategy and how a couple of small-time horseplayers with $8 walked away with $2,687,611.60.

Graham Stone confirmed that he and Will Dixon, partners in a wholesale jewelry business in Rapid City, South Dakota, held the lone ticket in the Breeders' Cup Pick Six. They were 50-50 partners in that bet, as well as a couple of winning Pick Threes. Stone made the picks.

Stone made single selections in four of the races, using Six Perfections (Mile), Islington (Filly & Mare Turf), High Chaparral (Turf) and Pleasantly Perfect (Classic). He preferrred Aldebaran in the Sprint, but worried that the six-furlong race was too short for him. He added eventual winner Cajun Beat to his ticket after reading a column by Daily Racing Form and Washington Post columnist Andrew Beyer touting his chances. In the Juvenile, his top selection was Tiger Hunt. He added eventual winner Action This Day to the bet because he said he reminded him of 1999 Juvenile winner Anees, a horse he had made a winning bet on four years earlier.

His most harrowing moment came in the Turf, when High Chaparral finished in a dead heat for the win with Johar. The placing judges took nearly 10 minutes to post the order of finish.

"I just about had a stroke waiting for that photo," Stone said.

After Pleasantly Perfect gave him his sixth winner, he checked the Santa Anita website to see what the payoff was. He misread the result chart, believing, at first, the $18,663 paid to anyone selecting five of six was the payoff for a perfect ticket.

"I saw the $18,000 and I was a little disappointed," said Stone, a 50-50 partner with Dixon. "I figured some people had all six, but not that many. Then I saw what it really paid and I called my wife over to look at it. I was shocked."

After it was confirmed that Stone had purchased the only winning ticket on the wager, racing officials, determined to avoid any further Pick Six scandals like the one that rocked the sport a year earlier, went over every aspect of the bet and concluded it was legitimate. A year after three fraternity brothers from Drexel University tried to rig the Pick Six, racing got a feel-good story about a couple of everyday horseplayers who turned $8 into $2.6 million, the second highest payoff of any kind in North American racing history.

"We say this is the best betting day in all of sports and this is illustrative of that," said Ken Kirchner, a senior vice president with the National Thoroughbred Racing Association.

Stone said he understood the reasons why his ticket was so carefully scrutinized and said he had no problem with the security measures.

"That was fine," he said. "I've never even been to Drexel or Philadelphia."

Stone said he will mainly put the money aside, but plans on one treat for himself. He has never seen a live horse race, something that will change next summer.

"My dream has always been to go to Saratoga," he said. "That I'm going to do."

Lunch is on you

[bbor]

BTW...was Mrs. Q the other partner ?

[QuikSand]

Heh... I wish.

Well, my consolation is that my small investment in the Pick-6 bet actualy got a hell of a lot closer than most did. When planning for a multi-stage bet like this, I identify three categories of horses that I want to consider:

One To Beat
Logical
Value Play

For each race, I typically have three or four horses listed this way, which makes for a totally unmanageable ticket. (It would cost $8,192 to put down a bet including four horses in every race) So, I work down from there, trying to build one or more affordable tickets which include my best feelings about the races.

For this year's races, my "worksheet" (looking back) actually included five out of six winners -- the only winner we woudl have missed on the whole day would have been PLEASANTLY PERFECT (which would have amounted to a colossal heartbreak).

We even used CAJUN BEAT and ACTION THIS DAY in our actual wager, and both of them won at over 20-1 odds. We also had both HIGH CHAPARRAL and JOHAR (the dead heat in the Turf) doubled in our main ticket. So, it turns out that our having 4 out of 6 two diffrent ways pays exactly zero dollars... but we were a hell of a lot closer than plenty of other people out there who laid out a lot more money than we did.

*sigh*

[Honolulu Blue]

QS: You would have done a lot better than I would have. I think I only had two of the six (though I nailed both of the races before the Pick 6).

Congrats to the winner; he's either a lot smarter or a much bigger gambler than I am.

Forgot to mention that I actually hit a Pick 4 at Del Mar about a month back. The bad news is that the payout was one of the lower ones you'll ever see, about $60. Considering that I invested $18 in it, it hardly seemed worth my time.

Perhaps worth my time is the double carryover at Santa Anita adding up to a pool of over $450,000. You never know what a few dollars and a dream can do...