I am a win bettor. I almost NEVER make a show bet. My handicapping focuses on finding a horse at a price that I think will cross the wire first. But on occasion an opportunity comes around that I just can’t pass up. One of these opportunities presented itself in a nondescript race at Hawthorne Race Course on a gloomy Thursday afternoon. I ignored all handicapping and just threw my money down on multiple horses…to show.
Spotting a Show Bet
The 4th race at Hawthorne Race Course on Thursday December 8th was a bottom of the barrel $4,000 claiming, non-winners of 2 affair to be run at 5 furlongs on the dirt. The field was scratched down to 6 runners. The favorite was at odds of 4-5 with 10 minutes to post. Nothing strange here until I noticed the show pool had about $12,000 in play and that over $10,000 of that show money was on this favorite.
So what did I think of this favorite? At those odds, no matter what pool I was going to put my money into, I was looking to bet against him. In a bottom level claiming race the soundness and ability of every horse can be questioned. There are reasons that they run at the lowest levels and in may instances you can make a case against every horse in the race. This race was no exception.
As we neared post time, the show pool grew and grew, with $40,000, then $50,000 all bet on the favorite, #1, Drinikinathebar. As the horses entered the gate, the favorite was bet down to 1-2, and the show pool totals for each horse looked like this:
1 – $107,374
2 – $419
3 – $1,177
4 – $3,611
5 – $727
6 – scratched
7 – $461
This is an opportunity that doesn’t come around very often. It is key that we know what to do when we see it. The strategy is to bet every horse except the favorite…to show!
The Math
Hawthorne takeout on show bets is only 17%. The show pool total was $107,374. In the event that the favorite doesn’t run in the money, the post-takeout $89,120.42 to show on the favorite (107,374 x .83 = 89,120.42) would be paid out to the 3 in the money horses. Taking a shot at this pool is simple and involves no handicapping and small risk.
We invest $10 on the race in the form of $2 show bets on the 2,3,4,5 and 7 horses. If the favorite finishes in the top 3, we will collect on 2 of our bets with a return of somewhere between the minimum payout of $2.10 and $4.00 for each, or roughly $6.00 (estimate). Two of the show bets are guaranteed to cash. The only question is, which two? This means we are only actually risking $4 or $5 dollars even if our worst case occurs and the favorite runs 1st, 2nd or 3rd.
The best case scenario is that the favorite finishes out of the money and we collect 3 of our 5 show bets and take our share of the $89,120.42 on each bet. Which is exactly what happened on this fateful Thursday. The favored #1, Drinkinatthebar, stumbled out of the gate, ran wide and finished 4th. The top 3 finishers were the #3, #4, and #2. Each $2 win bet on the #3 returned $10.00. Our $2 show bets paid more. We returned $52.40 on the #3, $18.20 on the #4, and a whopping $144.60 on the #2. All of this for a grand total of $215.20 returned on roughly $5 worth of risk. That’s a return of about 42-1. I’ll take it every time.
