Place 6 – Palmerston North 30 September 2019

I’ve been a fan of the place 6 since it was introduced.  It’s often been seen as the ugly duckling of the TAB’s offerings, yet there seems to be a bit of momentum in its favour in recent weeks.

At the dogs, it’s quite common for the Place 6 to have more of a pool than the main quaddie.  Today’s Place 6 ended up with a pool of $1400 which was slightly less than a bumper early quaddie.  Will be interested to see what the late quaddie gets to.

Why play the Place 6?

In simple terms, the place 6 provides an opportunity to get relatively large collects for relatively small collects.  There’s a couple of ways you can achieve this (which again, is a plus of the bet type):

1. Get a small collect of a large payout
2. Get multiple collects from a small payout

To understand those options, it’s worth explaining how the bet works.

• You can have 1 or more selections in each race
• Each runner that pays a place multiples the percentage payout

So if you have a 10% ticket and two runners in the first and both come in, your minimum pay out is 20% if you get one successful runner in each of the remaining legs.  On a good day, if you get a few multiple runners you could potentially end up with 20% or even 40% and if favourites get beaten the payout can boom.

It’s useful to keep those two options in mind as it provides an underlying strategy to the bet:

• do you think a lot of favourite runners will come in so you need to have a larger percentage and so the option to get more than 100%?
• or do you think one or more of the favourites is likely to get beaten so you want to try to ensure you get through the six legs?

Today’s Place 6

The same legs are used for the Pick 6 so the analysis could be useful for that too.

Leg 1 (race 7) – Mother’s Touch (5) has been good to us over recent weeks and there’s nothing to suggest she can’t be competitive again. Eye Know (1) has a bit of early pace.  Taking a risk and leaving Spring Fox out of Place 6 but if the logic makes any sense I would want it covered in Pick 6. Omelette for dinner but Mother’s Touch ensured we are live into leg 2.

Leg 2 – Bigtime Jasmine (1) and Bigtime Cutie (6) for a bit of cover.  Bit of cover does exactly what was required – keeps us alive while the two favourites missed a place.  Adds a little bit more interest!

Leg 3 – The top 2 in the predictor should keep us alive – Simply Smooth (3) and Thomas William (1) Easy for place six – pity about the F4! Gives us 20% now.

Leg 4 – A tough leg here.  I like Awesome Quality but the draw worries. Has to go in the mix though as does Bigtime Eve (2) and Bigtime Lizzy (8) Famous last words – the draw more than worried AQ but Lizzy keeps us live and again a couple of the favourites miss out.

Leg 5 – 5,2,4 – a bit of cover around the favourite if the start is bombed – again the speed map helped us out with the short priced favourite up in class and mapped to get back.  Should add a little more value.  Another double up so up to 40% now.

Leg 6 – Note the easiest race as Fare Dodger (or Dodgems as I think is more accurate) will head right and could cause some carnage.  On that basis the insurance policy has to be the red rug.  Going narrow earlier on should allow us to go wider in the last. 4,6,2,1 Again the speed map helped with Fare Dodger being the roughie.  Should give us 120% so an excellent return.  Dividend was $160.80 – payout $192.90 for an investment of $28.80.