Punting 101 – AB/AB/Fld trifecta

Some subscribers may not have fully understood the reference in today’s selections to an AB/AB/fld trifecta.  And I don’t mean the All Blacks either.

If you read my comments in today’s selections, I was confident that Bigtime Cooper and Big Time Fairy were the two best dogs in the race 7 at Palmerston North.

The challenge from a punter’s perspective is always how to find value, especially when the favourite is paying a measly $1.20 on the tote.

So let’s have a look at how we could invest an imaginary $10.

We could of course put it on the nose of the favourite and get back $13.50 (or $12 on the tote).  It’s certainly better than the bank will offer you but we’ve seen plenty of times when short priced favourites have been beaten.

Based on the stats, we could be pretty confident that Cooper and Fairy would run one and two.  Let’s have a look at what we could have got back with the $10.

The quinella paid what I think was a very generous $3.50 so we could have turned that $10 into $35.00 for a profit of $25.

The other option I mentioned was the AB/AB/fld trifecta.  With this bet, you take the two runners to finish first and second (ie Cooper and Fairy) and you have the rest of the field to run third.  To work out the combinations, we have 2 runners for first, 2 for second, and 6 for third.  However, when working out the cost of the bet, if one of our runners wins then logically, we only have one runner counting for second but 6 still for third so the actual cost is 2 x 1 x 6 = 12 combinations.  So for $10 we would get 83% of the trifecta – in this case 83% of $52.70 or $42.70.

Which option is better really depends on which of the runners runs third, assuming we get first and second right.  If a favoured runner comes in, then can expect a skinny trifecta but in today’s race, the third runner paid $5 place hence we made more on the trifecta.

(The same logic applies to the first 4 – $10 would have given us 16% of the first 4 or around $42.60).

It’s not always going to work as well as it did today but if you can find the right races, it can be a way to make a decent profit.  As we’ve seen, we made a good return with the favourite winning but it’s worth noting that the quinella would have been unchanged if Fairy had won yet with the trifecta option we would have still collected and indeed returned a significant profit.

I’ve opened up comments if anyone has any questions or comments.

David