Breaking the Bank: This Week’s Huge Payouts

Photo courtesy of Penelope P. Miller/America's Best Racing

Breaking the Bank - featuring data courtesy of Equibase - highlights the biggest scores of the past week in racing.

The buzz of the weekend from a gambling standpoint was undoubtedly the disqualification on Saturday at Gulfstream Park in Race 12 that cost one unlucky bettor a Rainbow 6 jackpot payout in the neighborhood of $1.5 million.

I’m not interested in getting involved with the debate surrounding whether the disqualification was warranted or not. I’ve watched sports for long enough to know that any time human judgment is involved, as it was in this case with track stewards disqualifying Collinito for interference in the stretch, there inevitably will be difference of opinion surrounding the call.

This particular wager is important to this blog for a number of reasons, the biggest of which is the carryover of more than $1.5 million into Wednesday’s card at Gulfstream. It’s also important because the sequence of events in the aforementioned race (Gulfstream 12 on Saturday) also triggered some huge payouts for other bets, including the week’s top exacta, trifecta and superfecta payouts. Take a look at last week’s top payouts:

Top Payouts for the Week Ended Feb. 23 - Click here to view: http://www.americasbestracing.net/en/the-latest/blogs/2014/02/25/breakin...

First let’s talk a little bit about the Rainbow 6 bet itself, a multi-race bet with a 20-cent minimum that requires gamblers to select the winners of six consecutive races. The Rainbow 6 is a jackpot Pick 6 wager that pays out only when there is one winning ticket. If nobody has all six winners in the sequence or if more than one person correctly selects all six winners, a portion of the money bet into the day’s Rainbow 6 pool, plus the money already carried over, rolls into the jackpot for next card.

There is a “consolation” payout from the money bet into that day’s pool for bettors who had winning tickets when more than one person nails the sequence. If nobody has all six winners, the “consolation” payout goes to bettors with five of six winners in the sequence.

You can see how over a period of weeks the jackpot builds, and entering this Wednesday’s card at Gulfstream there has not been a unique winner since Jan. 10. The Rainbow 6 begins with Race 5 on Wednesday with a scheduled post time of 3:06 p.m. ET.

The finale on Feb. 22 at Gulfstream was the race everyone was talking about this weekend. Collinito crossed the finish line first at 15.60-to-1 odds after an erratic stretch run with 39.20-to-1 longshot Strategic Keeper second. Had Collinito won it would have triggered the jackpot seven-figure payout but stewards disqualified him for interfering with Strategic Keeper and placed Collinito second, which led to another carryover of the jackpot.

The Strategic Keeper-Collinito exacta returned the highest payout for that bet for the week ended Feb. 23 with a $1,803.60 return for a $2 bet and the trifecta with 5-to-1 Great Minds third paid a whopping $24,619.70 for $1. The superfecta (with Aheadofthecurve fourth at 12.30-to-1) produced an eye-opening payout of $232,346.30 for $1 but with only $181,614 wagered into the pool we can deduct that the winning ticket or tickets were for smaller increments. For example a 10-cent winning superfecta ticket would have returned $23,243.63. Quite a score for a 10-cent bet.

We can only hope that the unlucky bettor who would have hit the Rainbow 6 had Collinito not been disqualified might have connected on one of these bets or at least had Strategic Keeper on his ticket as well, which would have provided a “consolation” payout of $36,659.22.

With the huge carryover into the next day's card at Gulfstream - the Feb. 23 card on Sunday - the Rainbow 6 again was a popular bet with more than $500,000 wagered into the pool chasing the jackpot.

The sequence on Sunday started with 26.40-to-1 longshot Analog Girl winning by a half-length in Race 6 and also featured a 19.80-to-1 longshot, Successful Sweep, winning Race 8, yet there still were multiple winning tickets. Sunday’s consolation payout for the 20-cent wager was $141,796.74. You read that right, that was a “consolation” payout to at least two bettors. Wow!

If you are chasing the $1.5 million jackpot on Wednesday, good luck!