When Playing Horses Like Lotto Pays Off

Like I said, I skipped the track today, and so I'm glad I don't have lucky numbers, and I'm even gladder that my lucky numbers aren't 5, 6, and 9. I do have numbers I like playing on hunches from time to time, but those aren't them.

Let's say you were born in May of 1969, or September of 1956, or let's say you're a very young degenerate who was born in June of 1995. Or maybe you've let yourself go and weigh 569 pounds. Whatever. Now let's say you were in Saratoga for just this weekend with a few friends, and you know nothing about the track, so you just bet a 5-6-9 trifecta box in every race. Those three horses can finish one-two-three in any order and you win. Well, in today's seventh race, you would have won $23,323. That's if you had bet two dollars ($12 total for the box, since there are six possible combinations). If you had made a one-dollar bet ($6 total), you would have gotten half that payoff. Of course, if you kept boxing those three numbers in every race, then over time -- a long time, granted -- you'd likely give it all back to the track.