Handicapping keys to success: Horizontal vs. vertical wagers

I vividly remember the first time I became aware of the pick-3 wager. I was at The Meadowlands Racetrack, and believed an even money favorite driven by Mickey McNichol was an obvious choice. I played the horse and he won easily. Cool beans. I paid no attention to the fact that it was the first leg of a wager called a pick-3. I have no recollection of wagering on the next two races, but I do remember that after the final leg of the pick-3 was history, the horses that won the second and third legs were eminently playable. The payoff was over $1,000. 

What? You mean instead of making a win bet on an even money horse, all I had to do was psych out the possible winners in the next two races and – I could have realized a four-digit return? Where has this bet been all my life? 

I also remember the first time I heard these cross-race wagers being referred to as being horizontal, while wagers where you needed to select the horses finishing behind the winner in a single race would henceforth become vertical wagers. The phraseology brought a smile to my face as it brought back memories of one of my favorite old TV Shows. The Outer Limits. In the opening monologue of every episode, the narrator would tell you that there is nothing wrong with your television. “We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical.” 

Unfortunately for horseplayers, there is no “we” controlling your decision to wager vertically, horizontally, or both. You are on your own. Here are things to consider when choosing your course of action. Budgetary restrictions are always the first things to consider, but we shall address the handicapping logic. 

It is significantly easier to identify possible winners than it is to eliminate horses that will finish close behind these possible winners. Horses with weak form are generally provided with easier trips by their drivers and despite their dubious chances, find ways to hit the number. At the same time, horses with better form get overused and frequently find themselves in the also-ran listings because of their early effort to out-maneuver the other figure horses. What we are intimating is that betting on the best two horses finishing first and second holds little value, but using both of them in horizontal wagers is more logical. I can go on about why horizontal wagers are more logical than vertical wagers, but there is this one teensy-weensy, teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy drawback that is the elephant in the room. 

When you make a horizontal wager, you need to be 100% correct to collect. You can be incorrect wagering on all but one of your vertical wagers that span the horizontal races, and come out ahead. Therefore, stay away from the pick-x races. Really? Well, there is the human element. Like when you look up at the board and see how much the pick-x wager paid – which you could have had – and you only made a pittance, or sometimes lost money even though you collected on your verticals. 

The old shoulda’ coulda’ woulda’ beast rears its ugly head once again. 

Strategy 

It always starts with opinion. Wagering on individual races always takes precedence. Here are the situations when I look to wager on pick-x races. If covering all of the logical components can be done within budget and not interfere with my vertical bets, I will make the play regardless of the probable odds of the horses. Pick-x payouts are wildly unpredictable. Overlay and underlays are the rules, not the exceptions.  

Other situations occur when I spot a vulnerable favorite, or a morning line favorite late in the sequence that will probably not receive wagers matching the promise of said morning line. Players generally key off the first leg and more often than not, include the morning line short prices from the later legs. The morning lines of the later leg horses are frequently a bigger factor in the final payoff of the pick-x wager than their final odds. It is not uncommon to spot a logical horse with a long morning line, that you correctly predict will get plenty of action. However, in the pick-x wager, payoffs can be generous when those horses win. 

Other reasons to investigate pick-x plays are: 

• One or more favorites in the sequence are deemed unplayable.  
• A small bet because there is a key horse in the sequence that can be made a single. 
• A big spread if I have confidence that none of the omitted horses can win. But deeming a wager too large and walking away should always be on the table. Know your personal constraints, and budget is not the only one. When potential rewards max out at short odds, stick with your vertical bets. I always write out a pick-x play, then look at the cost and the possible return, and more often than not kick it to the curb. 

After all of the other factors are considered, here comes carryover mania. Pool sizes explode if a sequence is missed, and the majority of the pool is rolled over into the pool of the next sequence. While it is hard to look away from the bigger pools, and payoffs can be great overlays on occasion, the key words in this sentence are “on occasion.” The more common result is a greater depth of handicapping knowledge comes into the carryover pools and more often than not, the payoffs are less than you would normally expect. But the possibility of the big pay day has been the carrot that inflates the pools beyond common sense. It is hard for mere horse playing mortals to look away. I would only humbly suggest that the carryover, by itself, is not a reason to jump headfirst into the carryover pool. 

Power to the punter. 

by Gil Winston, for Harnesslink