Savvy wagering pays off

If you bet $56 to win $4,502, what were the odds on your wager? Mike Pierce knows.

The 70-year-old trainer from Nebraska bet both his horses to the board in a $1 Pick 4 on Wednesday night at Assiniboia Downs and got an 80-1 return on his investment.

Where else can you do that in an hour?

The Pick 4 is a $1 minimum bet that requires you to pick the winners of four consecutive races on one ticket. The wager offers a guaranteed pool of $50,000 every race night, and it has been a huge hit at the Downs this year, with pools averaging over $100,000.

Pierce played a simple Pick 4 ticket keying his horses in the fourth and seventh races, with all eight horses in the fifth race and all seven horses in the sixth race. The cost of a Pick 4 ticket is calculated by multiplying the number of horses you use in each race by each other, which in this case was 1 x 8 x 7 x 1 for a total of $56.

Longshots come in often enough at the Downs to make them worth playing if you can find a solid reason, but when they combine together in a Pick 4 wager, the payoffs can be exponential. Pierce’s horses were not longshots, but the horses that won races five and six were, resulting in the lucrative payoff.

Pierce arrived at the Downs with four horses in mid-August after Wyoming Downs ended its meet Aug. 10 and made an immediate impact, showcasing the kind of success rate that made him a leading trainer there.

Pierce’s horse in the fourth race, Tenforthebigguy, was the third choice in the wagering and paid $6.80 to win with jockey Lenny Seecharan up. He looked like the lone speed in the race, and it was no surprise when he went wire to wire. There were 16 claims in for the horse! Owner Dark Cloud Racing and trainer Judy Hunter are now his new connections.

Pierce’s horse in the seventh race, Paco’s Pico, was the morning-line favourite dropping in class, but he ended up going off as the inexplicable fourth choice in the wagering at 4-1 and paid $10.30.”He was 7/5 on the morning line,” said Pierce, still puzzled by the high odds.

Pierce’s pedigree as a horseman runs deep. The former agent for top jockeys Paul Nolan and Adolfo Morales has been around racing for decades, working his way up through every job in the business. “Hot walker, groom, feed man, agent, everything,” said Pierce of his background, which began as a kid at Fonner Park in Nebraska.

Pierce’s horses had started six times at the Downs before Wednesday night, recording three wins and a second. There was no way his horses were going to go off as longshots. The $10.30 payoff on his seventh race winner was a gift, but most Pick 4 bettors had that horse and his winner of the fourth race on their tickets. What they didn’t have were the horses that won the fifth and sixth races

The winner of the fifth race, Calming Force, was listed as the 3-1 second choice on the morning line, but garnered no respect at the windows and was sent off as a huge overlay at 11-1.

Trained by talented young trainer Mike Taphorn, who recently won the $50,000 Manitoba Matron with Burrow Down, Calming Force had run four times before Wednesday, and had never really run a bad race. He’d won his previous race with Wednesday night’s jockey Ronald Ali with a long determined rally, signaling further improvement to come. He paid $25.60 to win.

Interestingly, Manitoba horse whisperer Florent Rivard owned a piece of the winner and the second place finisher in the fifth race, Princeoftheprairie, trained by Carl Anderson and ridden by Javaniel Patterson. Princeoftheprairie was listed at 5-1 on the morning line, but was sent off at long odds of 15-1 and triggered a leprechaun’s stash of payoffs, including a 20-cent superfecta that paid $602.57, a $1 triactor of $404.70, and a $1 exacta that paid $89.45. What did Rivard say to his horses?

The sixth race was where the real sleeper came in. Little Eddie, trained by Ryan Desjarlais, was sent off at 15-1 and got a perfect inside trip under jockey Sven Balroop, moving to the lead in the stretch and digging in all the way down the lane to win by a length. The three-year-old Manitoba-bred by Nonios did have an angle going for him in that he was making a big class drop out of the $40,000 JW Sifton Stakes. With only seven lifetime starts, he also had room to improve for a trainer who learned from one of the best horsemen and caretakers ever to race at the Downs, Jack Robertson.

Too simple, right? Not exactly, but lessons learned. In both the fifth and sixth races, horses conditioned by top trainers were overbet, apparently leaving the longshots to fend for the scraps, but someone forgot to tell them.

“I’m just glad we came up here,” said Pierce. “I like the laid back atmosphere. There are a lot of good people here. And Darren Dunn and his staff do a really great job.” While also proving once again, that it’s never a bad idea…

To bet on yourself.