Del Mar pick six soars

Boosted by a carryover of $94,601 from Sunday, bettors added a robust $910,910 to the $1 pick six at Del Mar on Thursday.

The bet returned $10,763 to tickets with six winners, and $111 to ticketholders with five winners.

The bet covered the third through eighth races. The winners of the pick six races were Nokie ($6), Standing O ($20.20), Stay in Line ($24.80), Linda’s Gift ($7.80), Cliquish ($4.40), and Asada Fries ($5).

Cliquish and Asada Fries were favored, while Nokie and Linda’s Gift were the second choices.

This was the first carryover since Santa Anita launched a $1 pick six in late September. Del Mar followed with the same structure for its current autumn meeting. The tracks previously offered a pick six with a Rainbow format.

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The revised pick six has been warmly received by bettors this month. Through Thursday, the seventh day of the Del Mar autumn season, the pick six attracted $1,936,292 in bets, compared to $1,110,173 last year.

The trend is likely to be reversed before the current season ends on Dec. 3. On closing day of the 2022 autumn meeting, the Rainbow pick six drew a pool of $3.57 million on a day with a mandatory payout. While the $1 pick six will have a mandatory payout on Dec. 3, the pool is unlikely to reach that lofty figure.

Santa Anita abandoned a Rainbow pick six format after its winter-spring meeting earlier this year. The bet, which was offered for seven years, had a minimum bet of 20 cents and was paid out in full in the event of a single winning ticket, or on days with a mandatory payout. On days with multiple winning tickets, a portion of the pool went into a carryover to be paid to a single winning ticket or on days with a mandatory payout.

The $1 pick six has a format in which 70 percent of the net pool is paid to ticketholders with six winners, or into a carryover if there are no winning tickets. The remaining 30 percent of the net pool is paid to consolation tickets, which on most days are tickets with five winners.

- additional reporting by Brad Free

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