The New York Racing Association is closer to replacing its traditional pick six with a jackpot-style iteration of the bet following action on Monday by the New York Gaming Commission. The commission at a regularly scheduled meeting approved a motion to publish rules governing the administration of the wager, which is the final step before the rule goes into effect. The earliest the rule could be published in the state register is Wednesday, Aug. 7, which would also likely be the first day that the bet could be offered at Saratoga Race Course, where NYRA is currently conducting a race meet. NYRA officials have already said that they plan to replace the traditional pick six with the jackpot bet at some point during the current Saratoga meeting. The new bet, with a 20-cent minimum denomination, rather than the $2 minimum for the current pick six, will have a carryover anytime there is not a single ticket with the correct sequence, in line with other jackpot-style bets that have been introduced at other major tracks across the U.S. in the past five years. Pat McKenna, a spokesman for NYRA, said that the association plans to offer the bet “as soon as the rule becomes effective.” The association has not yet decided on when to establish mandatory payout dates for the wager, he said. :: Get PPs, Clocker Reports, picks, and more from DRF's Saratoga/Del Mar One-Stop Shop The new wager will be called the Empire 6. If there is more than one winning ticket, 75 percent of the pool will be paid out to winning ticketholders, with the remainder put into the jackpot pool. The jackpot pool only pays out if there is a single winning ticket. Those rules have succeeded in creating enormous pools in other racing jurisdictions. Jackpot-style bets are not universally accepted among horseplayers. Some players object to the format, and NYRA was one of the last major racing jurisdictions to hold out on offering a jackpot-style bet. Also at the Monday meeting, the commission approved a rule that will allow racetracks to cancel show wagering on races without commission approval. NYRA had sought the change in the existing rule in order to avoid so-called minus pools, which are pools in which the racing association pays out more than what was wagered (minus the takeout) due to overwhelming bets on a single horse in the race. Under existing rules, NYRA is required to pay out at least five cents on the dollar for any single accepted wager. The rule will be subject to a 60-day public-comment period. At the close of the meeting, the commission’s executive director, Robert Williams, updated commissioners on the responses it has received from a survey sent out gauging the interest in restricting the race-day use of Lasix, the diuretic that is administered to horses to mitigate bleeding in the lungs. Williams said that the commission sent out surveys to 140 individuals and organizations involved in New York racing and has received, to date, 17 responses. He characterized the majority of the responses as being supportive of restrictions on Lasix race-day use. Long a controversial topic, the debate over the legal use of Lasix on race day has been re-energized by an announcement earlier this year from a number of leading racetracks, including NYRA, that they planned to seek regulations that would restrict race-day use beginning in 2020, starting with 2-year-old races. The survey effort by the NYGC is an attempt to gauge the opinions of New York racing and breeding constituencies on possible action by the commission down the road.