Santa Anita to eliminate jackpot wager, offer $1 pick six

The era of the 20-cent Rainbow pick six at Santa Anita is over.

The track is scheduled to introduce a $1 pick six for its autumn meeting, pending regulatory approval from the California Horse Racing Board on Thursday.

The $1 pick six will mirror a betting structure in place with the pick six until the autumn meeting of 2016. At the time, the bet had a $2 minimum.

For the six-week fall meeting, which begins on Sept. 29, 70 percent of the net pick six pool will be paid to tickets with six winners, or into a carryover if there are no winning tickets. The remaining 30 percent of the net pool will be paid to consolation tickets, which on most racing days will be tickets with five winners.

Since the 2016-2017 winter-spring meeting, the track has had either a Rainbow, or jackpot format to the pick six, setting aside a portion of the pool to be paid if there is a single winning ticket, or for the pool to be paid in full on designated days with a mandatory payout.

Del Mar currently has a 20-cent Rainbow pick six that has a mandatory payout on Sunday. Los Alamitos has a $2 pick six and has never offered the bet with a Rainbow or Jackpot format.

The restructured pick six at Santa Anita will prove popular with some bettors who abhorred losing a portion of the net pick six pool to a jackpot provision if there were multiple winning tickets.

For a period in the late 2010s, Santa Anita had a $2 jackpot format to its pick six that included a carryover if there were no tickets with six winners, and a smaller single-ticket jackpot pool with a carryover if there was more one winning ticket.

The track switched to a 20-cent Rainbow pick six format prior to the fall meeting in 2018.

The $2 pick six was the most popular bet in the nation for decades beginning in the early 1980s until the pick four and pick five bets, with minimums of 50-cents to $1, began to dominate the landscape earlier this century.

Koriner fined $1,000

Trainer Brian Koriner has been fined $1,000 after Resilient tested positive for the muscle relaxant methocarbamol in a workout at Santa Anita on May 18, according to a ruling published by Santa Anita stewards on Thursday.

Horses are not permitted to be treated with the medication for workouts.

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