Twinspires.com offering new pick five

Twinspires.com, the account-wagering service owned by Churchill Downs Inc., will begin offering a pick five on Saturday that will be split into two pools, one offering a payout only when there is a single ticket with all five winners and the other offering payouts to all ticket-holders whose selections finish third or better.

The $1 pick five, which will have a takeout of 20 percent, is similar to Gulfstream’s Rainbow 6, a 10-cent bet that carries over unless there is a single ticket with six winners. The Twinspires.com pick five, however, will use 80 percent of the pool each day to issue payouts for all tickets that include horses that at least show, with the remaining 20 percent of the pool reserved for a payout if only one ticket has all six winners.

If there are multiple tickets with all six winners or no ticket with all six winners, the 20 percent portion of the pool reserved for the single-ticket payout will carryover, Twinspires.com said.

The wager will be offered only on Twinspires.com, and not through any simulcast outlets. The first pick five will be offered Saturday, linking races from Arlington Park, Louisiana Downs, and Indiana Downs, and the pool will be seeded with $25,000 from the company.

Jeremy Clemens, Twinspires.com’s vice president of marketing, said the company plans to seed the pools with $25,000 several times this year after the pool pays out to a single ticket-holder. “That’s the plan for now, but we’re not planning on doing that indefinitely,” he said.

The pick five will be offered on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, Clemens said. Twinspires.com plans to select five races for the wager that will be run within the space of approximately 90 minutes.