Del Mar: Pick 6 weekend offers mandatory payout on Sunday card

Del Mar will feature a Pick 6 weekend this Saturday and Sunday with a $1 million single-ticket guarantee on Saturday’s 11-race program and a mandatory payout in place for Sunday’s planned 11-race card.

Both afternoons of racing will start at 5 p.m. EDT, and the Pick 6 will be based on the last six races on the days’ cards.

Saturday’s guarantee means anyone correctly selecting the bet as a single-ticket winner would get the complete amount in the pot (say possibly $500,000), then earn an additional check from Del Mar to raise the total earnings to $1 million. If there is no single ticket winner, all jackpot (single-ticket) carryover money will go forward to Sunday.

Then Sunday’s mandatory day, those with the most winners that afternoon will be paid the amount in the pot divided by the total number of winners. There will be no carryovers.

Nobody was able to hit the popular exotic bet as a single ticket through the first three days of racing at the seaside track’s summer meet, resulting in a $195,122 jackpot carryover into Thursday’s day 4. Eight races are scheduled that afternoon and another eight races Friday before the Pick 6 weekend.” If the wager is not hit with a single-ticket winner on those two upcoming afternoons, the bet could have a large carry with the possibility of much more to be added. Should the single ticket jackpot carry on to Sunday's mandatory payout, a potential final pool of between $2.5 million to $3 million is a reasonable possibility.

The Pick 6 may be wagered on for as little as 20 cents. Normally, it pays out 70 percent of its total pool to those with the most winners with the remaining 30 percent being allocated to the single-ticket jackpot pool and carried forward to the following day’s race program.

The largest win prize in the history of the bet at Del Mar took place Aug. 1, 2004, when one bettor collected a reward of $2,100,017.