Midland: Gulfstream's Rainbow 6 mandatory payout offers value

Gulfstream Park has a Rainbow Pick 6 carryover of $3,612,593 scheduled for Sunday's card. Estimates are that the pool could reach as high as $15 million as players chase the big pot and mandatory payoff.

But how good of a bet is the Rainbow Pick 6 on mandatory payout days, and how difficult is it to hit? We looked at recent data to answer those questions.

A $10 million pool is likely

Grabbing the data for the biggest mandatory payout days at Gulfstream Park and Gulfstream Park West since 2016, we found eight examples where a large carryover drove huge pools north of $3 million.

Looking at the chart below, the three occasions where the carryover is in the range it is Sunday ($3.6 million), that the pool was indeed $10 million or more. 

Huge carryovers can eliminate takeout

Looking at past examples where the carryover was nearing $1 million or more, in each case the amount of the carryover exceeded the 20% takeout of the wager, thus creating a positive expectation for bettors. This is why the effective takeout in the chart is listed as negative.

So when players bet into a huge $3.6 million carryover pool like this one, they don't benefit from the entire $3.6 million as added money, but rather, much of the $3.6 million is used to eliminate the normal takeout. For example, if $10 million is bet, with a 20% takeout, that creates $2 million in takeout. But $1.6 million would be remaining as added money for players - after the takeout.

Field size drives complexity of the wager

As players attempt to solve the pick six, there are hundreds of thousands of possible combinations. Just slight differences in field size can have a large effect on the total number of combinations.

Sunday's field sizes are rather small compared to past large mandatory payoff days. If you look at the Gulfstream Park entries, the field sizes are: 8, 7, 9, 10, 10 and 10. This is a total of 54 horses, which is smaller than all seven of the Gulfstream Park mandatory payoff days listed in the chart, but larger than the Gulfstream Park West mandatory day on Nov. 24.

Multiplying out the combinations, 8x7x9x10x10x10 = 504,000 possible scenarios before scratches. A lower number of combinations may drive a smaller payout.

Good payoffs await those who can solve the Pick 6

The previous mandatory payout days show that big payoffs are possible even without relying on a series of longshots. While the average payoff was more than $61,000, even the two lowest payouts were $4,761 and $9,018.

Even on a day when there were no 10-1 longshot winners on April 2, 2017, the payoff was a significant $48,882. However, on that day all six favorites lost, including horses priced at 6-5, 8-5, 3-2, 2-1, 2-1 and 5-2.

If the most recent mandatory carryover at Gulfstream Park West on Nov. 24 is any example, Sunday's payoff is likely to approach $5,000 at a minimum.