How to bet on the Breeders' Cup
The Breeders' Cup is two days of championship races, run at a different American track from year to year, with horses shipped in from Europe and beyond. You bet it the same way as any American race, into pari-mutuel pools. What makes it different is the size of the fields, the horses nobody here has seen run, and the number of races worth betting on one card.
Getting a bet down
The Breeders' Cup is pari-mutuel, like the Triple Crown races. Your money goes into a pool with everyone else's, the track takes its share, and the winners split what's left at the final odds. You don't know your price until the gates open. How to bet on horse racing covers the pool and the bets on the card, and how horse racing odds work shows how the price is worked out.
At the track, you give the race, the amount, the type of bet and the program number. Away from it, an off-track betting outlet or an account-wagering service puts your money in the same pool. Whether a service can take bets from you depends on where you live. An offshore racebook usually keeps the bet itself and pays track odds only up to a cap in its rules, so read the cap before you bet anything that could pay big. Horse racing betting sites goes through the difference.
Horses you haven't seen
Most American races are run by horses that have met before, at the same few tracks. The Breeders' Cup brings in horses from abroad, mainly from Europe and mainly for the turf races, and that changes how the race has to be read.
A European horse comes with form from courses that don't look like American ones: races run on grass, often on courses with turns and hills, often on softer ground, and often at a slower early pace before a fast finish. An American turf race tends to be run on a tight, flat oval at a strong pace from the start. Some European horses love it. Some never handle the turns. The form in the past performances is real, but it was earned in different conditions, and it takes judgment to translate.
That is where the price can be wrong in either direction. The American crowd tends to bet the horses it knows, which can leave a good European horse at a better price than it should be. In some years the crowd overcorrects and bets anything with a European trainer's name. I don't think either habit holds as a rule. I'd judge each horse on whether its style suits the track, and I'd watch for horses trained by people who have brought horses over and won before, because shipping a horse across an ocean is a skill of its own.
Big fields and the exotics
Breeders' Cup races usually draw big fields of good horses, and that does two things to the betting. The favorite is often a weaker chance than in an ordinary race, because the field is deep. And the exotic bets get harder to hit and pay more when they come in.
In a big field, a straight win bet on a horse you like at a decent price is a sound bet, and it is the bet I'd make most often. The exotics, the exacta and trifecta, need more horses on the ticket to have a real chance, and the cost of covering them climbs quickly. The pricing of those tickets is on exacta, trifecta and superfecta bets.
Pick 4 and Pick 5
The Breeders' Cup is the best day of the year for the multi-race bets, where you pick the winners of several races in a row on one ticket. The pools are large, the fields are big, and favorites get beaten, so the payouts can be large.
The cost is the catch. A ticket is priced per combination, and the combinations multiply. Say you play a Pick 4 at 50 cents a combination, with three horses in the first leg, three in the second, two in the third and four in the last. That is 3 x 3 x 2 x 4, or 72 combinations, and the ticket costs $36. Add one more horse to each leg and it costs far more. Single one horse in a leg and the cost drops.
The way to build these tickets is to decide where you are confident and where you are not. Single a horse in the race where you have the strongest opinion, spread in the race you think is wide open, and keep the total within what you set aside. A ticket that covers everything costs more than it can win.
A budget for two days
Two days of championship races, plus the undercards, adds up to a lot of betting, and the races come one after another. Set a budget for each day before the first race, and split it between the races you really have an opinion on and the ones you are betting to have a sweat. Most of the money should go on the first kind.
I'd also keep some money back for the last races. The biggest races tend to come late on the card, and nothing is worse than having a strong opinion on the main event with nothing left to bet it with. The thinking that lasts beyond one day is on horse racing betting strategies.
The crowd bets the names it knows. The Breeders' Cup is the day it has to bet a lot of names it doesn't, and that is when the price is most often wrong.