Had I had several hundred dollars to put into the Monmouth pick 5 I'd probably be alive to at least three horses right now and likely more, but I just couldn't pull the trigger on an ABC play using the matrix below because my five-member syndicate had no majority on finding one single let alone two (as suggested by the matrix there).
So, we ended up "cavemanning" our top agreement on a $480 play that excluded the opening leg winner, who was not impossible at 11-to-1, and was one of five horses trimmed throughout the ticket to bring us from a $1,080 caveman play to $480.
Normally I wouldn't advocate forcing a play in which you're cutting more than 50% of the combinations you'd like to use to fit your budget, but we had a sharp group and with $123k+ already in the pot and only 15% coming out of the new money, I thought it made sense to try to catch lightening in a bottle at a discount.
Sure, I could make the case that I might be alive if I had played it on my own or made an executive decision to single Ramsey earlier, but just as I prioritize picks into "A" "B" "C" categories, so too do I prioritize how I want to invest my money. It was a calculated risk to spread in certain legs and go narrower in others as it was a calculated risk to spend more on one ticket while limiting my own exposure. It didn't work this time, but they payouts aren't enough to make me rue the day I first heard the word "syndicate."
We'll get'em next time.
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Why not go ABC with the group play?
ReplyDeleteThat ABC grid was made with input from three of the five people in the syndicate. The other two people polarized the consensus a bit, so that's what hurt our bottom line in the end.
ReplyDeleteGroup think didn't come through for us this time. On the plus side, based on the results of the last race, I wouldn't have had it on my own, so I lost less than I would have without the syndicate :)