As part of my cousin’s bachelor party this past Saturday we spent the better part of the afternoon down at River Downs to take in some horse racing. This was actually my first time at River Downs, though I have been to Turfway once before. There is no entry fee and there are no employees at the gates checking bags, so entry is perfectly painless. Our group arrived on a school bus, taking the long way to get there, so we missed the first race of the day. I sat out betting on the second race and eventually placed a trifecta bet on the third race after finding the ATM.

River Downs Grandstand

I didn’t win this time, and that trend continued for the fourth and fifth races too. We spent the majority of the time hanging out near the rail on the paved standing area in front of the open air grandstand. Beers were just $4.50, which is much better than most other sporting events. And since they didn’t check anyone coming in, I wonder if some patrons didn’t sneak in some of their own beer in the multiple coolers that I saw throughout the day.

Winner! Winner!

My luck changed during the sixth race of the day. After coming close to winning on one of the earlier races, and paying attention to what my program was saying versus the results of the day, I started catching on. Or at least I thought I was starting to understand it all. Most of my bets were either trifecta bets, or I would occasionally pick one horse to win, place, or show, as I did in the sixth race. In my program the #6 horse was listed as 10-1 odds to win, and a couple of minutes before post the large board in the infield displayed the odds as much higher, over 20-1.

Winning Ticket

Once I saw this I ran to one of the automated machines and bought the ticket above. I thought that maybe there was something that I wasn’t picking up on that lowered the odds, but I figured it was worth a few bucks to find out. As the race started horse #6 was nowhere near the front of the back. The board only updates for the first 3/4 of the race at best, so as the horses all come toward the finish line it is really hard to tell who is in the lead. As this race came to a close I watched as #6 charged up the inside rail and won the race! I had won $124.80!

With just two races after that, I made a couple of bucks off the seventh race and was then put in charge of making a bet for my dad, brother, and I who pooled some money together. Again I went with the win place show bet, and nearly won again as the horse I selected finished in fourth place. Bummer. We had a great time and I look forward to going down to the track again in the future. Kim has already said that she wants to go too.