Everyone is interested in betting on trifectas. Everyone would like to have been on that $9,000+ trifecta the other day. Well, our Members were. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean that they all made a motza. The most likely result is that those Members who regularly bet trifectas have recouped their losses and edged in front. Not very exciting is it? But wait! Trifectas are the biggest growing segment of the TAB pools and there is potential there for a lot of profits.

Provided you are patient and you are satisfied with a long term profit of around 15%-20% you can find trifecta punting rewarding. Don't expect a high strike rate, however. Our box three Winform trifectas have a strike rate of only 3%, yet they have never had a losing year. Can you cope with a run of outs of 200 races?? With a strike rate of just 3%, that's exactly what you can expect. 200 times $6 is $1200 but you only need six trifectas paying $250 to make the profit worthwhile.

A box 4 trifecta will pop up about once every ten tries and a box 5 one in five or so but now the cost has jumped from $6 a bet to $24 to $60. Strangely enough the profit is about the same.

We analysed over 9,000 Trifectas in 2000 and about 4,000 in 2001 and another 4,000 in 2002 and the results didn't change all that much but there were interesting variations that could lead us to better profits. We found that it did matter where the race was run i.e. Metropolitan, Provincial and Country tracks yielded different results. We further analysed by field size and this made a major difference too.

When we added our analysis by track condition and then by distance and cam to some surprising conclusions. By careful elimination of races we were able to see how we could secure, not so much a better strike rate, but a higher average dividend and this is after all, what we are after.

Charlie Philcox has been following trifectas for some years. He has come to the conclusion that as more people try to win trifectas, the average dividend is falling and he may be right . There are a lot of scam merchants out there who sell trifecta programs to the unwary and even though the purchasers of these schemes do inevitably lose money, they do score some trifectas, simply because of the multiplicity of the combinations they take. They never win back enough money to get in front but they do reduce the dividends for everyone else.

Charlie now carefully selects his trifectas based on field size and distance as well as other factors such as class of race and whether there are many first starters etc. He then works out the expected dividend by looking at the prepost markets. Any races where any combination will return him less than $200-$300 on the race he ignores. "After all," he says "aren't we after the big ones?" And Charlie is right. Strangely enough, his strike rate is not adversely affected by this strategy and this is why all his dividends are big ones. He has reduced his daily outlays by two thirds but his returns are reduced by much less than this. Some of his big winning trifectas include two of $8,000 on Melbourne Cup Day and more recently a $9,742 monster. His biggest return was over $23,000 on a country Class 1 event.

Yes Trifectas are still worthwhile but only if you have the patience to wait for the big collect. Our Trifecta profiles book and updates are still available through the Winform Bookshop. They are a must read for anyone interested in making serious money from trifectas.