With sports wagering coming near here, you must learn the 'exacta' way to bet

The Solano County Fairgrounds sit outside the community of Vallejo.

It is not one of California’s true garden spots.

It’s memorable to me, though, because it was there among the weeds and various flying insects that I learned something important about wagering on animals — or people, for that matter.

My dad took me to the fair on what was a typical hot, dry and brown summer day.

It was my first-ever outing that involved risking money.

Not my last, however.

This would have been when I was 11, I think — but to be more precise we’d have to rewind toward the Paleozoic Era and creep forward.

My father was a regular around the California fairs horse racing circuit every summer, quite logically because the same horses, trainers and jocks trekked up and down the state.

A savvy player knew the field far better than, say, those hundreds of locals from each county who would come out to enjoy a day with their pals, lose some money and go home with sunburn.

Dad routinely pocketed a slice of that money, almost as though it was his second job.

ON THAT particular day, I was told — not unkindly — to chill on the first-time excitement and pay attention to why some bets were made, some not and the reasoning behind each decision.

Dad’s logic was pretty sound: Coming from the family I did, it was pretty much a lock that I’d wind up as a gambler — maybe a lot, maybe a little, but in any case, you’d rather learn how to win.

My father would scold me right now for even using the word “gambler,” which he assigned to people who took wild chances on roulette wheels and assorted other games of sheer chance.

If pressed on a description, Dad would have said he was spending an afternoon on the outskirts of Vallejo as an “investor.”

Meanwhile, we were camped out near the rail, maybe 50 yards up the track from the finish line.

The other adult present that day was one of my dad’s serious betting buddies, and his name — I’m dead serious — was Jack Loser.

Not a nickname, either, but right there on his driver’s license.

And yes, he’d heard the jokes often enough that he’d stopped paying attention.

The part that I found funny was that my dad’s name also was Jack, so the guys tended to call each other by their last names, which if your name was Loser, well…

Anyhow, the humor in that had long since died away.

The men were present at the fairgrounds to accept donations from the good citizens of Solano County and elsewhere, those folks who made bets according to lucky numbers, cute horses’ names and so forth.

My dad felt that, in the correct order of the universe — like the sun rising in the east — these day-trippers were his natural and legitimate prey.

ON ONE particular race — and it sticks with me every time I consider a wager — the men had agreed to bet an exacta.

If you don’t know the definitions, an exacta bet — unlike, say, simply betting on a horse to win — means that you’re wagering that two horses will finish first and second, in the “exact” order you have on the ticket.

Obviously, it’s a much tougher bet to hit, but the payoff is going to be larger.

Much larger, in most cases.

Dad and Jack Loser each made a $20 exacta bet (a whole lot of money in those days) on horses Nos. 7 and 4.

That meant their only way to win was a 7-4 result. Without conducting a clinic here, yes, a way to “protect” that bet would be to also purchase a ticket on the No. 7 to win.

That way, if the No. 4 horse finished back up the track somewhere, you’d still get some of your money back.

But my father was a CPA, he understood numbers, odds and possible payouts almost as though it was magic, and he had decided that — in this race ONLY — it was a wiser bet to use everything on the exacta.

He wagered on the way he visualized the race being run, and that was how he saw it in his mind.

So why waste capital on a win bet that wouldn’t pay out much, when the ratio of risk versus reward suggested the exacta?

THIS WAS all fascinating stuff to me, and maybe I’m embellishing it in my own mind, but I think I grasped the notion of pari-mutuel (wagering against fellow bettors, as opposed to “the house,” as you would in a casino game).

And I damn sure got the idea of making larger, more specific bets — like the exacta — to aim at a fat payoff.

The race got off, a 6-furlong event (three-quarters of a mile, around one turn), and it became clear soon enough that the Nos. 4 and 7 were the class of the field that day.

So far, so good.

The problem, as the horses came off the turn and headed toward us, was that the order was 4-7 — the wrong way around for their exacta bet.

Both men were dead silent, watching through binoculars, but I couldn’t help shouting, “Number 4 is too far ahead!”

My dad didn’t even turn his head, but he said: “Don’t worry, he (No. 4) will give it up.”

And indeed, it happened precisely that way.

Their exacta payoff was VERY handsome, and I learned yet another lesson when the numbers were posted on the tote board.

Neither my dad nor Jack Loser hollered, or laughed or anything that would have suggested they’d just hit a big winner.

Win or lose with the same expression.

I can do it, stone-faced, to this day.

AS WE walked toward the grandstand for the guys to cash their tickets, I asked how they were so certain that the No. 7 horse would make up that ground in the stretch to win.

Dad had taught me the basics of reading the Daily Racing Form — which might as well be in another language if you don’t understand horse racing — and I asked to look at it again.

I wanted to see if speed or a history of running shorter distances, or at least something, showed that the No. 4 horse would give it up in the last eighth of a mile.

I couldn’t see it.

Finally, Jack Loser said: “That (No. 4) horse is a pretty good animal for running at Vallejo.

“But the owner is a lady from San Francisco who won’t ever let her jockeys use a whip.”

And that was that.

Dad and Jack had something going that almost no one at the track could have known.

No whip down the stretch.

My father was just as good handicapping sports events, by the way.

He always seemed to understand something that your average fan wouldn’t or couldn’t know.

Dad told me routinely that it’s there if you look hard enough — and most critical of all, if you can’t find that edge, hold on to your money.

His mantra was simple: “There will be more races and more games. Save your cash for the right one.”

I’ve tried to do that — and I’m way ahead in the long run.

I’m also an unashamed bettor, so the fact that the legislature in Washington is about to make sports wagering legal at tribal casinos leaves me with a huge smile.

Now, Idaho…

Get moving on a bill that gives our own tribal casinos a fair chance to compete.

A lot of us are going to put our money down someplace.

Bet on it.

Email: [email protected]

Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns for The Press appear on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He also contributes the “Zags Tracker” package on Gonzaga basketball each Tuesday.

Steve’s various tales from several decades in sports — “Moments, Memories and Madness” — run on Sundays.