I've been working on an exacta strategy for a couple months. First posted an overview of it on this forum back in January and have been tightening it up ever since. Several weeks of back-testing and live play with small stakes ultimately gave me the conviction to take it to the windows this weekend. Encouraging results!

I live in a state where I can bet on Amwager, which has an exacta dutching feature. (Worth checking out for anyone with access). With this ability to dutch exactas, I'm typically playing tickets A-B or A-B-C over A-B-C-D-E. And sometimes hedging D-E over A-B-C.

My contender process is a combo of Best Horse Rank/Magnitudes 1/1 and 2/2 and the lowest Object Odds of my H's, using the "Fire LH System" button and natural odds to identify my H's. My BALO process draws from a combo of The Neal, Brian's original report and the new AI Object that is Object #2 in The Brian. In most races I can leave one low-odds horse in. I'd say I'm striving for two parts hit rate and one part value, because my ultimate goal is to play exacta dutches with large unit sizes i.e. $100 or more per race. So I want a hit rate in the mid-50s to 60% to sustain the larger unit size without fear of a major drawdown. For me value comes primarily from playing against low odds horses in the win slot. (I typically leave them in place slot).

Internet went down Saturday mid-session and when it came back on I was too disgusted to play again after seeing that I missed three consecutive winning races. Did cash 3 of 5 races before losing internet. Today I hit 6 of 7 races live. I sat out the eighth race on a gut that I was due for some regression, and it lost, so I'm calling it 6 winners in 8 races today. Total 9 winners in 13 races for the weekend.

My average return on the winning exacta dutches this weekend was 112% or IOW a $100 exacta dutch returned an average $212. This is consistent with my results when I was testing under simulated live conditions. And my back testing indicates that a hit rate of 55 to 60% is very achievable. (I can't quote an exacta number because my process has evolved over these past several weeks).

I'm playing field sizes 7+, no races with FTS 2+ and only races that are 88:2, 88:3, 88:4 and 88:5. Playing both Chaos 1 and Chaos 5, and with this approach I have yet to find much difference in how to play them. IOW I'm "handicapping" all races including Chaos 5. There are indeed some races, usually Chaos 1, where I'm not able to eliminate enough of the exacta pool to generate the needed ROI, so I skip these races.

If this keeps up- and several weeks of testing/researching/tweaking leads me to believe there's a good chance it will- then I could be right where I want to be with deT, which is to ultimately play professionally or semi-professionally. My approach is not for everyone- it is tote-dependent and requires submitting these dutch tickets as horses are loading. And of course one needs to play in a state with Amwager access. (At the Races Pro also has an exacta dutching tool and a file upload feature to the other major ADW's).