Gulfstream Park Pick 6: Rainbow Six nears the end

Gulfstream Park's Rainbow 6 wager, a pick six that only pays the full pool to a single winning ticket, has entered the final furlong of an extraordinary run. This weekend is the final weekend of Gulfstream's fiscal year, meaning that Memorial Day Monday is a "de facto" end of the meet  requiring the payout of the entire Rainbow 6 pool which currently holds a carryover of $6,303,426.30. Given the size of the current carryover, it's not crazy to think the pool could swell to well north of 10 million if a single wager fails to take down the wager on Saturday or Sunday.

With the Rainbow 6 likely to attract horseplayers of all shapes and sizes this weekend, figuring out your strategy is probably the biggest hurdle going into each day's card. Do you try and play a ticket laced with ridiculous longshots in the hopes of catching a lottery ticket and taking it down? Do you simply play a ticket based on the strength of your handicapping? Or do you take some kind of alternate strategy (and one I've read lately) of playing chalk with the hopes that everyone else plays bombs and if a chalk sequence comes in, while it won't pay a lot, it might pay better than it should given the low odds winners in each race?

I'm not sure that last strategy is going to go very far considering the deep pocket players that are sure to swarm the pool over the coming days (and, especially, on Monday if the pool continues to carryover). Additionally, at this point in the sequence, I'm fairly certain that a single ticket is not going to be able to take the wager down. If that's the case, playing the crazy, long-shot laced ticket might not be the best philosophy, either.

Perhaps the best strategy is this: handicap the cards, play a ticket your comfortable with and, with any luck, get a piece of the prize, make a little money back, and have some fun. Or lose it all and yell obscenities at a jockey through your TV. Really, either one of those situations will work.

Should the wager go un-hit on Saturday, we'll have an open thread on Sunday and Monday following the final days of this massive carryover.

In terms of recent performance, below are the payouts for the Rainbow 6 over the last nine days, along with the $2 win payouts in each leg: