I've got a quote and a question. The quote is from Steven Crist's last Breeders' Cup Diary entry on drf.com:

"My primary personal-investment lesson for the day, which I shall try hard to remember a year from now, is not to put 80 percent of my eggs in the pick-4 and pick-6 baskets as I did yesterday. There is plenty of money to be made on Breeders' Cup Day by being right in just one spot."

My question is: why do people find multi-race bets so attractive? They're obviously all the rage now. From my perspective:

1. It's not often that I have a strong opinion in 2 consecutive races. Forget about 4 or 6. And when the races are at different tracks (as in the NTRA National Pick-4s), my confidence in my selections drops further.

2. The takeout is high.

3. You're betting blind with respect to the amount being wagered on horses in all but the first race of the sequence (see Artie Schiller).

4. As someone has previously noted on this board (HP?), such bets have a high now-I-have-to-kill-myself factor.

Maybe players with more well-rounded handicapping skills and bigger bankrolls feel like that gives them an edge. Maybe it's about the buzz of a big score. In any event, I'd be interested in anyone's comments on why they play in these pools.