When the rich try to hit it bigor in their case, biggerthey do not go to their neighborhood parish house to play bingo or purchase lottery tickets in a cigar store. Instead, they travel to Kentucky in the summertime and, midst all the splendor of the bluegrass, they buy thoroughbred race horses.
On the surface, such a venture seems nothing short of fiscal madness. For every dream horse like Seattle Slew (auction price: $17,500; payoff on the Triple Crown races alone: $462,380), there are thousands of also-rans and tens of thousands of never-rans. As a rule, only 5% of the more than...