The Preakness Stakes is one of the biggest horse racing events each year as far as sports betting enthusiasts are concerned. Justify, the winner of the Kentucky Derby, enters the Preakness at Pimlico Race Track as the heavy favorite, with Kentucky Derby runner-up Good Magic sitting in second position in the Preakness odds as well. One way to increase the excitement — and your winnings — from the Preakness is to put wagers down on multiple horses in the order that you think they will finish. The “exacta” wager picks the first- and second-place horses, the “trifecta” wager picks the first-, second- and third-place finishers, and the “superfecta” wager adds a fourth horse to the mix. If you “box” your bets, as long as the horses you pick finish in one of the positions you pick, you still win. For example, if you box a trifecta with Justify, Good Magic and Noble Indy, those three horses need to be the top three finishers, but they can finish in any order. Now that you know how the bets work, we’ve looked at the racing form and made some horse racing betting picks for each of these types of wagers.

Exacta, Trifecta and Superfecta Picks for the 2018 Preakness Stakes

.@kentuckyderby: ✅ @preaknessstakes: 🔲 @belmontstakes: 🔲 Justify has one jewel in the Triple Crown. Next up: Pimlico. Coverage of the #Preakness starts Saturday at 2:30 ET on @NBCSN and 5 ET on @NBC! pic.twitter.com/TOQatAEeO4

— NBC Sports (@NBCSports) May 16, 2018

Updated Contender Moneylines

• Justify                                                -200
• Good Magic                                       +450
• Diamond King                                   +1600
• My Boy Jack                                      +1600
• Hofburg                                              +1800
• Runaway Ghost                                +1800
• Telekinesis                                        +2000
• Bravazo                                              +2500
• Quip                                                    +2500
• Sporting Chance                               +3300
• Noble Indy                                         +6600

Why should you give these wagers a shot?

The payouts are terrific — if you win. In 2017, at the Kentucky Derby, if you put down $2 on an exacta and it hit, you won $336. A 50-cent bet on the trifecta at the Kentucky Derby last year won more than $4,000. And the superfecta? If you put down the $1 minimum bet at the Kentucky Derby last year, you walked away with over $75,000 if you had the right horses.

Justify to win

He still has never lost a race — and he even broke Apollo’s Curse, a streak that went all the way back to 1882, when Apollo won at Churchill Downs without competing as a two-year-old. No other horse that did not race as a two-year-old would win until Justify did it. He raced to the rail, seized the early lead, and never looked back, winning by 2 ½ lengths. He was limping a bit the next day, and it turned out that he had a slight crack in his left hind hoof — but that shouldn’t keep him from rolling to victory on the shorter track at Pimlico.

Sporting Chance to place

The top three or four horses in these signature events almost always include a dark horse out of nowhere, and Sporting Chance is our pick to do just that. He ran at Churchill Downs — but he ran in the Pat Day Mile, one of the undercard races ahead of the Kentucky Derby, and he got forced out wide late, so he couldn’t snag the victory. He is a temperamental horse, but when he is ready to race, there are few who can match his closing speed.

Good Magic to show

The runner-up from Churchill Downs has wins at the 2017 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile and the 2018 Blue Grass Stakes in the trophy case, and he worked hard down the stretch to catch Justify but simply could not close the gap — or make the race really competitive. His trainer, Chad Brown, had Cloud Computing in his stable — the horse that won the Preakness in 2017. However, given that the game effort by Good Magic failed at Churchill Downs, it’s likely that another horse will slip between him and Justify this week.

Quip to finish fourth

Quip didn’t race at the Kentucky Derby but put together an impressive second-place result at the Arkansas Derby, coming in behind Magnum Moon. However, he didn’t look solid in training in the days after that race, and so his team decided to hold him out of Churchill Downs. He comes to Pimlico with fresh legs, and while I don’t see him cracking the top two or three, he should have enough to round out your superfecta.