How to bet exotics??

[Thunder Gulch]

I play a lot of $27 trifectas with the general format
1,2,3/1,2,3,4/1,2,3,4,5 ....obviously, it varies somewhat from race to race, but I never go over this number of combinations, instead often reducing the first slot to two contenders, or the middle to three. With exactas, I usually only play if I can key one horse over a couple of others.