Welcome to Tacos and Trifectas! Each week, America’s Best Racing’s Southern California correspondent Jose Contreras - @LosPonies to those who follow him on Twitter - will provide a taco review along with a selection that he will key in trifecta bets in hopes of winning some cash to buy more tacos! Contreras will map out a trifecta betting strategy for how to key his main pick and keep track of his return on investment (ROI), which was positive in 2017.

Stop back each week if you love tacos and want a trifecta play!

This week’s eatery:

A special edition of Tacos and Trifectas featuring a carne asada taco duel between My Taco Guy and Tacos La Charlie at the Tacos y Cerveza event at Santa Anita Park.

My Taco Guy

Score: 8.6

• Nice cut of steak
• Green salsa had the right amount of heat
• Double tortillas kept the taco from falling apart
• Steak was well seasoned

Tacos La Charlie

Score: 8.1

• Skirt steak had a tasty citrus marinade
• Grilled onions added a nice flavor
• Careful with the grilled serrano peppers

Recap of last wager: Our key horse Mendelssohn was completely eliminated at the start and Justify proved to be the real deal with a freaky good performance. With the Preakness shaping up to be a small field and a probably chalky result, I’ll look to race 11, The Very One Stakes with a field of 14 runners as a good gambling opportunity. But if you’re looking for my opinion on the Preakness, I think it will be a repeat of the Kentucky Derby with Justify and Good Magic finishing first and second.

This week’s trifecta key:

Saturday, Pimlico, Race 11, $100,000 The Very One Stakes, 4:42 p.m. ET

#3 Pretty Perfection (10-1 odds): She comes off a brutal trip where she had to steady multiple times, was in tight quarters, lost momentum and lost all chance for a better placing when finishing last in her most recent race. She’s got much more tactical speed than the last two efforts show on paper. I like that she’s been given some time off since her last race and she shows three workouts in preparation for this event. There is plenty of early speed in this field and I think she’s gonna be close to enough to benefit from a pace duel. Her last three running lines look less than ideal on paper and that’s why I think we will hopefully get higher odds than the 10-1 morning line she’s listed at. I’m going to raise the budget to $100 for this race to cover another horse in the trifectas while lowering the win bet to $10. If she wins and one of the horses we tossed gets us out of the trifectas, we should still be able to make some money given the odds I expect at post time. Pimlico will have .50-cent minimum trifectas but I’m going to play them for $1.

Strategy on $100 Budget:
$1 Trifecta: 3 with 1,8,11,12,13,14 with 1,8,11,12,13,14 ($30)
$1 Trifecta: 1,8,11,12,13,14 with 3 with 1,8,11,12,13,14 ($30)
$1 Trifecta: 1,8,11,12,13,14 with 1,8,11,12,13,14 with 3 ($30)
$10 Win on #3 Pretty Perfection

ROI Year to date: $856 wagered / $473.30 returned