Winning bets on lone wolves

There are two good ways to use consensus boxes like the one that appears in L.A. Newspaper Group sports sections. One is to look for a horse that's picked by all of the handicappers (a true "consensus" selection). Another is to look for a horse that's picked by one handicapper but not mentioned in the top three by anybody else.

You get the reasoning behind the second approach if you've ever worked on a committee, where the brightest ideas always come from one member with a mind of his or her own, while the group as a whole tends to get bogged down in conventional wisdom.

Basically, if one handicapper picks a horse everyone else ignores, it could be because the lone wolf sees something the others overlook.

In our consensus, Terry Turrell and Ray Nelson tend to take unique stands more than Bob Ike and Jerry Antonucci do. And so far at the Hollywood Park meet, both Terry and Ray have done very well with these horses. If you'd bet on the lone-wolf picks of either man, you'd be making a profit.

For obvious reasons, lone-wolf horses win less often than consensus picks. But they can more than make up for the low percentage with high payoffs. Here are Terry's and Ray's totals so far.

Turrell: 12 top selections that didn't appear in anybody else's top three; 2 winners, paying $22.60 (Rivergrade Boy, Oct. 30) and $21.60 (Friendly Half, Nov. 1). Total: a $20.20 profit (84 percent!) on $2 win bets.

Nelson: 9 top selections that didn't appear in anybody else's top three; 1 winner, paying $19.80 (Catastaire, Nov. 5). Total: a $1.80 profit (10 percent) on $2 win bets.

Nelson and Turrell have two lone-wolf picks each on today's Hollywood Park card:

- Nelson likes Affirminator (No. 4) in the fourth race; Affirminator is 8-1 on the morning line. He also likes Miguel's Mascot (8) in the fifth; Miguel's Mascot is 12-1.

- Turrell likes Atka (7) in the fifth; Atka is 6-1. And he likes D. Double You (5) in the seventh, following the scratch of his original top pick Sassou. D. Double You is 5-1.

These might be good horses to, at the very least, throw into your combination bets.