Certain equine events involving mint juleps and ladies in big hats may get more attention.

But for avid horseracing fans, the Breeders’ Cup is the supreme event of the year, frequently described as racing’s version of the World Series, Super Bowl and World Cup rolled into one.

It began Friday and continues today. 

This affair is not about tradition and ceremony — it’s about betting. Most of the time, horseplayers contend with modern indignities: cheap claiming races, near-deserted racetracks, waning media attention, government taking a huge cut of their winnings and races with fields so small they’re hardly worth looking at.

But they persist because they love the intellectual challenge of trying to beat the ponies. Each race is an intricate puzzle of possibilities with limitless bits of raw information to feed into cold calculus and informed intuition. (Then you lose and the person next to you who thought the horse had a cute name hits the jackpot.)

The Breeders’ Cup is 14 races over two days, when the best horses from all over the world assemble with the best jockeys to compete on grass and dirt, in sprints and mile-and-a-half marathons, in races for two-year-old juveniles and races with nine-year-old warhorses.

The culmination is the $5 million Classic, in which superstar Curlin will compete today against a field that includes intimidating European interlopers such as Raven’s Pass, Henrythenavigator and Duke of Marmalade.

For all its charms, the Breeders’ Cup is extraordinarily tough to beat.

There are too many quality horses.

This is in some ways a good thing because the parimutuel money is spread around widely and odds on each horse are higher, paying more.

Even an overwhelming favorite can be profitably bet: Just pair the horse in an exacta with a choice for second — and there is a herd of choices.

Yet the abundance of talent can be bewildering. Bettors who weigh a dozen factors when they analyze a race suddenly are looking at hundreds. It’s difficult to find many horses to “throw out” because they have a poor jockey, poor trainer, poor track record or a lack of class. Bettors who take half an hour studying most races might spend hours on just one.

“There are so many variables,” said Dave Johnson, a longtime announcer who co-hosts a racing show on Sirius radio. “Instead of looking at one race, you’re looking at 14, and instead of five horses, it’s 14. There are so many combinations, and they start to increase exponentially.”

And this year, there’s a wild card: a new artificial surface at Santa Anita, one of nine added in the past few years in North America.

These more-yielding tracks are designed largely to cut down on injuries since a series of tragic accidents such as when Eight Belles went down in the last Kentucky Derby.

But handicappers want to know how to play it. Students of the game have crunched numbers on thousands of races looking for patterns over the years, but there’s little data on the synthetic tracks. Not to mention that there are four different brands.

Bill Finley, author of the current book “Betting Synthetic Surfaces,” said, “Ten years from now, someone will be able to write a much better book.” He said he himself would demur. (“Not a lot of money in it.“)

If you’re betting the Breeders’ Cup, Finley and others do have a few general observations which may play out.

The track could be easier on European horses, who run on softer turf at home and sometimes dislike hard Southern California dirt.

Horses that like to come from behind, or closers, tend to do slightly better on the plastic than speedy horses who seize the lead early (and often tire at the end). And obviously horses who have already performed well on a synthetic surface might prosper.

Curlin, by the way, never has, but the consensus is that he’s the real deal and should win the big race handily. Trouble is, that’s not enough. At a morning line of 7-5, you won’t earn much if you merely bet him to win. But there are, of course, a zillion other options.