tote-board, does it influence you?

[Capper Al]

Many ways to incorporate the tote-board. You can ignore it and play your picks. You can play your picks at odds only, a.k.a. value play. You can confirm your plays from tote action. Or you can make your picks by tote action only and not handicapping. I'm a value player trying to integrate a method of play with the board and re-reading The Tote Board is Alive and Well. What's your experience with tote action?

[Overlay]

The only time that I use the board as a gauge of intent is with first-timers (especially two-year-olds). Other than that, I use it for determining wagering value in comparison to my own fair-odds line.

I specifically do not subscribe to the practice of staying off a horse that appears competitive against its field based on form, class, and other fundamental handicapping factors, solely on the basis that its odds or tote patterns supposedly indicate that the horse will not be "trying" today.

[Dave Schwartz]

I choose option 4, but it really sounds like I use no value.

I use "perceived value based upon my own line," (i.e. what I think the odds SHOULD be).

Then I size the bets based upon the pool not being wagered and the pool on the non-contenders.

It is working very well for me.

[Capper Al]

I choose option 4, but it really sounds like I use no value.

I use "perceived value based upon my own line," (i.e. what I think the odds SHOULD be).

Then I size the bets based upon the pool not being wagered and the pool on the non-contenders.

It is working very well for me.

Dave,

How does your method differ from option 2 where you set expected odds?

[Pensacola Pete]

If the horse is long enough odds to bet, I bet it. I don't let tote moves or supposed smart money influence.

[Stillriledup]

It does, both ways. I threw the winner of Belmont's first race into some of my pick 5s because the horse got bet down pretty hard, that totally had an effect on some of my tickets so yeah, on occasion, i'll throw in a horse who takes money. I also didnt love the winner of the 2nd race, but when she got bet like she couldnt lose, i didnt bet as much against her as i normally might have.

On the flip side, i might toss out a horse because its overbet, so in that regard, i'll also look at overbet horses to toss them, so the board plays a huge factor for me, i'm not betting on horses, i'm betting on bets.

[Capper Al]

If the horse is long enough odds to bet, I bet it. I don't let tote moves or supposed smart money influence.

Option 2?

[Capper Al]

It does, both ways. I threw the winner of Belmont's first race into some of my pick 5s because the horse got bet down pretty hard, that totally had an effect on some of my tickets so yeah, on occasion, i'll throw in a horse who takes money. I also didnt love the winner of the 2nd race, but when she got bet like she couldnt lose, i didnt bet as much against her as i normally might have.

On the flip side, i might toss out a horse because its overbet, so in that regard, i'll also look at overbet horses to toss them, so the board plays a huge factor for me, i'm not betting on horses, i'm betting on bets.

Option 3, playing for or against action on the tote?

[Capper Al]

Anyone read the book the Tote Board is alive and Well? I'm interested in the trends. Any experience with this?

[green80]

Betting horses without looking at the tote board is like buying stocks without looking at the price.

[Stillriledup]

Option 3, playing for or against action on the tote?

I do. If i see horses take "sneaky money" and they are horses that i'm on the cusp of liking anyway, that will give me an extra bump to throw them into my exotics.

[Dave Schwartz]

How does your method differ from option 2 where you set expected odds?

I do not set MINIMUM odds.

I bet ACCORDING to my expected odds.

I no longer am a slave to the tote board. I use it only for scratches and payoffs.

1. I determine an Order of Preference (OOP). That is, the order that I think the horses should be played based upon value and hit rate, but mostly value.

2. I begin putting horses into a Dutch by the OOP.

3. When I have bet a significant portion of the pool, I stop adding horses.
Usually 3 horses, sometimes 2, occasionally 1. Rarely as many as 5.

[traynor]

Option 4, for the same reasons Dave Schwartz provided, with the exception that I don't make adjustments based on odds on a race-by-race basis. The projected odds (that I use) are close enough to the actual odds (over many races) to make adjusting wagers on individual races non-productive. (That is a euphemism for "a waste of time.")

Specifically, I don't find that betting one race at a time and adjusting wagers based on the tote board is more profitable than what I do now. If I did, I would do it.

(Based on DS's last post, it is not an exception.)

[DeltaLover]

Obviously #4

[RaceBookJoe]

Anyone read the book the Tote Board is alive and Well? I'm interested in the trends. Any experience with this?

I enjoyed that book, but liked Holloway's " The Talking Tote " better, but maybe because I read that one first. There was a time ( pre-internet wagering ) I would just use the tote from time to time, but only on certain races. I haven't really tried it recently, but have been thinking about it again, just not sure how late money internet bets come in to affect things, not to mention getting sidetracked with simulcast racing now.

[Capper Al]

My thought is that I set minimum odds, but by demanding odds there are a lot of dead horses before I hit a winner. If I could eliminate some losers, it would make waiting for a win a lot less stressful and profitable. The betting action, a.k.a. trends, might provide a clue as to what long odds horse is worth waiting for.

[Robert Fischer]

I know what to expect with the tote-board for a given horse. I prefer to get what I expected.

My rule is when you expect a certain odds range, and you don't understand why you aren't getting a different odds range, then you are missing critical info and should tread lightly.

[Tape Reader]

I bet off the tote board only. I am not a serious horse player. I am a serious technician in the markets. I use 100% technical analysis for both.

I love charting the the tote board. In the past I used specially designed chart paper. Now I have a home grown program that reads live odds and issues buy or sell candidates according to my user defined variables. I like to play vertical exotics when the odds are good.

Contrary to popular belief, I feel that "whales" and late impulses enhance the rewards for value tote board readers. A ton of money coming in on a favorite drives up the odds on all the others.

To the casual "looker" at the tote board I would caution that high odds, low odds, should not be summarily dismissed. There is analysis involved just as there is in PP reading. Just my opinion.

[Capper Al]

.
Gaines names his tote-board trends H1, H2, H4, H6, and H8. His favorite trends seem to be first H1 followed by H8. H2 is a losing pattern to watch out for. The H1 pattern is as follows:

Opening flash odds are half or less of the Morning Line odds.
Odds go up until the last few minutes.
Then the odds drop before closing.


My book is an 1981 edition. Could this possibly work in today's internet world with odds holding out to the very end? I think it might. Is someone using it?

[Tape Reader]

.
Gaines names his tote-board trends H1, The H1 pattern is as follows:

Opening flash odds are half or less of the Morning Line odds.
Odds go up until the last few minutes.
Then the odds drop before closing.


Early money is one of the angles that I use successfully. However, the late money added to that early bet adds a “conspiracy” theory to it. I don’t see it that way.

< ML at open and >ML at off, I find better. No conspiracy. Just someone disagreeing with the ML odds maker. Something I regard as “other”: Bettor does not agree with the ML maker, and the public does not agree with the bettor. Suspicious, I like that.

[Robert Fischer]

I know what to expect with the tote-board for a given horse. I prefer to get what I expected.

My rule is when you expect a certain odds range, and you don't understand why you aren't getting a different odds range, then you are missing critical info and should tread lightly.

I think I worded that wrong. [should be and you don't understand why you are getting a different odds range ]
Still should be easy to understand.

Before the race, let's say I expect the :4: horse to be 7-2 2nd choice.
Then Opening Flash the :4: is 7-1.

The problem I have with this scenario, is that I EXPECTED the :4: to be 2nd choice around 7-2.
So I have no idea why he opens at 7-1.

By the time the race goes off, chances are he's been bet down to 9-2. (maybe that was just weird early action, or maybe the Public is betting off of form and equalizing some of the form-related overlay/underlays by post time.)
Since I don't know why that horse opened so cold and overall was so cold, then that means I am missing critical info. I don't know what the hell is going on, so I'm either betting very small, or passing the race altogether.

same principle - same race, let's say I think the :4: horse is the the 2nd most likely winner. He should be about 7-2 on the tote board. However, I can see that he's the 2nd best, but I doubt the public will see it. They don't know what they are doing with this horse. I can see something that they can't see here.
I expect the :4: to be at least 4 or 5-1.
Then Opening Flash the :4: is 7-1.
Great. The public hasn't seen the reality with this horse. I hope he stays 7-1.
As post time nears he looks to go off around 9-2. I make my standard, normal confident wager.

So that was the same horse, same odds, Completely Different betting by me.

[Hoofless_Wonder]

...My book is an 1981 edition. Could this possibly work in today's internet world with odds holding out to the very end? I think it might. Is someone using it?

While I think tote analysis is still relevant, I don't consider the opening flash nearly as important as it used to be 20 or 30 years ago. With smaller crowds at the track, and smart phone/tablet wagering, getting shut out is isn't nearly the problem it once was which drove some connections to bet early. Of course the problem of the late avalanche of money is more prevalent today as well.

That being said, I do think using technical analysis techniques can provide much insight to the outcome of the race. Personally, I look most closely at:

- the overbet favorite and the risk of tossing it out completely
- the overbet non-contender and why are the odds so low?

There was a time when I followed harness horses that I could almost read the tote board like a book:

8/5 - horse trying, dumb money following
5/2 - horse trying, acceptable price
7/2 - horse not trying, toss

With today's erratic thoroughbred, I can't really do that any more...

[Capper Al]

Early money is one of the angles that I use successfully. However, the late money added to that early bet adds a “conspiracy” theory to it. I don’t see it that way.

< ML at open and >ML at off, I find better. No conspiracy. Just someone disagreeing with the ML odds maker. Something I regard as “other”: Bettor does not agree with the ML maker, and the public does not agree with the bettor. Suspicious, I like that.

Intuitively, I agree with you. Although, Gaines does not list this trend in his book.

[Capper Al]

I think I worded that wrong. [should be and you don't understand why you are getting a different odds range ]
Still should be easy to understand.

Before the race, let's say I expect the :4: horse to be 7-2 2nd choice.
Then Opening Flash the :4: is 7-1.

The problem I have with this scenario, is that I EXPECTED the :4: to be 2nd choice around 7-2.
So I have no idea why he opens at 7-1.

By the time the race goes off, chances are he's been bet down to 9-2. (maybe that was just weird early action, or maybe the Public is betting off of form and equalizing some of the form-related overlay/underlays by post time.)
Since I don't know why that horse opened so cold and overall was so cold, then that means I am missing critical info. I don't know what the hell is going on, so I'm either betting very small, or passing the race altogether.

same principle - same race, let's say I think the :4: horse is the the 2nd most likely winner. He should be about 7-2 on the tote board. However, I can see that he's the 2nd best, but I doubt the public will see it. They don't know what they are doing with this horse. I can see something that they can't see here.
I expect the :4: to be at least 4 or 5-1.
Then Opening Flash the :4: is 7-1.
Great. The public hasn't seen the reality with this horse. I hope he stays 7-1.
As post time nears he looks to go off around 9-2. I make my standard, normal confident wager.

So that was the same horse, same odds, Completely Different betting by me.

Figuring what the individual handicapper sees in a race verse the crowd verse the smart money is what this effort is about. It looks to me that you are more focused on the crowd than the smart money. This leaves the smart money out. Tagging the smart money might be impossible with today's totes until after the windows close. Still it's good to understand the pubic before making a wager.

[Capper Al]

While I think tote analysis is still relevant, I don't consider the opening flash nearly as important as it used to be 20 or 30 years ago. With smaller crowds at the track, and smart phone/tablet wagering, getting shut out is isn't nearly the problem it once was which drove some connections to bet early. Of course the problem of the late avalanche of money is more prevalent today as well.

That being said, I do think using technical analysis techniques can provide much insight to the outcome of the race. Personally, I look most closely at:

- the overbet favorite and the risk of tossing it out completely
- the overbet non-contender and why are the odds so low?

There was a time when I followed harness horses that I could almost read the tote board like a book:

8/5 - horse trying, dumb money following
5/2 - horse trying, acceptable price
7/2 - horse not trying, toss

With today's erratic thoroughbred, I can't really do that any more...

Overbet favorite and non-contender might be the only things to look for. The money flow doesn't seem to matter in this case. It looks like Smart money is left out of your analysis also. Again,in today's world smart money may be too difficult to track.

[Capper Al]

H1 to me is the essential smart money analysis. Of course, figuring which horses drop last minute is almost impossible nowadays.

H2 (a loser) is as follows:


Open flash half or less of ML.
The odds never go up.


The money here seems to be pure public without smart money. It could be a bad ML or the newspapers picked this horse and the public follows.

[Robert Goren]

I usually set minimum odds, but that varies from race to race and horse to horse. I might bet RA at 2/5 and think I got a steal. other times and other horses I might want 5/1. Sometime I might pass a race, when I like a horse and think the public would make it 3/2 and it goes off at 7/2. Sometimes I like a horse and it does not matter if it is 5/2 or 25/1. That happens when I think I have found a strong track bias.

[CincyHorseplayer]

I know Thask has been interested in some patterns he has been seeing and has recorded notes.Can't wait to hear his input.

I watch odds,but not hardcore.I do know that when I see horses getting "Steamed" and I think they are wrong I get excited.But if at a certain track mediocre looking horses keep getting bet and win,it's time for me to go.

[DeltaLover]

Overbet favorite and non-contender might be the only things to look for. The money flow doesn't seem to matter in this case. It looks like Smart money is left out of your analysis also. Again,in today's world smart money may be too difficult to track.

Technically speaking, I do not think that the term 'overbet favorite' is very accurate. Whenever you detect a significant discrepancy between what your estimate and the crowd's, it is most of the times the later that will be proven correct! A 5-2 overlay that based in your handicapping was supposed to be even money, in most of the cases does not represent an overlay but a dead horse.

A far better approach will be use 'overbet' handicapping angles as opposed to specific horses. Instead of looking for the specific horse trying to detect if it is overbet or not, you can simply detect its most visible handicapping factors and check if at least one of them tends to mislead the crowd. By doing so, you simply do not care about the price of the specific horse, knowing that in the 'long run' you have an edge betting against it.

A classic example of such an angle, is a horse exiting a route in the breeders cup finishing in the top spots. This type of a starter is always overestimated by the crowd, creating very large overlays among the other starters.

[Capper Al]

When this topic started, in my mind anyway, I was just watching the tote-board for trends. Robert's view to me is very interesting. He considers himself with the opportunity just like the smart money folks do and plays against the crowd with his horse. The 'conspiracy' part falls out with this approach, and this may be more practical in today's world. So now the question is elevated. Do tote-boards trends matter, and why do they matter? And, if they do matter, is it because we are tracking smart money or the crowd or both?

[Robert Fischer]

Figuring what the individual handicapper sees in a race verse the crowd verse the smart money is what this effort is about. It looks to me that you are more focused on the crowd than the smart money. This leaves the smart money out. Tagging the smart money might be impossible with today's totes until after the windows close. Still it's good to understand the pubic before making a wager.

When I don't get the odds that I expect, it can **only mean 3 things:




Randomness - example: Owner bets his horse(- for no other reason that he is the Owner, and has a meaningless $10K to back his horse in Thursday's 5th race).
Market Behavior - example: HUGE! favorite just lost the race before, and is affecting the market behavior for this race (maybe gamblers are chasing losses, maybe they are chasing their tails!).
smart money- example: Word has gotten out that a morning line favorite class standout claimer, is in fact dropping down the claiming ranks due to infirmity.




** 'only' is a strong word and often premature in these usages

[RaceBookJoe]

I would sometimes also only use the toteboard on races that were tough to handicap, maybe a race with mostly first time starters , or lots of imports ( personally I don't do well in deciphering the overseas pp lines ), races with lots of proven losers or even something like a turf race with no horse ever running or running well on grass. I should run thru that Gaines book again, only thing I really remember off hand is that he names his H-patterns for Lou Holloway.

[Capper Al]

Gaines looks for smart money patterns only. If one does like Robert and only plays the crowd, he is playing a game like Texas Hold 'em poker. The tote-board is the cards turned up. His edge on the game is what is hidden in his hand turned down. One has to be confident in their handicapping that they could see something that the public misses and, hope, that there isn't smart money he's playing against. My question to Robert is do you ever make a play when you perceive the crowd isn't blowing it? And how does this vary from simply setting a minimum and striking when the crowd is off your horse?

[Capper Al]

H2 wasn't necessarily a bad play if your handicapping picked the horse also. There just isn't any smart money value in it.

From H4 out is where it starts to get interesting for me because the odds are now acceptable at ML or higher.

The rules for H4 are as follows:


The opening flash is less than ML but more than half ML
Odds go up until before closing.
Odds drop before the window closes.

[thaskalos]

When this topic started, in my mind anyway, I was just watching the tote-board for trends. Robert's view to me is very interesting. He considers himself with the opportunity just like the smart money folks do and plays against the crowd with his horse. The 'conspiracy' part falls out with this approach, and this may be more practical in today's world. So now the question is elevated. Do tote-boards trends matter, and why do they matter? And, if they do matter, is it because we are tracking smart money or the crowd or both?
Tote board trends no longer matter...because we no longer know when this money was actually wagered. The monies that are wagered are no longer reflected on the tote board exactly when the bets are made.

In the "old' days...a sudden drop in the odds as the horses were nearing the post actually meant that someone unloaded on the horse at the last minute of betting.

Now...it could easily mean that an ADW outfit was late in passing a prior wager through to the main track.

[Capper Al]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJTp5U7LVcE

The link above is a 50 minute Night School discussion on the tote-board.

[Capper Al]

Tote board trends no longer matter...because we no longer know when this money was actually wagered. The monies that are wagered are no longer reflected on the tote board exactly when the bets are made.

In the "old' days...a sudden drop in the odds as the horses were nearing the post actually meant that someone unloaded on the horse at the last minute of betting.

Now...it could easily mean that an ADW outfit was late in passing a prior wager through to the main track.

How do you feel about committed money like in the Double or Pick 3 payouts?

[Dave Schwartz]

Tote board trends no longer matter...because we no longer know when this money was actually wagered. The monies that are wagered are no longer reflected on the tote board exactly when the bets are made.

In the "old' days...a sudden drop in the odds as the horses were nearing the post actually meant that someone unloaded on the horse at the last minute of betting.

Now...it could easily mean that an ADW outfit was late in passing a prior wager through to the main track.

You just keep making great posts these days.

:ThmbUp:

The "first flash" stuff, IMHO, used to work because of all the "bookie money" getting shoved into the pool before the race was on the tote board. That ship has pretty much sailed.

In fact, these days, I would actually be a little worried that a first flash horse was just somebody trying to mislead the public.

[dkithore]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJTp5U7LVcE

The link above is a 50 minute Night School discussion on the tote-board.

That was informative. thanks.

[thaskalos]

How do you feel about committed money like in the Double or Pick 3 payouts?

I have looked into that a little through the years...but I have never found it to be of any consequence.

IMO...there is no reason to believe that the "committed money" is any more informed than the final odds of the individual races.

[ultracapper]

Betting horses without looking at the tote board is like buying stocks without looking at the price.

True, true. I don't let the tote determine which horse I'll bet, but it definitely determines IF I'll bet, and how much. If the tote is "out of whack" with where I think it should be, I usually run away. If 3 or 4 horses are at prices I just can't figure out, I figure I've maybe missed something. I feel like I should be able to predict well enough about the price every horse should be. I try to think as much like the morning line maker as possible, which is not to determine which horse will win, but how each will be bet.

[ultracapper]

You just keep making great posts these days.

:ThmbUp:

The "first flash" stuff, IMHO, used to work because of all the "bookie money" getting shoved into the pool before the race was on the tote board. That ship has pretty much sailed.

In fact, these days, I would actually be a little worried that a first flash horse was just somebody trying to mislead the public.

The early money has always been the money I've watched, and I think even more so now. I always figured the early money was barn/connections money. The barn is too busy pre-race to hit the windows, so they get their money in earlier in the day. Often connections can't make it to the track, and if they have a good one going, particularly if it's a cheap race and being there for the picture isn't as important as if it were one of the stable standouts, they'll have somebody else, a friend that's present or one of the barn personnel, get the bet down for them. The computer can take that out of the equation somewhat now as the non-present connection can now get their bet down anytime before post time, but in times gone by, that was the way I figured. I fully agree there is early money put on horses with the full intention of taking the bet down close to post time. A new wrinkle of the computer betting generation. Late money can come from anywhere, and it doesn't need to be smart. Some clown can have a huge day at Belmont, drink all day, and with a stupid $250 to win and place at Emerald Downs, knock a horse from 6-1 to 7-2. Late money has never really gotten my attention, and even less so now. Very little money from handicappers can be considered smart money in my opinion. Smart money to me is barn/connection's money. Maybe a better word for it is "in the know" money. I think the majority of that is early, at least I've felt it's that way, and I feel like early money has lead me better than late money in the years I've been playing the track.

Many connections have betting habits. There was a very prominent owner back when Longacres was running named John Roche. Big apple grower in Eastern Washington. Owned many nice horses. His money was always down at the first flash. It didn't take much imagination back then to determine if Mr. Roche felt his horse was going to run that day or not. If his money wasn't there at the first flash, it wasn't coming at all. Mike Chambers, a very high percentage trainer at Turf Paradise these days, was his trainer back then, late 80s early 90s. If Chambers told him today was the day, Roche told the rest of the world 25 minutes to post.

[FocusWiz]

I have looked into that a little through the years...but I have never found it to be of any consequence.

IMO...there is no reason to believe that the "committed money" is any more informed than the final odds of the individual races.I tend to agree with this and yet since I was a child, I have always watched the toteboard and double and exacta probables when considering my wagers.

As far as whether or not the doubles wagering has any value, here is a snippet from the Sunday wagering at Belmont. It shows the horse bet down most (by my calculations) in the doubles wagering for the 2nd through 11th races (based on the wagering in the 1st through 10th) and whether or not that horse finished in the top four or not (with payoffs if it finished in the top 3):

Horse Finish Win Place Show
5 1 $3.80 $2.50 $2.10
3 4 $- $- $-
4 2 $- $3.40 $2.80
4 2 $- $3.80 $3.20
5 1 $7.70 $3.60 $2.70
7 4 $- $- $-
4 4 $- $- $-
5 1 $5.70 $2.90 $2.60
9 4 $- $- $-
4
From another perspective, if you looked at the top 3 horses selected by the doubles wagering, 5 of these top three "contenders" won their race, with the highest paying $24.00.

That was a typical day. I have been tweaking the formulas since July and I have seen much better and much worse. The interesting thing is that I expected these horses to always be short money horses, but they aren't. On 10/2, for example, in the 5th race the top horse (by a significant margin) in the doubles wagering was Vinny Goodtimes which I had not even considered a contender and which won paying $22.80. The horse left the gate at the morning line odds of 10/1. Though heavily bet in the doubles, the win odds had hardly budged at all.

So, yes, these probably not any more informed than the final odds, but definitely there are times when the wagering is very different.

[ultracapper]

I would guess any kind of tote indicator is a really, truly significant event about once every 25-30 races, maybe even less frequent. Whether early money, late money, or double pools, a real, true indicator that somebody has something under their hat and is giving it away on the board is probably only once or twice a week at any given track. I don't think every race has somebody in the know, betting smart money in a coordinated fashion. It happens, no doubt, but firstly having it go down, and then recognizing it for what it is, seems to me to be very difficult. The example of reliable early money that I gave in an earlier post was recognizable for what it was because we knew the owner's modus operandi. Without that, it's tough. In Socal, it hasn't been for a few years now, but there was a time when you could watch the John Liviakis owned horses and tell whether Conlon had given him the big green light or not. You had to keep your eye on it too. He wasn't always early money. I saw him bet a horse of his down at SA with a minute to post from 8-1 to 2-1. At that time of the betting at Santa Anita, that must have been a 10 to 15K bet.

[Capper Al]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJTp5U7LVcE

The link above is a 50 minute Night School discussion on the tote-board.

I'm just repeating this post for those joining us late.

[Capper Al]

I have looked into that a little through the years...but I have never found it to be of any consequence.

IMO...there is no reason to believe that the "committed money" is any more informed than the final odds of the individual races.

I have found that the committed double/pick 3 money is as good as the final flash of the tote-board. Committed money may differ from the tote-board, but neither one has an edge over the other. The favorites win about the same on each board. If anything else, playing the double/pick 3 payouts will save one the hassle and time pressure of trying to figure out where the tote-board is going and getting in a bet before the windows close.

[Capper Al]

Two more trends to go. I do believe Thaskalos was right about trends not being as valuable as they once were. Although, I still like to check opening flash and about 5 minutes before closing. We'll get back to committed money later on.

H6:


Opening odds > ML
Odds go higher in next flash.
Then they start to go down.
Before closing the odds may go up again.


This is another one with good odds at the end.

[Capper Al]

H8 is Gaines second favorite after H1 and the last of the trends.

H8:


Opening odds are twice ML.
Several drops in odds. He calls these WHAPs.
Odds may go back up.


Another trend that may end in high odds. Tell us if you tried any of these and what you found.

[MJC922]

In the case of my pick being dead on the board it influences my opinion of the event post-race when forming an opinion of the result for future use. As for the pre-race i.e. bet itself, I stick to my guns and bet the same amount anyway. That's usually a very bad idea. In the aftermath though if it looked like the rider was on hold and I'm convinced the connections didn't have their money down I will follow the horse for a race or two. Citius was a recent example of this which I posted about. I was convinced a couple of weeks ago when he was off at 7-2 with a 5-2 morning line he was cold.

Tote action can be subtle. To evaluate it properly I think is big challenge in today's game. Often times one horse is bet inordinately hard by some random person and the odds on all of the rest are slightly elevated, that's vastly different from a single horse being DOB even though the odds in both cases may be the same. Then you have another problem of people betting heavy early to drive people toward other horses and then pulling the money out late.

Then you have cases where money just shows up strong and you know it isn't all crowd money. I would say last night at Mountaineer in the second race Beer Drinkin Shari was a good example of a horse that you expect will take a bit of money on the drop down.

The morning line on this horse was a reasonable 4-1 she was dropping a peg after caving three in a row. She got slammed down to 5-2 in here going right into the face of an even money shot that was breaking from the rail. The board spoke, IMO crowd money is no better than 7-2 on this horse. The result? She blew past the field moving like a car and won for fun.

Watch the rider the race before, you'll know last night was a GO.

[traynor]

Technically speaking, I do not think that the term 'overbet favorite' is very accurate. Whenever you detect a significant discrepancy between what your estimate and the crowd's, it is most of the times the later that will be proven correct! A 5-2 overlay that based in your handicapping was supposed to be even money, in most of the cases does not represent an overlay but a dead horse.

A far better approach will be use 'overbet' handicapping angles as opposed to specific horses. Instead of looking for the specific horse trying to detect if it is overbet or not, you can simply detect its most visible handicapping factors and check if at least one of them tends to mislead the crowd. By doing so, you simply do not care about the price of the specific horse, knowing that in the 'long run' you have an edge betting against it.

A classic example of such an angle, is a horse exiting a route in the breeders cup finishing in the top spots. This type of a starter is always overestimated by the crowd, creating very large overlays among the other starters.

Without giving away the candy store, could you expand on that? I understand the bet against the favorite (you will be right two out of three times with nothing else considered). but you seem to be doing something more sophisticated. What I don't understand is the bolded part above.

I understand single factors have specific percentages (strike rate). I also understand that single factors almost never exist in isolation--there are always other confounding factors that influence the percentages (and the outcome of the race) by their presence or absence.

I agree totally that this is a productive area for one to devote some time and effort to understanding and using. I am unclear how regarding only a single factor can be productive. Or am I misreading what you wrote?

I have been working on something similar, but it uses multiple factors to create "profiles" for each entry. I have found that composites generally outperform single factors, but take a LOT more work to create meaningfully.

[Hoofless_Wonder]

Interesting thread Capper Al - thanks for starting.

The H8 pattern lends itself to the tote board analysis software, and identifying the WHAPs. I've done a lot of manual tracking over the years and used a couple of s/w packages with mixed results. The downside is the time factor - when trying to handicap multiple tracks, looking for track bias, trying to get a look at the ponies in the paddock and on the track, etc., the analysis of the tote board action often takes a back seat, at least for me. Is anyone willing to share their success (or lack thereof) stories with any commercial or custom s/w packages they use for tote board analysis?

The "smart money" can possibly be divided into two camps - the "in the know" barn/connections side, and the superior handicapper side. Since I make the assumption the majority of barn money goes vertical in a single race, the "committed" money of the multi-race pools may indicate where the better handicappers are leaning, and as Capper Al pointed out - also provide a more accurate estimate of final race odds.

[Capper Al]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJTp5U7LVcE

The link above is a 50 minute Night School discussion on the tote-board.

Again I'm just repeating this post for those of you joining late. It is a good overall discussion on the tote-board.

[Capper Al]

In the case of my pick being dead on the board it influences my opinion of the event post-race when forming an opinion of the result for future use. As for the pre-race i.e. bet itself, I stick to my guns and bet the same amount anyway. That's usually a very bad idea. In the aftermath though if it looked like the rider was on hold and I'm convinced the connections didn't have their money down I will follow the horse for a race or two. Citius was a recent example of this which I posted about. I was convinced a couple of weeks ago when he was off at 7-2 with a 5-2 morning line he was cold.

Tote action can be subtle. To evaluate it properly I think is big challenge in today's game. Often times one horse is bet inordinately hard by some random person and the odds on all of the rest are slightly elevated, that's vastly different from a single horse being DOB even though the odds in both cases may be the same. Then you have another problem of people betting heavy early to drive people toward other horses and then pulling the money out late.

Then you have cases where money just shows up strong and you know it isn't all crowd money. I would say last night at Mountaineer in the second race Beer Drinkin Shari was a good example of a horse that you expect will take a bit of money on the drop down.

The morning line on this horse was a reasonable 4-1 she was dropping a peg after caving three in a row. She got slammed down to 5-2 in here going right into the face of an even money shot that was breaking from the rail. The board spoke, IMO crowd money is no better than 7-2 on this horse. The result? She blew past the field moving like a car and won for fun.

Watch the rider the race before, you'll know last night was a GO.

Dead money or lack of money on a horse is another complication for us to deal with. It is very important to me since I set minimum odds. I have to answer the question why am I so fortunate and getting 9 to 1 on my selection? Is it because the crowd missed it? Is it because I missed something? Is it because the barn isn't going to try today? Am I under rating another horse? These are the questions that have peeked my interest in the tote-board again. Just think how wonderful it would be for the cappers that wait for their long shots to come in to be able to eliminate half of their plays on dead horses while they wait.

[Capper Al]

Interesting thread Capper Al - thanks for starting.

The H8 pattern lends itself to the tote board analysis software, and identifying the WHAPs. I've done a lot of manual tracking over the years and used a couple of s/w packages with mixed results. The downside is the time factor - when trying to handicap multiple tracks, looking for track bias, trying to get a look at the ponies in the paddock and on the track, etc., the analysis of the tote board action often takes a back seat, at least for me. Is anyone willing to share their success (or lack thereof) stories with any commercial or custom s/w packages they use for tote board analysis?

The "smart money" can possibly be divided into two camps - the "in the know" barn/connections side, and the superior handicapper side. Since I make the assumption the majority of barn money goes vertical in a single race, the "committed" money of the multi-race pools may indicate where the better handicappers are leaning, and as Capper Al pointed out - also provide a more accurate estimate of final race odds.

WHAPs are a big deal to trend watching. A WHAP is a drop of two or more odds ratings. Let's set up the natural order of the odds: 2/1, 5/2, 3/1, 7/2, 4/1, 9/2, 5/1 etc. Should a horse drop from 5/1 to 4/1in one flash, it is skipping over 9/2 in the natural order of odds. This is significant and adds to the comfirmation of any trend being watch that you may be on to something.

I once had a tote-board system for harness that used odds ranking. The thinking was a movement from the fifth to the fourth favorite wasn't significant, but a move of two positions
Was. For example, a move from fifth to third. And this only applied to the top half of the favorites. In a nine horse field, a horse dropping from ninth to sixth wasn't significant.

[MJC922]

Dead money or lack of money on a horse is another complication for us to deal with. It is very important to me since I set minimum odds. I have to answer the question why am I so fortunate and getting 9 to 1 on my selection? Is it because the crowd missed it? Is it because I missed something? Is it because the barn isn't going to try today? Am I under rating another horse? These are the questions that have peeked my interest in the tote-board again. Just think how wonderful it would be for the cappers that wait for their long shots to come in to be able to eliminate half of their plays on dead horses while they wait.

Yeah it's an interesting and relevant part of the game. I would estimate half or more of the high-wpct 20% trainers at my local track bet heavily, I observed this personally, and not just on their own horses, they bet just like anyone else almost every race. When they liked their own horse it typically took some money. They aren't always right and sometimes it just makes for better prices on other contenders but the end result is an awful lot of these horses are underlays on paper but they win often enough, that's just the reality of it.

I think if you can find a way to identify live horses by the money they're taking then you can probably identify dead ones too. Something to try is maybe to filter the money at each flash and see how much is bet on each horse percentage-wise from minute to minute, that might reveal some larger action in close to real-time. Hard to say. The other thing is an awful lot of stable money goes into gimmicks so looking at the win pool isn't always going to tell the whole story. Some of these people don't bet into the win pool at all.

[Overlay]

Dead money or lack of money on a horse is another complication for us to deal with. It is very important to me since I set minimum odds. I have to answer the question why am I so fortunate and getting 9 to 1 on my selection? Is it because the crowd missed it? Is it because I missed something? Is it because the barn isn't going to try today? Am I under rating another horse? These are the questions that have peeked my interest in the tote-board again. Just think how wonderful it would be for the cappers that wait for their long shots to come in to be able to eliminate half of their plays on dead horses while they wait.
As I've commented previously, quantifying and compartmentalizing my handicapping help me in this regard. Basing my line on statistics in which I have long-term confidence (rather than on "feel" or subjective opinion) eliminates agonizing over why I rated a horse as I did. And knowing exactly what factors and weights went into arriving at a horse's overall probability in my line helps me both to see why horses in the race might be held at odds that are higher or lower than mine, and to know when popular opinion can be safely disregarded.

Perhaps the public has recognized a positive factor that I also have, but has overbet it, creating an underlay and causing the odds of other well-meant horses in the race to rise. Or a horse may have been underbet because of a factor that the public has regarded as a negative sign, but where I am confident that either the factor is not the negative indicator that the public perceives it to be, or that the horse has other positive attributes that outweigh it, and the odds are compensating me for it.

However, in neither of these cases am I dependent on the analysis of tote patterns to arrive at my conclusions. All the information that I need is in the horse's record.

[traynor]

As I've commented previously, quantifying and compartmentalizing my handicapping help me in this regard. Basing my line on statistics in which I have long-term confidence (rather than on "feel" or subjective opinion) eliminates agonizing over why I rated a horse as I did. And knowing exactly what factors and weights went into arriving at a horse's overall probability in my line helps me both to see why horses in the race might be held at odds that are higher or lower than mine, and to know when popular opinion can be safely disregarded.

Perhaps the public has recognized a positive factor that I also have, but has overbet it, creating an underlay and causing the odds of other well-meant horses in the race to rise. Or a horse may have been underbet because of a factor that the public has regarded as a negative sign, but where I am confident that either the factor is not the negative indicator that the public perceives it to be, or that the horse has other positive attributes that outweigh it, and the odds are compensating me for it.

However, in neither of these cases am I dependent on the analysis of tote patterns to arrive at my conclusions. All the information that I need is in the horse's record.

I think that is the only approach that is going to be productive over time. If one doesn't have (and use) that information, one would always be reacting to the actions or inactions of others, with no real idea why they were doing whatever it was that one is reacting to.

Betting hundreds of races (or thousands, over time) is way different than betting one or two races once in awhile.

[FocusWiz]

As I've commented previously, quantifying and compartmentalizing my handicapping help me in this regard. Basing my line on statistics in which I have long-term confidence (rather than on "feel" or subjective opinion) eliminates agonizing over why I rated a horse as I did. And knowing exactly what factors and weights went into arriving at a horse's overall probability in my line helps me both to see why horses in the race might be held at odds that are higher or lower than mine, and to know when popular opinion can be safely disregarded.

Perhaps the public has recognized a positive factor that I also have, but has overbet it, creating an underlay and causing the odds of other well-meant horses in the race to rise. Or a horse may have been underbet because of a factor that the public has regarded as a negative sign, but where I am confident that either the factor is not the negative indicator that the public perceives it to be, or that the horse has other positive attributes that outweigh it, and the odds are compensating me for it.

However, in neither of these cases am I dependent on the analysis of tote patterns to arrive at my conclusions. All the information that I need is in the horse's record.In my opinion, this is how odds should be used. You cannot know if the money on a horse is "smart money" or "stupid money" just from looking at the tote board. Handicapping should not be dependent on the analysis of tote board patterns. These are two separate things.

I generally use the tote board to influence my wagering patterns, after the handicapping is done, but I have no problem placing wagers based on what I handicapped and what I predict the range of final odds might be.

That is not to say that the tote board cannot be used to interpret how others have handicapped the race. In fact, assuming that the majority of the bettors wager based on a their handicapping skills (which may definitely not be true in some races and in some parts of the country), the odds may be considered a "consensus" of other handicappers' opinions. I admit that I also look at what other handicappers have selected in the same race to question whether or not I (or they) may have overlooked something. I do not see watching the tote board indicators as anything different from that.

[traynor]

In my opinion, this is how odds should be used. You cannot know if the money on a horse is "smart money" or "stupid money" just from looking at the tote board. Handicapping should not be dependent on the analysis of tote board patterns. These are two separate things.

I generally use the tote board to influence my wagering patterns, after the handicapping is done, but I have no problem placing wagers based on what I handicapped and what I predict the range of final odds might be.

That is not to say that the tote board cannot be used to interpret how others have handicapped the race. In fact, assuming that the majority of the bettors wager based on a their handicapping skills (which may definitely not be true in some races and in some parts of the country), the odds may be considered a "consensus" of other handicappers' opinions. I admit that I also look at what other handicappers have selected in the same race to question whether or not I (or they) may have overlooked something. I do not see watching the tote board indicators as anything different from that.

That seems to be the weakness in any approach that uses the tote board.

[Capper Al]

What I'm watching are my contenders on the tote, and horses I don't figure that the public deems a contender. The belief is that going with the ebb and flow of odds might improve my wagering strategies not my handicapping.

[Capper Al]

.
Many of you probably have know what I'm about to go over, but I just recently found this out. It's a big deal, and has made tote-board studying a possibility for the low roller.

One can copy the odds off the Twinspires Classic tools board and paste them into a spreadsheet. There is one hitch. Numbers in fractions still have to be entered by hand. The spreadsheet cells receiving the cells have to be formatted numeric. It's not much more complicated than that. Now the little guy can do it!

[MJC922]

If one could separate the informed money from the uninformed I think you'd have something worth closer scrutiny, but again it's doubtful it could be done without having deep hooks in the tote system. If I can see the delta between the tote machines in the upper and lower club during a window between 3-8 mins after riders up vs what's coming in from let's say twinspires I suspect it would be highly relevant.

Stable money is a factor, whether one can make money on it is something else. I mean hopefully we can agree these trainers aren't going to leave money on the table, they get up early every day, they work hard, some make next to nothing but the better ones pull in six figures. If they can pull in another 50 grand or more during the year off the radar they will be trying to do it -- sometimes at the public's expense. A couple of bad lines on a horse whether by accident or more typically not and you can bet they're starting to think about the day this horse has the big form reversal when all of the meds go in at the 'proper' doses and trust me they will have money down.

It's something we should be aware of, not everything is clearly visible on paper, the barn often knows that horse came out of the race a bit worse for the wear, maybe a bit sore, and because of that maybe they don't like him so much today, they throw him out of their horizontals completely at 6-1 and at virtually no chance of winning they're now playing into minimal take..., maybe he's in just to do someone a favor to fill a field of six and get a bad line. Few weeks off, drop down a peg, right dosages, money goes on. We as players can go on being quite oblivious to all of this background noise, but if you're winning you're winning in spite of it.

[lamboguy]

there are guys that claim that they can find "live horses" by looking at the tote boards. other's will tell you the horse is dead on the board.

then you have your value players that say the horse is bet to much because the odds are to low. i see horses leave the gate under even money and pay 2-1 or all day. i see plenty leave at 6/5 that pay 2/5. what i try to do is anticipate the tote board and try to benefit from odds possibly going up after the break. i find it almost impossible to bet right at post time and know what i am going to get for prices. i usually bet 6 hours or more before the race and take my chances. sometimes i watch the track and see their is a bias that is going against me, so i cancel my bet on those.

as it turns out, conditional wagering was a great innovation in its early days, today it is nothing but a waste of time, all you can do is get aggravated with it.

[FocusWiz]

.
Many of you probably have know what I'm about to go over, but I just recently found this out. It's a big deal, and has made tote-board studying a possibility for the low roller.

One can copy the odds off the Twinspires Classic tools board and paste them into a spreadsheet. There is one hitch. Numbers in fractions still have to be entered by hand. The spreadsheet cells receiving the cells have to be formatted numeric. It's not much more complicated than that. Now the little guy can do it!When I started trying to do this, I was cutting and pasting from the XpressBet odds screens (the equivalent on TwinSpires appears to be the classic "Pools" or "Exotics" data).

Being old, I prefer to see values like "7/1" to just "7" in the odds. Being lazy, I prefer not to retype the odds. Being careless, I am better off not retyping the odds. I use a relatively straightforward Excel formula to convert what Excel thinks is in the cell, to what I want to see (and I put that in a different cell.

Here is what the odds from TwinSpires looks like for one of the races today:05-Sep 7 02-Mar 17 8 --- 11 8
They look quite similar from XpressBet.

I use a formula roughly like this to convert them to how I prefer to view these:=IFERROR(IF(A1<20000,A1&"/1",MONTH(A1)&"/"&DAY(A1)),"")I arbitrarily chose 20000 (a date in 1954), but could have used 30000 (in 1982) or anything else which is unlikely to be track odds, but likely to translate into an Excel date. The "IFERROR" is a recent addition to Excel which may not work in older versions. The usage above simply says, if the expression following translates into some error, don't display and error, just show a blank (i.e., the "" right before the last parenthesis). You may or may not need to convert A1 and the month and day values to text by wrapping the "TEXT" function around them like this, but I did not need to in the version I am using:=IFERROR(IF(A1<20000,TEXT(A1,"0")&"/1",TEXT(MONTH(A1),"0")&"/"&TEXT(DAY(A1),"0")),"")Whichever works, this should be the result:9/5 7/1 3/2 17/1 8/1 11/1 8/1You could do this with conditional formatting as well, but every time you paste into those cells, the information from the website will wipe out any formatting. The solution would be to keep a copy of the formatted cells in another row on the sheet and then use paste / special / formats to put the formatting back into the cells.

I am a bit of duffer in Excel, so I am sure there is a simpler set of rules I could have used to do this, but what I used were two conditional formatting rules, one for the items which Excel turned into dates, and the other for things that Excel left as numbers. It is more easily explained by looking at the conditional formatting rules on the odds line of the attached spreadsheet. The attachment (if this works) is a ZIPped file since they won't let me upload xlsx suffixed files to the forum. I could not save it in old (i.e., xls) format on my PC (Excel kept crashing), so it is in the newer format. My older computer is on the fritz or I would have rekeyed it in an older version of Excel. Maybe if I can get the memory chips replaced, I will be able to do that (in other words, not any time in the near future).

[Capper Al]

FocusWiz,

Thanks for your post and attached spreadsheet. I will be looking into what you do. For me, it's not a big hassle to change a few cells around. But, from what I see, your way may be better.

[Capper Al]

For value players, like myself, there still may be good information on the tote-board left. Let's say my average minimum value is around 8/1. If I can figure a way to eliminate 50% of my minimum value horse at a cost of being wrong 25% of the time, I should come out ahead over the long run. And this is the problem going long for value. One tends to bet on a lot of turkeys while waiting for their big win. It's time for R&D. And yes Dave, it will be under 200 races in my test set. So goes the low roller.

[FocusWiz]

FocusWiz,

Thanks for your post and attached spreadsheet. I will be looking into what you do. For me, it's not a big hassle to change a few cells around. But, from what I see, your way may be better.Al,

No problem. It is not necessarily better, just an alternative to consider. There are quite a few ways to accomplish the same thing in Excel.

Please understand that I am not recommending conditional formatting for this since it makes things "look" pretty, but is not particularly useful for computations. It just changes how things are displayed, leaving the underlying data still a cacophony of dates, numbers, and junk. For computations, the formula method I mentioned would be better.

Just in case it is useful in understanding how the formula would be used, I threw together a similar page (which I made sure I could save in the "old" format), with an example of how the odds can be reformatted and then used in formulas. The attached shows the use of the formula from my other post (using the old Excel method where "IFERROR" is not available) and shows how the reformatted odds can then be used to compute the decimal version of the odds.

Also in this sheet is an example of a couple of place and show pool analysis formulas in case you have a use for them. I chose this example because the #2 horse in the 9th race at Belmont yesterday showed an interesting opportunity if you had considered wagering on it. While it was 3rd in overall wagering, it was 4th (and actually closer to 5th than to 3rd) in the show wagering. Sometimes this merits consideration to play the horse for show (again, assuming you were going to play this horse to begin with) since a figure like 161% is significant (I generally look for 200% which is quite rare). In this case, the horse paid $4.20 to place but then paid $4.00 for show.

Like I said, I don't know too much about Excel, so these formulas are a bit crude, but I am more than happy to share what little I know.

[RaceBookJoe]

For value players, like myself, there still may be good information on the tote-board left. Let's say my average minimum value is around 8/1. If I can figure a way to eliminate 50% of my minimum value horse at a cost of being wrong 25% of the time, I should come out ahead over the long run. And this is the problem going long for value. One tends to bet on a lot of turkeys while waiting for their big win. It's time for R&D. And yes Dave, it will be under 200 races in my test set. So goes the low roller.

You might also want to do some research on Holloway's 4 Line Plan. He said that sometimes taking every odds change was a bit of work and he had an easier plan to follow. Basically you took a look at 4 sets of odds and then determined which ones were plays. in order the odds were ML/your basic odds line , the opening flash , when horses come on to the track, odds as close to closing as possible. Same basic rules as Gaines " H " trends. Horse opens half of Basic and then climbs to dbl or close to dbl that opening..horse is Active. Also Active is a horse closes half or less than half of Basic price. On late droppers he liked to see decent sized odds moves. Just something you might want to check.

[Valuist]

I didn't vote, because there needs to be an option between 3 and 4. For the majority of the time, the toteboard isn't going to influence my opinion. I tend to avoid races overloaded with first timers, although if there's one or two, I'm curious to see the action relative to the line I project.

There is another instance and that's when a horse is alive; not 7-5ish but maybe should be 10-1 or 12-1 and its holding at 5-1 or 6-1. I want to try and determine where the money is coming from. If its a Pletcher or Asmussen horse, or a Castellano mount,it could just be the crowd betting them. If its an obscure trainer, its more significant. Also, I want to see how the horse looks. Often times, "live" horses on the tote look exceptional physically, and while they may appear to be overbet from a mathematical view, in reality, they probably are not.

[Capper Al]

You might also want to do some research on Holloway's 4 Line Plan. He said that sometimes taking every odds change was a bit of work and he had an easier plan to follow. Basically you took a look at 4 sets of odds and then determined which ones were plays. in order the odds were ML/your basic odds line , the opening flash , when horses come on to the track, odds as close to closing as possible. Same basic rules as Gaines " H " trends. Horse opens half of Basic and then climbs to dbl or close to dbl that opening..horse is Active. Also Active is a horse closes half or less than half of Basic price. On late droppers he liked to see decent sized odds moves. Just something you might want to check.

I'm thinking about opening flash, post parade bugle call, and two minutes after the post parade is over. No point nowadays to even attempt a final odds. I'd look at the will pay double and pick 3 for final odds considerations.

[Stillriledup]

Races 2 and 3 today at Belmont the tote influenced me a bit, the 4 in race 2 was a "Van off" type who got bet like there was nothing wrong with her and race 3, i'm not sure how the 1 horse was anything under 40-1 off his PPs and yet there he was hovering at 8-1 with 1 MTP....that shocked me enough to consider him a factor and guess what happened....another horse who showed zero on paper (or video for that matter) at Belmont was a winner in unwavering fashion...seems to be the trend over there the last few days.

[Capper Al]

Races 2 and 3 today at Belmont the tote influenced me a bit, the 4 in race 2 was a "Van off" type who got bet like there was nothing wrong with her and race 3, i'm not sure how the 1 horse was anything under 40-1 off his PPs and yet there he was hovering at 8-1 with 1 MTP....that shocked me enough to consider him a factor and guess what happened....another horse who showed zero on paper (or video for that matter) at Belmont was a winner in unwavering fashion...seems to be the trend over there the last few days.

There seems to be something to the idea if a horse opens at half the ML or twice the ML. Both extremes may flag what's not in the PPs.

[bugboy]

many moons ago at phila park,I knew nothing about racing......same as today!! I was home looking at the picks in my local paper. looking at the names. Well I saw a horse named "reliable Jeff" well I worked with a guy named Jeff. I said to myself , when I get to the track I'll bet 20.00 to win on him. The race comes up, I'm looking at the odds, 10-1, 15-1,,25-1, well I thought, these people here no a hell of a lot more than me. I'll drop my bet to 5.00......you guessed it. Jeff won at 25-1. Do I let the odds board influence me.......no more

[Tape Reader]

many moons ago at phila park,I knew nothing about racing......same as today!! I was home looking at the picks in my local paper. looking at the names. Well I saw a horse named "reliable Jeff" well I worked with a guy named Jeff. I said to myself , when I get to the track I'll bet 20.00 to win on him. The race comes up, I'm looking at the odds, 10-1, 15-1,,25-1, well I thought, these people here no a hell of a lot more than me. I'll drop my bet to 5.00......you guessed it. Jeff won at 25-1. Do I let the odds board influence me.......no more

A rapid rise in the odds is not necessarily a bad thing, especially if the odds were below the ML at some point.

[taxicab]

The tote board...?
Absolutely.
Some barns can't help themselves.
Examples.
In So.Cal.......You never want to see a horse trained by Mike Puype or Julio Canani substantially over the morning line.
Especially first tick.
I know when he was in the Bay Area many years back, they said he pushed it through the windows.
Doug O'neil sort of.
Once in awhile one slips by, but usually if his horses don't take action they don't fire.
When Kathy Walsh had a bigger barn ( when she was younger ) she let you know at the windows also.
Bobby Frankel was the opposite.
The tote board didn't matter much with his horses.
Jack Carava the tote board doesn't mean much.
And the Daily Double will pays can be helpful.
Horsemen love the DD.
It's a good way to hide "backstretch money".

[Ocala Mike]

Horsemen love the DD.
It's a good way to hide "backstretch money".




Exactly why I love NYRA and SoCal; rolling doubles throughout the card.

[taxicab]

Exactly why I love NYRA and SoCal; rolling doubles throughout the card.


It's a big help Ocala Mike.
Prime example.
Bob Baffert had two well bred firsters going a route of ground in the 4th last Saturday @ SA.
The winner ( Tap It Rich ) DD action screamed it was him, not the other Baffert ( Hold Everything ).
T.I.R. was 3-1 ml.
H.E. was 5-1 ml.
But the DD will pays pointed you directly towards Tap It Rich.
The DD futures had a huge difference in action.

[Ocala Mike]

Wanted to come up with an example for you, so I'll just refer to KNOCKHER OFF in today's 7th at Belmont. 10/1 M/L, but the DD price flagged it right away. Unfortunately, we had to settle for a more realistic 7/2 on the win, so nothing was really "hidden."

[Stillriledup]

The board is everything at Belmont right now. hard to bet horizontals without knowing who the "right" horse is.

[Tape Reader]

The board is everything at Belmont right now. hard to bet horizontals without knowing who the "right" horse is.

Examples please.

[Ocala Mike]

I will give an example. The :6: in the finale at Belmont was the "right" horse. Bet hard in the DD, and the only P/6 that would have paid off. Unfortunately, he got beat in a blanket finish to the :5: .

I don't like horses who just won their maiden, but I keyed this one in my exactas anyway. The :8: was overbet.

[limit2]

I am going to reveal I am one of those who accepts the programmers' odds. In doing that, based on the quality of the race, i.e. Open, Acceptable or Questionable, I look for 50%, 75% or 100% premium respectively. I bet exclusively according to the odds. That is the way I have been doing it for years as I was first introduced to the chapter in the book, "Treasury of the American Turf" on betting when the odds are right.

[Capper Al]

I am going to reveal I am one of those who accepts the programmers' odds. In doing that, based on the quality of the race, i.e. Open, Acceptable or Questionable, I look for 50%, 75% or 100% premium respectively. I bet exclusively according to the odds. That is the way I have been doing it for years as I was first introduced to the chapter in the book, "Treasury of the American Turf" on betting when the odds are right.

Sometimes I wonder if just playing the odds could be profitable. I handicap and then play odds in the 'One and Only Absolute Truth' method.