When will that longshot win?

[dav4463]

I have a (for lack of a better word) "method" that points me to a lot of longshots. I mainly play longshots in my betting. I bet to win and sometimes to win/place. I've played exactas too, but overall I do better sticking with win and win/place.

Only problem is I never know when my longshots are going to win. There are days where no horse over 3-1 wins.....I hate those days!

I'm working on a way to identify the races that have the best potential for a longshot to win or place.

I know big fields help, but I've found great prices in six horse fields too. Sometimes the field size is too big and I can't identify the best longshot horse, so other than field size, what is the best way to identify longshot races?

[windoor]

Chaos races were everything looks good or everything looks bad.

Non winners of two.

Maiden races with more than 3 first time starters,

All two year old races.

Some 3 year old races with claiming prices at 16K or under.

That should keep you busy for a while.


Regards,

Windoor

[JustRalph]

Tough question. You have to come up with a volatility rating. I use the one in Jcapper, for better or worse...... I don't really look hard at a race unless it rates a 125 or higher. Sometimes it's pretty damn good. Other times....a high volatility race comes back with the fav winning easy. But It's pretty good in my opine.

Here are some races with high volatility for tomorrow:


TAM R4 5F T 02-23-2011
13:45 EASTERN
VOL Rating: 210

I like 4-1-9 as possible longshots * These 5F affairs are tough to get a price sometimes.

TAM R7 8F T 02-23-2011
15:13 EASTERN
VOL Rating: 232
# 7 if he can get the extra distance this time?

TAM R9 8F T 02-23-2011
16:18 EASTERN
VOL Rating: 225
#7 or #4 maybe ?

Maybe ripe for a price ? I will check them out after scratches etc, that can change everything.

My databases say field size is the biggest factor........

See what you think of them ? Is there a price in there?

[Dahoss2002]

Tough question. You have to come up with a volatility rating. I use the one in Jcapper, for better or worse...... I don't really look hard at a race unless it rates a 125 or higher. Sometimes it's pretty damn good. Other times....a high volatility race comes back with the fav winning easy. But It's pretty good in my opine.

Here are some races with high volatility for tomorrow:


TAM R4 5F T 02-23-2011
13:45 EASTERN
VOL Rating: 210

I like 4-1-9 as possible longshots * These 5F affairs are tough to get a price sometimes.

TAM R7 8F T 02-23-2011
15:13 EASTERN
VOL Rating: 232
# 7 if he can get the extra distance this time?

TAM R9 8F T 02-23-2011
16:18 EASTERN
VOL Rating: 225
#7 or #4 maybe ?

Maybe ripe for a price ? I will check them out after scratches etc, that can change everything.

My databases say field size is the biggest factor........

See what you think of them ? Is there a price in there?
Im gonna put a little WP money on that #7 in R9. Seems like a decent "chance play".

[rrpic6]

If you use BRIS Ultimate PP's, on the top of the Summary page, they list the type of race and what percentage of favorites win. Also is listed a percentage of winners at less than 5-1 odds, 5 to 10 to one odds and over 10 to one odds. They are free until the end of February.

RR

[lamboguy]

I have a (for lack of a better word) "method" that points me to a lot of longshots. I mainly play longshots in my betting. I bet to win and sometimes to win/place. I've played exactas too, but overall I do better sticking with win and win/place.

Only problem is I never know when my longshots are going to win. There are days where no horse over 3-1 wins.....I hate those days!

I'm working on a way to identify the races that have the best potential for a longshot to win or place.

I know big fields help, but I've found great prices in six horse fields too. Sometimes the field size is too big and I can't identify the best longshot horse, so other than field size, what is the best way to identify longshot races?no idea how to come up with the high priced horses, but can tell you betting w-p-s is the way to go. its no good to find a $20 horse and play him in tricks and get nothing because you didn't pick the right horse for second.

[Show Me the Wire]

when:

a) it is an unknown commodity,

b) the fav is over bet,

C) catches a favorable track bias,

d) other jocks ride a sub-par race, and or

e) artificial performance enhancement.

[thaskalos]

I have a (for lack of a better word) "method" that points me to a lot of longshots. I mainly play longshots in my betting. I bet to win and sometimes to win/place. I've played exactas too, but overall I do better sticking with win and win/place.

Only problem is I never know when my longshots are going to win. There are days where no horse over 3-1 wins.....I hate those days!

I'm working on a way to identify the races that have the best potential for a longshot to win or place.

I know big fields help, but I've found great prices in six horse fields too. Sometimes the field size is too big and I can't identify the best longshot horse, so other than field size, what is the best way to identify longshot races?There is NO way of telling when our longshots will win...otherwise we would only play THOSE races...

If your "method" is a winner overall, bet on all your plays and don't worry about identifying the winning longshots.

Let's suppose that a certain type of race does have "the best potential for a longshot to win or place"...does that mean that you are likely to come up with that winning or place horse?

[vegasone]

You could ask the same question about shorter priced horses. If someone could figure it out he would be able to retire in a short time....

Your stats can only tell you your win percentage you can expect if you keep using the same rules. If you start changing the rules then it is a different game.

With long shots you can expect long dry spells and can either live with them or change strategy. Also if you only have a couple hundred races for stats don't expect it to keep going....things can change from month to month, year to year drastically.

[curious]

Something that helped me a lot, and I am not a handicapper, I want to make that clear. But, I win money, no I cannot explain it.

Anyway, what helped me was to look at the last N years at each track in terms of what the odds were of each entrant in each race and look at which entrants won money. I only looked at win, place, show, I ignored all the other bets.

What I found was that at some tracks you are crazy not to bet either the favorite or one of the top 3 favorites. At other tracks you are crazy not to bet the horse that is closest to 10-1. Some tracks you could bet only entrants that are between 5-1 and 6-1 blind.

I looked at all odds at all races at all major thoroughbred tracks for the past five years and there were only 3 odds levels that were + money if you bet them blind. The best of these was from 9-1 to 10-1. But, now there is a problem. Let's say that you are looking at a race and there are 3 entrants that are all 10-1. Now what? Also, at some tracks these long shots almost never win money and at other tracks they win money all the time, so you have to do this by track.

I found another problem. At some tracks the long shots will not do well unless the track is muddy or sloppy. So, I had to write a new program and take into account the track conditions.

This is what I would recommend. Buy the stats for all the tracks that you are interested in for the last five years. I did not buy my stats, someone I trust gave them to me. These stats have to tell you the race track conditions. Then use excel or write a computer program if you know how to program and list the odds of every winner for every race and group by similar odds. This will tell you how to divide the entrants. For the odds less than or equal to 2-1 you will want to use halves, above 2-1 you will use whole numbers, above 15-1 you can use some factor of 5. Then see what the win % is for each group of numbers.

I know that this sounds crazy because we are not handicapping the horses we are only handicapping the odds. Another way to do it would be to use where that entrants odds are in the list of all the entrants. Say you have a favorite that is 2-1, he is #1, the next entrant by odds is #2, etc.

One thing that I noticed is that the people who set the odds for the races are much better at it at some tracks than at other tracks. So, at some tracks the listed odds mean something, at other tracks not so much. You can figure this out by looking at the results vs the odds listing before the race.

Anyway, I hope this helps you.

[dansan]

you never know when them thier doggies are coming in I was taught to put more money on longshots, than your lower odd horses anyone else agree

[TrifectaMike]

I looked at all odds at all races at all major thoroughbred tracks for the past five years and there were only 3 odds levels that were + money if you bet them blind. The best of these was from 9-1 to 10-1. But, now there is a problem. Let's say that you are looking at a race and there are 3 entrants that are all 10-1. Now what? Also, at some tracks these long shots almost never win money and at other tracks they win money all the time, so you have to do this by track.

A very nice observation based on a sound study. I have also found this to be true.

In fact, here are my results over a ten year period:

8.3% winners ROI .268 (multiple win bets...average approximately 1.5 bets per race).

Odds range 10-1 to 25-1 and ONLY one additional condition on horses in that odds range.

Curious, you are definitely on to something good. Keep it up.

Mike

[Ray2000]

Did you look at field size?

just curious:)

[curious]

Did you look at field size?

just curious:)

No, I only looked at odds. I am sure that in some races with short fields there aren't going to be any really long odds. But, I could not figure out a way to account for this.

What I do in practice is I take the odds closest to 10-1 on the short fields, which I admit is probably not the best way to do it because on a lot of races you will always be on the longest odds underdog.

It took several weeks to run all these numbers and I don't have an easy way to get a database full of all results for all tracks to try different analysis strategies on.

[curious]

A very nice observation based on a sound study. I have also found this to be true.

In fact, here are my results over a ten year period:

8.3% winners ROI .268 (multiple win bets...average approximately 1.5 bets per race).

Odds range 10-1 to 25-1 and ONLY one additional condition on horses in that odds range.

Curious, you are definitely on to something good. Keep it up.

Mike

One thing that I noticed is that at some tracks you are crazy to bet a really longshot, so if you filter out the tracks where this is not a valid play it increases the win level at the other tracks. There are some tracks, and you can probably name them off the top of your head where long odds entrants win all the time.

This is why I say that you need to look at this per track and per track condition.

I don't have an easy way to get all the track data to run lots of different analysis programs. I am a very good programmer and I can analyze anything you want.

Another thing that I noticed is that if you take all the races across all the tracks in order by time, then you might have 3 or 4 races where your 10-1 pick does not hit the board, but that isn't going to happen for a large number of races, so if you just use a progression you will be in the money before long and you can reset.

For example, I always use X on the win, 2X on the place, and 4X on the show. So, let's say that this race loses, on the next race I will go 2X on the win, 4X on the place, and 8X on the show. If that race loses I will go 3X on the win, 6X on the place, and 12X on the show. Since the races are coming in time order across lots of tracks if there are tracks where this doesn't work very well those losses get made up by the wins coming from the tracks where this approach is golden.

I don't have all the programs that you would need to automate this, so I have to have lots of paper and pencils and things can get wild and wooly trying to keep up with it all.

I found that getting the real odds right before gate is much better than using the line that is posted very early. So, I try to make the plays right as the race starts. Now, if you are playing every play on every track and trying to do this and it isn't automated you will miss plays and of course those plays always win.

But, I find that this works. What would be a lot better would be to have real time access to the data and constantly update the database per track and look at track conditions because that matters.

Anyway, for those fellars that have all the data and the programming skills this is a very good approach, but it isn't easy.

[trying2win]

Has anyone found the longshot track chart at the HTR website useful?

T2W

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
~"Current longevity studies show that the more we are
committed to curiosity and learning, the longer we will live."

--Dr. Robert Anthony

[Kelso]

You have to come up with a volatility rating. I use the one in Jcapper, for better or worse...... I don't really look hard at a race unless it rates a 125 or higher.
"Volatility Rating" is a new racing concept to me. Would you flesh it out a bit, please?

What factors go into it? Is it more applicable to certain race classes than to others? Is it associated with a particular author/book?

Thank you.

[Kelso]

Odds range 10-1 to 25-1 and ONLY one additional condition on horses in that odds range.

Not sure what point you're making here with the reference to "condition." Would you elaborate, please?

Thank you.

[curious]

I have a (for lack of a better word) "method" that points me to a lot of longshots. I mainly play longshots in my betting. I bet to win and sometimes to win/place. I've played exactas too, but overall I do better sticking with win and win/place.


Do you keep records on which position that your entry finished in? I have good success betting X to win, 2X to place, 4X to show and then if there is a superfecta put the entry in the 4th place.

[dav4463]

Do you keep records on which position that your entry finished in? I have good success betting X to win, 2X to place, 4X to show and then if there is a superfecta put the entry in the 4th place.

I just keep up with when my horse finishes in the top four. I find that win betting outperforms place betting, but when I have a losing streak, the place betting sometimes keeps me in the game (keeps me sane!) and still shows a profit overall. I do not bet to show.

I do normally bet 1 unit to win and 2 units to place on horses that are 9/1 to 13/1, 1 unit to win and 3 units to place on 14/1 or higher. I bet to win only if horse is under 9/1. I try to bet about 2 mtp.

[JustRalph]

"Volatility Rating" is a new racing concept to me. Would you flesh it out a bit, please?

What factors go into it? Is it more applicable to certain race classes than to others? Is it associated with a particular author/book?

Thank you.

From Jeff Platt at Jcapper. This is an article he posted on his site. It's in a public area, and I found it using google, so I guess he won't mind if I post a part of the article.

http://www.jcapper.com/Article_Jan2005.html

Btw, this is six years old.........

Race Volatility
Race Volatility in JCapper combines Field Size, the PF1 and PF2 of the top Prime Power horse in the race, and the odds of the Morning Line favorite in the race into a single number that often indicates the amount of volatility or chaos present in the race. The higher the Race Volatility score, the greater the degree of uncertainty present in the race.

[TrifectaMike]

Not sure what point you're making here with the reference to "condition." Would you elaborate, please?

Thank you.

In a thread entitled "Using Chi_Square Statistic...", I wrote the following:

Let me list our tools that we will be using:

1. Chi-Square statistic for significance testing of factors.

2. Z-score for weighting the significant factors.

However, before we run a single test, we want to do the following:

Segment our selection of races for testing by odds.

For instance, one data sample may include races where the winner was between 2-1 to 4-1, another sample may include races where the winner was between 5-1 to 10-1.

This will help us find on significant factors that the public under bets and over bets.

Mike

The reason I reference the above quote is that there is a factor in the odds category of 10-1 to 25-1, which is highly significant, and also has a very high positive Z-score.

Unfortunately we never did get to the point of actually testing the various factors for significance in the various odds categories.

Mike

[curious]

In a thread entitled "Using Chi_Square Statistic...", I wrote the following:



The reason I reference the above quote is that there is a factor in the odds category of 10-1 to 25-1, which is highly significant, and also has a very high positive Z-score.

Unfortunately we never did get to the point of actually testing the various factors for significance in the various odds categories.

Mike

Are you saying that you can predict, not 100% but with some degree of accuracy, whether or not one of the low odds entries is going to win a race so that there is no reason to bet on the long odds entrants?

[TrifectaMike]

Are you saying that you can predict, not 100% but with some degree of accuracy, whether or not one of the low odds entries is going to win a race so that there is no reason to bet on the long odds entrants?

Yes, I can make that statement, but more importantly I'm saying that "not all 10-1's (in your case) are equally likely to be a potential winner".

There is a factor that is significant in that odds category and it can be used to separate the "good" from the "bad".

Mike

[curious]

Yes, I can make that statement, but more importantly I'm saying that "not all 10-1's (in your case) are equally likely to be a potential winner".

There is a factor that is significant in that odds category and it can be used to separate the "good" from the "bad".

Mike

I never said that all 10-1 were equally likely to be a potential winner. I have no idea if they can win or not based on the horse's qualities. I don't even try to look at that. I'm not a handicapper, I wouldn't know how to do that anyway.

This factor that is significant in the 10-1 odds category, can you tell us what it is?

[Kelso]

Ralph, Mike ... Thank you, to both, very much. (Growing more and more clear that an Atari400 home computer isn't up to the job any longer. :D )

[Robert Fischer]

longshots win more often when heavy favorites lose. ;)

[lsosa54]

Another version of volatility developed by Ken Massa/HTR back in 2002. I believe it's automatically calculated by their software but one can cobble something together manually. Field size and morning line to me are the biggest influences.

[Overlay]

I rate horses on a variety of elements using scales of numerical values to come up with a fair-odds line. Aside from the use of the fair odds as a betting guide, I've found that horses that rank in the bottom category on all of my elements, and that thus have nothing to recommend them in comparison to their competition (and that may even be poorer than my line gives them credit for, since some of my bottom categories are open-ended), are much poorer risks than horses (even those at long fair odds) that at least have a favorable wrinkle or two in their records. If I were to discriminate between longshots on a basis other than odds, that's how I would proceed.

[castaway01]

What I found was that at some tracks you are crazy not to bet either the favorite or one of the top 3 favorites. At other tracks you are crazy not to bet the horse that is closest to 10-1. Some tracks you could bet only entrants that are between 5-1 and 6-1 blind.

I looked at all odds at all races at all major thoroughbred tracks for the past five years and there were only 3 odds levels that were + money if you bet them blind. The best of these was from 9-1 to 10-1. But, now there is a problem. Let's say that you are looking at a race and there are 3 entrants that are all 10-1. Now what? Also, at some tracks these long shots almost never win money and at other tracks they win money all the time, so you have to do this by track.



I understand what you are saying and how it looks when you review the winners later, but when 80 percent of money is wagered in the last three minutes before post time and the odds change after the race starts, how do you use this information to actually wager? Even if you bet at one minute to post, how do you know a horse that is 10-1 at the time won't end up at 16-1 after the final wagers come in?

[Robert Goren]

I discovered several things about long shot winners.

Some trainers get them and there is often a method to their madness.
Track Bias get them, but they are pretty rare and they generally don't last long. The last few days of a meet is a time when sometimes the tractors run out of gas.
The opening week or so of a meet is good time for them. Watch and see where they raced last.
Sometime during the middle of a meet, the chalks will stop winning for a week or so. The week or so before this happens will be extremely chalky.

[strapper]

You watch enough races you get a sense of when a longshot will strike. I get that feeling a lot but can always pinpoint the right longshot. :confused:

[lamboguy]

that is a very easy question for me to answer. when i need a favorite the longshot will win!

[Ray2000]

"The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday - but never jam to-day."


Lewis Carroll...... 1871

Sorry for the hi-jack

[strapper]

Replying to myself - I meant can't always pinpoint the right longshot!

[thelyingthief]

Chaos races were everything looks good or everything looks bad.

In my experience, races where everything looks good are the most formful--they rarely pay well. Excluding Graded stakes, that is....

You might try looking at the average mutuel at various tracks, and what days of the week are most likely to see long-shots. Sundays are rarely the same as Saturdays, price wise...

But really, you're asking for the keys to the kingdom, and I for one am not about to hand them out. Go do some research.

tlt-

[The Judge]

If there is a horse that has no reason to be in this particular race and he is at long odds I am interested in this horse. Why is he here? Doesn't mean I am going to play him but I am going to look real hard to see if he can win. Sometimes its a low class horse but his numbers put him in the hunt.

Next I always ask... am I fooling myself , is this 15-1 in reality just a 15-1 horse and I'm just imagining he has a chance? Are the top horses really going to run bad or am I just hoping too much?

I need a reason to bet a long shot not "the computer likes him". The computer gets the horse a long-long look however. The computer must have "seen" something or else the horse shouldn't be high in the rating. All it did was crunch the numbers and the numbers say something is going on, now its up to me.

[JustRalph]

I don't tend to think of 5F races as that volatile......but this one at Tampa on 3-2-11 looks pretty chaotic to me.

I like speed in these affairs:

:3: MAJOR MARVEL

If the 10 spits the bit.....you could see some prices in here.

I think this is a volatile race......

Also like

:7: ROYALE HARBOR in the 9th for the same reasons

Volatile race. The :11: may be the fav but the post is tough. If he falters.......... I look for improvement from Royale Harbor

Dirt to 1st time turf may keep the odds up.......cross your fingers

[acorn54]

i think you are all missing one fact
there is not much money in the betting pools for longshots. so even if you knew a long shot was going to win it would not take much money to bring the odds down to an unsustainable level of profitabliity.
this has been proven by jeff platt's j factor as he documents on his website.
before his j factor was made available to the public it showed a nice profit, just betting horses at six to one or higher, but after 100 people had the j factor it became a factor that lost seven cents on every dollar wagered.
nowadays i get the impression that horseplayers are competing with one another over the crumbs, what with the reduced betting pools and attrition of the numbers of horseplayers.
wall street is where you want to be today, in the financial markets that is where the real money to be made is.
just ask dick schmidt one of the co-authors of pace makes the race. last he told me he was into the commodity markets because there is more money to be made there.