Supers, Combos vs Straight

[Ray2000]

Thought this might be interesting to Superfecta Players betting Harness Races. For years, I've been comparing Trifecta combination tickets to straight wagering and never found a multiple ticket that could come close to the straight wager ROI. Found one that does in Superfectas. (Remove the max straight hit and the combo crushes straight betting)

It seems always sticking in the rail Horse, when your handicapped Picks 1,2,3,4 doesn't already include him, boosts the return. I expected the ROI to drop, given the added combinations, but in the case of ab-abc-bcd-bcd, it rose almost to the level of straight ticket betting. This is due to the high frequency of the rail horse getting on the board and would probably not apply to T-Bred Superfecta betting.

Here are the numbers for RaysRobot Picks a-b-c-d, for 20,884 Races starting Jan 1, 2010
No races w/ Maidens, Coupled entry, too many high breaking horses, Pick Scratch or Double scratches, <7 or >10 Field size
$41,768 Wagered
(Returns based on $2 invested in each race. i.e. Someone sells you a 2$ share of a $48 box 4 :) )

Combo Type.......... Net ........ROI.....Strike%
abcd straight...... $20,365 .....49%.....1%
ab1-abc1-bcd1-bcd1. $17,905 .....43%.....6% ......Adding the Rail Horse
ab-ba-cd-dc........ $11,967 .....29%.....2% ..My standard ABBA play... "Take a Chance on Me" ;)
ab-abc-bcd-bcd..... $10,565 .....25%.....3%
abcd box............ $2,901 ......7%.....8%


The chart shows the races sorted on Pick 1 est chance to win, left to right, high to low (50%-10%)
Remove the $9800 Str hit (CALX 11/5/10 R9) and Str ROI drops to 25%, barely effecting rail-added 41% ROI

[Roghaltz]

Very impressive Ray. A lot to think about. I have looked at supers a few times but struggle with the low hit rate unless you buy a ton of coverage (it inevitably comes back for $9 for a dime...). Will have to look at how it works with my other strategies.


Best
Ezra

[Ray2000]

thx Ezra

If you're tracking Superfecta wagers for your system, here is an Excel 2003 (.xls) file that can show P/L for various types of tickets, Straight vs key vs 4box etc.

If you want a large database (20800 Harness races) to copy and paste, there's one at

http://members.localnet.com/~rayschell/ .....file name Supers.cvs (Open with Excel)


Maybe you can find a combo ticket that beats Straight betting

Note: I haven't tested this by putting in entries for the 5th Pick, Let me know if any errors pop up.

.

[DeanT]

That's great stuff Ray.

[melman]

Ray what does the robot have to say for straight pic3/pic4's?? Just try it for tracks MR M1 WDB/Moh because they have rolling pic bets.

[Ray2000]

You're reading my mind, Mel :)

I'm working on that now for comparison. Have to force that lazy bot to do some races that it skipped before, to get enough plays to be meaningful....Results to follow... hopefully soon.

[melman]

No rush ray anything u and the robot do is fine with me. I would have to skip all races with horses with no or very few lines also. Have hit three "cold" pic4's so far this year. Two paid over $1.000 one of which I posted here. You do have long "dry" spells however. Not "cold" but had a pic3 just now at MR with a A-AB-A ticket. Very ez to hit for $4.00. Paid $69.00. Looks like another cold pic3 coming at MR. :lol:

[Ray2000]

Nice
Bot went 3 for 4 on the other posting but didn't string'm

here's the rest of its picks, ***best picks..

Good Luck the rest of the way mel

R1 6 Allikait Fighter-5/2
R2 2 Bad Obsession-7/2
R3 4 Kewlgurl-5/2
R4 5 Winsmith Molly-3/1
R5 3 Winsmith Jen-5/2
R6 1 S F Hazey-3/1
R7 6 ***I'm All Sporty-3/1
R8 3 Community Spirit-5/2
R9 4 Fly Italia-7/2
R10 2 ***Fair Lady J-7/2
R11 3 Armbro Bracken-4/1
R12 4 Notimefordreaming-7/2

[melman]

Well ya got one "cold one" in the bag already Ray. :) Paid $21.80. I like your chances err the robot's chances :D on the next one.

[Ray2000]

when "Zeke" pulled I thought I had that one all the way to wire...damn

Love horses with heart....

[teddy]

I can tell you this, when I play Northfield I put the 1 on every slot on every pick 5 ticket. Too m any times it won and paid huge. I really felt like they didnt try with horses till they got the rail. It has to be miserable on all lines to get left off.

[Roghaltz]

That's great, Ray. Thanks. I will take a look.

Best,
Ezra

[Ray2000]

teddy
adding the 1 horse should hold true for other small oval tracks as well. Odd though, adding the "5" didn't produce as big of an effect.

__________

Ezra, thx and BTW

I don't believe I've mentioned this as yet, but if you're using SulkyPicker, AKA RaysRobot, there's a latest version at
http://members.localnet.com/~rayschell/LatestSulkyPicker/

Replace the file on your hard drive path..
"C:\ProgramFiles\SulkyPicker\SulkyPicker.exe"
with the newer version of the same name.

I had previously made some changes to allow Yonkers 1 1/16 mile races NOT to be rejected but now a shipper coming from Yonkers to a track like Pocono and having 10 pp lines at 1 1/16, was being ignored as "No valid lines last 100 days" Now these lines will be pro-rated and used. Final Time = FT x 16/17, 4thQtime = FQT x 4/5

The other SulkyPicker changes are some bug fixes and adding "P" to Driver's name (or "Q" but I don't know what "Q" stands for.:)) and listing SP's 4th Pick in Playlist grid where Overlay for Pick3 used to be.

If you're not using SP but want it, then use the install package (older version) and after installing, replace "SulkyPicker.exe" with the latest version.

[Roghaltz]

Thanks!

[Ray2000]

mel

I didn't break it down by track too few even this way...

Here are some RaysRobot results playing the Pic3 and Pic4
With Supers I can vary the combo ticket a/ab/bcd/...etc easily, but with Pic 3s and Pick 4s it's really hard to analyze results on multiple tickets due to Scratches, Faves substituted, Which race to 'Single' or 'Double' or go 'All' and the limited data points.

Pic3s...8,860 Race Pools
Ticket Type.....Bet...........Return.......ROI.....Hits.. .Strike%
a/a/a ..........$17,720 .....$17,072 .....-4%......208......2.3%
ab/ab/ab........$141,760.....$129,955......-8%.....1020.....11.5%
abc/abc/abc.....$478,440.....$400,401.....-16%.....2187....24.7%

Pic4s...2,621 Race Pools
a/a/a/a...........$5,242 .....$13,276 ...*153%.....19......0.7%
ab/ab/ab/ab......$83,872 .....$79,939 .....-5%.....154.....5.9%
abc/abc/abc/abc $424,602.....$362,968.....-15%.....405.....15.5%

*the 2 hits below accounted for this freak ROI, (If you have SulkyPicker and the TM data file rerun those cards and see how close Sp came to missing..:)) That's why I would guess at least 20,000 race pools would be needed to draw any conclusions on Pick 4 performance, Much bigger than I have.

Yonkers Aug 10, 2010 R6-9, 4-1-1-4 Paid $5,755
Northfield Apr 23, 2010 R8-11 2-6-2-5 Paid $2,481