Scholars tackle the fave/longshot bias
 

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pretty interesting stuff - their analysis included data from almost 6 million races

they also discuss exotic betting

although, I must admit my eyes started to glaze over after awhile

might want to jump to the conclusion





https://i.imgur.com/lVobjxS.png




http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc...=rep1&type=pdf







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Useless data.

1992-2001?

I seriously doubt the 20 years have changed things much

Barry Meadow's book of 2019 "Skeptical Handicapper" showed basically the same thing - it just wasn't in as much depth as this and did not provide explanations as this does


here is what he had from about 862,000 races




https://i.imgur.com/ysb0keX.png





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None of this really means anything because no one bets every favorite or every 20-1 shot. Sure, if you bet every favorite and every 20-1 shot you'll lose more money betting the 20-1 shots. But that doesn't mean that chalk bettors are more successful than longshot bettors.

I basically agree with you but I wouldn't say it means nothing

to me it means that if I bet against a fave, which I often do, I need to double check on that fave - and make sure I'm satisfied with what I'm doing

I want to make sure I didn't miss anything about the fave

I'm going to have some respect for the public's top choice




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I agree.

When you bet against a "legitimate" favorite you are wading into very dangerous territory. Those horses will lose less that the track take as a group. That means the other horses in those race will lose more than the track take as a group. You are playing a very tough game trying to find an overlay against a legit favorite. You better be sure. What you want to do try to stick to betting against favorites you really dislike.

with studies like this, I immediately look for the "conclusions".
Generally, i need to read them a few times.
I'm not certain its concluding anything different from the papers I have read in the past, but i'll take another look.

It's been long shown that the rate of return on win bets declines as the risk increases.
what interest me would be an in-depth study of the comparison of a favorite win bet return to the exacta return. i have not found a definitive study of same.


actually, i did a word search on "exacta". it appears over 50 times. something to look further into

Looking at the data points on page 7, it appears that ROI betting in the UK, is better than the US at odds under 10-1. Could that be from fixed odds/bookmakers' odds? Australia which has access to both pari-mutuel and fixed looks worse than the US at above 5-1. With the huge betting /race in Hong Kong, it would have been interesting to see how they stack up.

No data breakouts for field sizes either. My WAG is that the betting market has probably improved on hit rates with a field of 5, versus a field size of 8-10. But the ROI, may have declined slightly.