Quote:
Originally Posted by JerryBoyle
I don't think bold should be taken as fact. Fixed odds betting does not guarantee that you can put down more money on an event. I get your point that large wagers in a pari-mutuel system drop the price, but once bookies know you're a sharp you'll have minimums set quickly. From a modeling perspective, I think PM systems allow a bettor to better estimate how much he can put down. It's simply solving for bet size given pool total. With fixed-odds, I need to figure out how many friends I can get to place bets for me. That said, personally, I think exchange betting is the best of both worlds.
Being a sharp sports bettor requires no different time commitment than being a sharp horse player, at least structurally. Maybe one is harder than the other, but the timing of events argument is not valid.
Integrity factor I agree with if you mean race fixing/trainers obfuscating facts/etc. Those are not good, but not so bad that they stop a serious bettor from gaining edge. If you're talking about all the "late odds changes" shenanigans, I disagree.
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The sports bettor, if he chooses, can bet several thousands of dollars on a basketball or baseball game, and tens of thousands of dollars on a football game, without ever resorting to the assistance of any of his friends when placing his bets. If he tries to do that in horse racing...he ends up decimating his own odds. This is the reality of the matter...regardless of whether we accept it or not.
When I made my "convenience" argument...I wasn't talking about the time-commitment involved in handicapping races or sports. I was talking about the additional time-commitment that the horseplayer has to make while the races are being run. Horse-betting being what it is, the horseplayer has to actually be attentive as the races are run, in order to actualize the "edge" that he supposedly holds on the game...because the complexity of the game does not allow him to place all his bets before the races start, so he can then spend the rest of his day however else he chooses. Track biases, late scratches, surprising tote-board action, etc, are all factors that affect the structuring of the wagers that the sharp horseplayer has to make. And the sad truth is that the races are currently being run while the vast majority of the horseplayers are otherwise occupied.
I've been a horseplayer and a sports-bettor for many years...and I find that betting sports is the much more convenient gambling venture.
