Odds lines are useless

[lamboguy]

i played a race last night at the Mountain. the horse opens up at 1-9 on the board.

the race breaks and the horse shows 2-5, he goes 5 on top and crosses the wire first and pays $4.80 for win.

i don't know what good an odds line does for cases like this that seem to come up occasionally.


personally when i am at the top of my game i am betting first time starters that i know have ability and will come from somewhere other than busting out of the gate on top. i find that most of the time the final odds goes up on the very last flash on these horses.

winning in this game is all about getting value for your money. you can be the very best handicapper and race picker and hardly ever get the right values unless you are able to lock in odds.

[thaskalos]

We can't hope to get "value" on every wager in today's game...because the late betting action will go against us more times than not. The most we can hope for is that our handicapping methods have "collective value"...which will allow us to be profitable over time. And this is getting more and more difficult to do...there is no doubt about that.

[Elliott Sidewater]

Totally on point, what good will an odds line do you when the 1/9 shot, who by the way opened with an "in your face" $5000 win bet into a $186 win pool, will go up to 7-5 after the bell, and the runner up, who was 2-1 or 5-2 at post closes as the 4-5 favorite? I'll tell you what good it's good for: absolutely nothing, just as Edwin Starr sang. Not that this happens every half hour, but it happens enough as to reduce the effectiveness of pre-race odds lines used for betting.

SOMEWHAT.

Nor should we assume, as I'm certain some will claim, that we can predict in advance when these dramatic odds shifts can or will happen at places like Mountaineer. If Andy Beyer was to update his chapter on the Great Barrington Fair (Parsley, Sage Rosemary, and Crime) for the modern betting era, the chapter might be titled "Mountaineer: men, machines, and masochists".

A bookie once gave me the following advice:

"Don't play rock- paper- scissors with guys who are smarter or richer than you".

[lamboguy]

basically as far as i am concerned the game has passed my bye and i am way over my head trying to battle this game 365 days a year.

but i have to give strong credit to The Little Guy and Moutainman who actually go at it in their respective venues and produce plenty of winners and have net winning meets picking every single race.

[Elliott Sidewater]

Lambo: I'm sorry to hear that, but you know that someone famous, in the movie Magnum Force, said "a man has to know his limitations". I have had similar feelings, and my frequency of play has dropped way off gradually during the past 3-4 years. Back in the good old days, if you had a losing day at the track, it was on you. With the out of control after the bell pool reconciliation, that's not as true as it used to be. Today, a good bet can often only be determined after the race is over, and too often, the 8-5 shot you bet with a 40% chance to win finishes 3rd at 4-5. When compared with the stock market, what racing lost in respectability as a gambling pursuit used to be semi-justifiable because it was fun. This is supposed to be fun?? In the consumer sector they call what is happening in horse racing "bait and switch".

[lamboguy]

i have a friend that loved the racing game. he didn't want to spend $11 on a racing form so i send him all the pp's he wants. i spoke to the guy this morning and asked him what forms he wants, he told me the game is so boring he doesn't want to even look at the forms any more.

as for myself, i am going into a limited mode of betting from now on. i am just playing the 2 year old races. if the company's decide that i am no longer a big enough player to warrant the rebate i get, i will quit the game all together and do something more productive with my time.

i wonder how many other's fall into this category these days. as far as i can see, the game hasn't done to much to entice anyone to stay in.

[AltonKelsey]

Originally Posted by lamboguy

basically as far as i am concerned the game has passed my bye and i am way over my head trying to battle this game 365 days a year.

but i have to give strong credit to The Little Guy and Moutainman who actually go at it in their respective venues and produce plenty of winners and have net winning meets picking every single race.

If you think this game has passed you by, there are many more daytraders in the stock market that have been blown away. Horseplayers have it easy.

[thaskalos]

Originally Posted by AltonKelsey

If you think this game has passed you by, there are many more daytraders in the stock market that have been blown away. Horseplayers have it easy.

If the horseplayers have it so "easy"...shouldn't these failed daytraders be coming over to OUR game, sometime soon?

[Dave Schwartz]

IMHO, the volatility of the tote board in this era makes it all but impossible to use as a line tool. Frankly, it was making me nuts, especially at the high rebate tracks where there is WAY MORE VOLATILITY.

I moved away from the tote board about 3.5 years ago. I (as well as many of my HSH users) use what we call "Object Odds."

That is, we use a 5-factor object to represent the odds. There are two static objects I suggest, one for low-rebate tracks and the other for high rebates. The difference is that the most important object for the low-rebate tracks is the morning line, while at the high rebate tracks it moves down to 3rd or 4th.

Personally, I do it dynamically (i.e. have the software build it "on-the-fly" from the database of "races like this one").

The output is clearly better than most morning lines but sometimes makes huge mistakes. For example, Just watched the 4th at PRX - very playable (40 units) - where we went in with 2 horses projected to be 7.3/1 and 12.8/1. We loaded on the 7/1 and watched as he paid $5.80.

I've also had horses projected to be 5/2 pay $28. LOL

Of course, it is usually better than that, but the point is IT WORKS for us.

That is, it allows us to forget about the tote board. Many of our users double-check the tote visually and some simply use the tote scraping capability built in at 0 or 1 minute to post. Personally, I find that the first update after 0 minutes is "good enough" to play but still makes me crazy.

Despite the occasional inaccuracies, most of the time our object odds are dead on with the low odds horses, especially in terms of public choice order.

I recently did a 150-race test and the average error was +/- .6 positions (in the odds), and in the top 3 choices the positional error is less than half that. There are a lot of 6 horse fields where it gets the order top to bottom.

I shown on several videos how to do this and will do so again in our upcoming (Late July) "Summer Seminar Series."


Regards,
Dave Schwartz

[dilanesp]

I read this whole thread, and thaskalos' posts in it are the way, the truth, and the light.

[AltonKelsey]

Originally Posted by thaskalos

If the horseplayers have it so "easy"...shouldn't these failed daytraders be coming over to OUR game, sometime soon?

Afraid not, diff skill set. Meant the changes to racing over the last 20 years pale in comparison to changes in markets.

[thaskalos]

Originally Posted by AltonKelsey

Afraid not, diff skill set. Meant the changes to racing over the last 20 years pale in comparison to changes in markets.

Maybe so...but by saying that "horseplayers have it easy", you implied that it's easier to make money at the track, than in the "markets".

[Nitro]

When I read this sort of stuff, I just sort of scratch my head and wonder why all the alleged fervent horse players who continue to complain about the same old thing about the local game don’t switch to playing Hong Kong?

Maybe it’s just me, but I’ll tell you what, as far as I’m concerned there’s absolutely nothing like it here in N.A. In fact, from a player’s perspective it’s overall product content is probably an opposing 180 degrees from of every grievance that you’ll see mentioned on this forum.

I’m not going into all those details again, but let’s face it all the complaining in the world isn’t going to change the local game. Perhaps when someone with an entrepreneurial spirit shakes up the racing community with some real innovation, things might change. Until then I’ll take my chances with what I believe to be the best racing product on the planet.

[thaskalos]

Originally Posted by Nitro

When I read this sort of stuff, I just sort of scratch my head and wonder why all the alleged fervent horse players who continue to complain about the same old thing about the local game don’t switch to playing Hong Kong?

Maybe it’s just me, but I’ll tell you what, as far as I’m concerned there’s absolutely nothing like it here in N.A. In fact, from a player’s perspective it’s overall product content is probably an opposing 180 degrees from of every grievance that you’ll see mentioned on this forum.

I’m not going into all those details again, but let’s face it all the complaining in the world isn’t going to change the local game. Perhaps when someone with an entrepreneurial spirit shakes up the racing community with some real innovation, things might change. Until then I’ll take my chances with what I believe to be the best racing product on the planet.

I would switch to the Hong Kong product...but I find their offered past-performances to be woefully inadequate for the handicapping that I do.

[dilanesp]

Just a personal observation about odds lines, and this dovetails with Thas' posts, but one thing making at least a rough odds line does for me is keep me away from the worst bets, which are horses with fairly good chances to win at fairly low odds.

In other words, you think a horse has the best chance to win the race, and he's 2 to 1. Without an odds line, I would have tended to just bet that horse to win. But the odds line keeps me honest-- if I assign probabilities to the rest of the horses in the race, do I really give that horse a 34 percent or greater chance of winning the race (really a 40 percent or greater, because I need a cushion)? Oftentimes if I do the line and realistically estimate the chances of the other contenders, I will find I only give that horse a 25 percent chance, or a 20 percent chance. I still think he's got the best shot, but the betting value isn't there. So I pass the race (unless I can figure out a likely overlay in the exotics).

I think LOTS of players make exactly these sorts of negative value bets, because they don't have an odds line (or a strong enough notion in their head of what the odds should be) to stop them.