how many overlays on a 9 trace card

[formula_2002]

To anyone that is making at least 10% in the win pool.

Just how many overlays do you find on a 9 race card??

OK, if you are not making 10%, how many overlays do you think are on a card?

Caution, the information you provide could help prove the impossible..

[cj]

Here is the answer:

True overlays: I have no idea

I generally find 5 or 6 horses on a 9 race card I think are overlays. The thing is, I could be dead wrong on all but one and still make a nice profit if I am right on the other one.

This is what I don't understand about those who say you have to statiscally prove your betting line, that 2-1 shots should win 33% of the time, 3-1 shots should win 25% of the time, 4-1 shots should win 20% of the time, etc.

I will always stand by the fact that you don't have to prove this for your line to be a good tool. The real test is this - do your OVERLAID horses win often enough at high enough odds to show a profit? When you are wrong, it doesn't matter by how much you are wrong. The key is to have your line point you towards horses the public will underbet.

[GR1@HTR]

I'd say 2 to 4 per race...About 27ish per card...Now that doesnt mean they will all win. Contending overlays win about 12% on average...But if you have 3 in a race that is about a 36% win percentage you will have in the race...Most will find this post ludicruis, but it works for me...

[Jeff P]

I generally find about three horses on a nine race overlaid enough to justify (IMHO) making a win bet.

How many of those are TRUE overlays? All of them of course!!! Or is it just the ones that win?

I'll admit to being dead wrong somewhere between 83 and 85 percent of the time. But when I am right, those that do win pay more than enough to make the whole excercise wonderfully worthwile.

[JustMissed]

Hey, why did you guys reply to Joe's question. Didn't you get the memo?

Based on Joe's thread "trolls of the board take heart", over in the Off Topic section, we are not suppose to reply to Joe anymore in order to help him curb his evil 'trolling' ways.

Hope it helps, I think Joe is a nice guy when he is medicated.

JM

[Steve 'StatMan']

The number of true overlays on a race card? No one could know for certain it depends on the contestants in each race and how the betting goes. What may be an overlay with 5 minutes to post could end up being an underlay when the race starts, or vice-versa.

What one can do, however, is make their best reasonable estimate of the true odds, based on the factors they are able or willing to identify. Bets are made on those going off at the higher odds. Allow for enough room with the odds so that you have room for error in your judgements but still have a margin for profit.

Example: Betting horses with a 33% chance to win (2/1 fair odds) at actual odds of 3/1.

If you are exactly right in your estimates (and you always got paid $8.00 for those 3/1 shots), the profit margin is:

(.33 * 3) - .67 = .99 - .67 = .32 - a 32% thoretical profit.

If you don't actually win 33%, but do win, say, 28%, then the results are:

(.28 * 3) - .72 = .84 - .72 = .12 - Still a 12% profit. For having an error in your judgement of (.33 - .28) / .33 = (.05/.33) = .15555... a 15.5% error in one's judgement.

You could still break even by actually being right only 25% of the time

(.25 * 3) - .75 = .75 - .75 = 0

and could still be (.33 - .25) / .33 = .242424.... about 24% off in one's judgement.

Only being worse than 24.24% off in one's judgement would result in a loss, under these circumstances.

The hard part - being hard-working enough, patient enough, and actually finding enough worthy factors and situations and wait for those odds. Personally I'm still working on achieving the right personal/work balance to succeed on this part.

Total rigidity isn't necessarily required for actual success. In fact, the complexity of racing makes rigid testing by paper or computer impossible to prove to the 100% level, and since the odds can differ for similar situations later on, there are guarantees of future success.

But the therory does work. Like my example in another thread (Off Topic - Trolls Take Heart) you have to find the situations, the subsets, the 'Antiques Among The Junk'. If you're correct enough in your 'judgements on value', it can be done.

For those who have never read it, Barry Meadow's "Money Secrets At The Racetrack" is an absolute must read. It certainly inspired me, and many of us here (Thanks Barry!)

[Overlay]

I think that the distinction that GR1@HTR makes about contending overlays is useful. Because the public tends to overbet low-odds horses and underbet high-odds horses, I usually run into a fairly high frequency of overlays in my betting line, but many are only slight overlays on horses to which I have assigned a very low true probability of winning. When measured as potential wagers in terms of the edge provided by the disparity between my calculated true odds and their tote-board odds, they don't offer enough of an advantage to warrant any play as a win bet. I find that I perform best in win betting when I focus on overlaid horses with true odds which I calculate to be lower than their random chance of winning based on the field size of the race (for example, horses with true odds lower than 7-1 in an eight-horse field).

[toetoe]

Thank you so much, Statster, for impeccable math, the sine qua non for any shot @ actually making money. Of course I checked it this way:
3/1 horse pays $8.00; 3/1 horse "wins" 33% of the time.
8.00 --------x-------- .33 = $2.64 or
64 cents profit per $2.00 or
32 cents profit per dollar.

[Valuist]

Are we talking strictly to win? There may only be a few legit overlay win candidates per card but there's a decent number who are overlay candidates to hit the underneath slot(s) in exactas, tris or supers.

[Steve 'StatMan']

Originally Posted by Valuist

Are we talking strictly to win? There may only be a few legit overlay win candidates per card but there's a decent number who are overlay candidates to hit the underneath slot(s) in exactas, tris or supers.

Thanks toetoe!

I agree Valuist! Plenty of ways, pools and areas. I'm just trying to show the basic 'Win' premesis - we've been having some long discussions on whether or not the races are even beatable. I'm trying to make the case that, finding methods to distinguish individual bets and horses at odds, success is possible, vs. Joe/Formula's long running preminse that the races are not beatable because betting all 3/1 shots is a losing wagering proposition (Naturally! If one doesn't make any distinctions between them!)

[thoroughbred]

Originally Posted by toetoe

Thank you so much, Statster, for impeccable math, the sine qua non for any shot @ actually making money. Of course I checked it this way:
3/1 horse pays $8.00; 3/1 horse "wins" 33% of the time.
8.00 --------x-------- .33 = $2.64 or
64 cents profit per $2.00 or
32 cents profit per dollar.

Doesn't a 3/1 horse win only 25% of the time?

[formula_2002]

Thank you all for your replys.
Yes I was talking about win pool overlays.

The hard numbers I got from the replys were ;
5-6 per crad

2 to 4 per race ( I have not done the math, but I dont think you can have 2-4 10% profit overlays in 1 race) so I'll go with 1 per race and per race .

On my own, I would say 1 per race card.

So I'm going to assume 2.5 overlays per race card.

say 8 horses x 9 races =72 horses

2.5/72 = 3.5% overlays per race card

Very rough figure.

In another thread, I post that in the odds range >=2.5 to <=3.4 (average odds of 3-1)
you would have to play 270 3-1 horses, win 27.5% of the time at a 15% take-out track in oder to establish a significant system to pick 3-1 horses for a 10% profit

3-1 horses represent 8.85% of al the horses that run.

say only 3.5% of those horses are overlays.

Therefore;

270/.035 x .0885=81716

Which means I would have to handicap 81716 horses to find 270 3-1 "system" picks.

81716/( 8 horses per race x 9 raced per card)=
1134 track card days, or perhaps 3 years worth of racing.

Anyone agree with the math?

[Steve 'StatMan']

Originally Posted by thoroughbred

Doesn't a 3/1 horse win only 25% of the time?

On average, horses end up at 3/1 win a bit less than 25%, because of the track take, and as probably all odds groups, a flat bet loss.

The goal for win betting is to find horses whose chances to win are better that their win odds.

So betting horses you feel should be 8/5 that are really going off at 5/2 or better, or maybe your '5/1 shots' are going off at 8/1. Those are potentials for value and profit - assuming one's judgement is good enough. (Big assumption, goes toward handicapping skill).

The goal from the first example is to find a horse you think that should be 2/1 (wins 33% of time) that has final tote odds of 3/1.

[formula_2002]

Actually 3-1 horses win % tend to correlate to the track take-out.

In a 7200 race sample in tracks with a take of about 15%, they won 21% of the time for a loss of 16%.

[toetoe]

Tbred,
No, we always forget to add 1 to the denominator when we estimate probability. 25% = 1/4. Bet one to gain 4, incl. orig. bet, which isn't yours anymore, anyway (like playing with "the track's money"). We call that 3 to 1.
Always add one to every ratio and you'll know the correct relationship between prices. Ex.: 3 to 1 is not 50% better than 2 to 1. It is 33% better3 + 1)/(2 + 1) = 4/3 = 1.33.