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Old 08-12-2017, 02:24 AM   #331
thaskalos
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Originally Posted by ReplayRandall View Post
You want ketchup or tabasco with your form?
"It doesn't matter if there are 2 horses or 20. There is the same amount of error."

A comment that boggles the mind.
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Last edited by thaskalos; 08-12-2017 at 02:33 AM.
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Old 08-12-2017, 02:32 AM   #332
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"It doesn't matter if there are 2 horses or 20. There is the same amount of error." ????

A comment that boggles the mind.
It's late, who knows what kind of cocktails Highnote drank all night?
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Old 08-12-2017, 02:36 AM   #333
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It's late, who knows what kind of cocktails Highnote drank all night?
If he was drunk...he'll come to his senses tomorrow. But if he WASN'T drunk...then he's got a problem.
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Old 08-12-2017, 02:52 AM   #334
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Highnote, The public has a chance to error on every horse Some will be overbet, others underbet. The more horses in the race the more chances of getting value. Horse 1 has an extra 5% on him, horse 7 has an extra 7% on him, horse 3 has an extra 4% on him, those 3 horses wiped out the take. In a 6 horse field you still may not find any significant value, because there are only 3 horses left. In a 12 horse field very easy for the public to make a couple more mistakes and offer you significant value on one or more entrants. In the extreme a match race, it would be impossible to overcome a 15% takeout of a large number of races. Look at the math. Two horses are bet equally. 100K bet 85k paid out, payoff $3.40. Break even on $3.40 or a required 58.8% probability needed to just break even. By comparison, your sports bettor only has to hit 52.3% to break eve and most fail to do that.

When you get into the exotics the mistakes magnify. Just one example, say the favorite is bet to 4/5 and should be 2-1.That extra money not only follows him in the win pool but in exactas and trifectas and superfectas....Get him off the board and your value really magnifies. Getting an overbet chalk off the board in 10 horse fields happens all the time, in 6 horse fields it is a lot tougher.

The same applies to pick 4's. 4 10 horse plus fields in a row and you have a really good chance of getting well above the parlay value. Four 6 horse fields in a row, and you most likely will not see nearly as much value (relative to the parlay amount).

I would much prefer a 17.5% takeout with field sizes of 10 or more to a 15% takeout with field sizes of 6 or less. It is not even debatable.
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Old 08-12-2017, 04:29 AM   #335
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"It doesn't matter if there are 2 horses or 20. There is the same amount of error."

A comment that boggles the mind.
It is correct to say that it doesn't matter if there are two horses or twenty horses, the probability of a winner is 1.00. It can't be greater than 1 and it can't be less than zero.

OK. You can argue there are dead heats, coupled entries, and no-contests. Forget about those. In every race that has ever been declared official with one winner, there was a chance of 1.00 that the horse would win.

For example, you are at home watching the TV. You saw the race live earlier in the day. Someone asks you what the chance is that the horse would win. The answer is 100%.

If they asked you before the race then you might have a different answer. If you say 100% you might be right, but then again you might not be. If you are wrong you made an error and the horse actually had zero chance. In fact, every horse that lost had zero chance. If there are 10 horses in the race and there were nine losers then sum of the chances of the losers winning are 0%.

If it was a match race and Horse AA won where the public's betting gave AA a 60% chance of winning and BB a 40% chance of winning then the public made a 60% error before the race about BB and only a 40% error on AA's chances.

In reality, AA had a 100% chance of winning, but no one knew the true chances before the race. After the fact, the true error on AA was 0% and it was 100% on BB. However, the betting public made a 40% error on AA and 60% on BB.

There may have been some highly skilled bettors who knew AA was a lock. The error of the highly skilled bettors on AA and BB was smaller than the public in general, but the sum of the highly skilled bettors' errors was still 100%.

For any given horse in any give race the amount of betting error is going to range from 0% to 100%.

I don't know how to make it any clearer.

Last edited by highnote; 08-12-2017 at 04:31 AM.
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Old 08-12-2017, 04:41 AM   #336
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"It doesn't matter if there are 2 horses or 20. There is the same amount of error."

A comment that boggles the mind.
I hear you, but you're not explaining anything.

At least take a shot at stating why the total amount of error in a race can sum to something other than 1.

I will say it again:

In a match race where the betting public gives Horse AA a 60% chance of winning then they must give Horse BB and 40% chance of winning. It has to sum to 100% -- assuming they both finish the race.

If the people who think AA has a 60% of winning and it does win then they were 100% correct. Those who bet on BB were 0% correct.

In the long run, bettors on AA will be correct 60% of the time and bettors on BB will be correct 40% of the time. That means bettors on AA will be in error 40% of the time and bettors on BB will be in error 60% of the time. 100% of the time one of them will be right and one will be wrong.

The only time they will both be right is if all bettors who usually bet AA bet him and all bettors who bet on BB refrain from betting and AA wins.

In that case it can be said that AA bettors gave AA a 100% chance of winning and they were right. BB bettors gave BB a zero percent chance of winning and they were right. There is no betting error in this case.
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Old 08-12-2017, 11:02 AM   #337
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Bottom-line, who in the long-term makes substantially more money? Sorry you don't see the point of betting the game at the optimal level either..... Maybe Cratos can teach you how to bet 60 plays a year and make the same amount of money. Get used to making $20K bets, and don't worry as variance will never come into play the Cratos way...

Variance is a killer, short fields kill handle and doom racing. Contraction is the only thing that will save this game, believe it or not.
Thanks for the education.
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Old 08-12-2017, 11:07 AM   #338
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I would much prefer a 17.5% takeout with field sizes of 10 or more to a 15% takeout with field sizes of 6 or less. It is not even debatable.
is there a point in the take where your position flips, is it 20% win and 25% exacta 30% trifecata?

seems like the slippery slope of the argument
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Old 08-12-2017, 11:12 AM   #339
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Are you aware they put in $6 million a year for purses above the contract with horsemen (which I take to mean as not coming from handle) and that wasn't sustainable according to the initial story?

If you were aware of that subsidy (for lack of a better term) and reason for it, as well as, even with the added money, purses weren't competitive with some other tracks, what would YOU recommend to address the issue of having to add millions of dollars annually to be competitive with other tracks that run at the same time time of year?

I'm sure you will agree coming up with solutions is as important as raising issues. Honestly I don't have answers myself but I am hopeful you might have some ideas for solving the issue of purse inequity (which can lead to field size declines from one track to another) considering your intimate knowledge about how tracks operate.

Lastly, I don't understand how this can be labeled as corporate greed if the money is flowing back into purses, and therefore to trainers and their staff, jockeys and others that benefit from the trickle down effect of a vibrant racetrack economy.
re: the bolded part of the above quote...

Call it corporate stupidity instead of corporate greed then.

Actually -- Utter stupidity might be a more accurate label.

"Raise takeout because we need bigger purses" is what this is being sold as.

But there's a huge problem with that.

You see "raise takeout because we need bigger purses" has been tried before.

In the entire (recent) history of takeout increases: "raise takeout because we need bigger purses" has never once produced the desired result.

It didn't work as promised in 2009 when Los Al had their takeout hike. In fact it had the opposite effect. During the first 6 months after the Los Al takeout hike ON TRACK handle fell approx 27%.

It didn't work as promised in 2011 when Santa Anita, now closed Hollywood Park, Del Mar, and Golden Gate had their takeout hike. Handle fell by a big pct immediately afterwards. The result was purse cuts not purse increases.

It didn't work as promised in 2014 when Churhill did the same thing. For non special event days (read that as days other than Oaks Fri and Derby Sat) handle fell by a big pct as well. The result once again was purse cuts not purse increases.

Outside of the above real world case histories that I'm citing --

The the topic has been studied by people with impeccable bios who are much smarter than myself.

Dr. Richard Thalheimer authored one such study in 1998.

In that study he identified and ranked the factors that drive betting handle in the following order of importance:

1. Special Event Days (Derby, Preakness, Belmont, Breeders Cup, etc.)

2. Takeout

3. Number of Races

4. Field Size

5. and lastly: Purse size

In his study, which was based on looking at real world numbers Thalheimer wrote the following on page 9:
Quote:
This average purse elasticity is quite small and it suggests, for example that wagering would increase by only 6% if purse were doubled. This is a surprising finding considering the importance that is attached to the purse variable in all major policy decisions to increase the wagering in this industry.

So riddle me this:

If this has been tried many times in the recent past?

And if it has produced purse cuts instead of purse increases every time it has been tried in the recent past?

And if dating back, well forever, the industry's own paid for published studies written by people with impeccable bios and letters like Phd and Dr after their names have been telling the industry why it won't work?

Why in the hell would anyone in their right mind think it will work this time?

No matter what reason Keeneland gives -- and no matter how Keeneland tries to sell this to its players -- I think the most likely outcome after Keeneland takes their turn with "raise takeout because we need bigger purses" will be:

a. Creation of some serious player badwill (much more than they anticipate.)

b. Purse cuts.

c. Or if they don't want publicly announced purse cuts because that would make them look bad: Having to step up the subsidizing of purses from sources other than betting handle on their own parimutuel pools. Re: Instead of throwing $6M of their own money at purses having to throw $8M or $9M at purses because handle on their own pools dropped that much.




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Old 08-12-2017, 11:19 AM   #340
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How did you guys manage to go from rallying a reactionary boycott, to a debate about value, about which half of you are wrong?
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Old 08-12-2017, 11:55 AM   #341
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How did you guys manage to go from rallying a reactionary boycott, to a debate about value, about which half of you are wrong?
Half? Which half?

Rhetorical question. I know the answer.
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Old 08-12-2017, 12:07 PM   #342
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is there a point in the take where your position flips, is it 20% win and 25% exacta 30% trifecata?

seems like the slippery slope of the argument
In general I feel that the appropriate takeout for this sport is 8% wps and 12 % exotics. But that is a blanket statement. which includes 5 horse fields and 12 horse fields. If you break it down to a per runner basis, I think about 1 % per competitive entrant (which loosely would be defined as up to 30-1-maybe up to 22-1 on field sizes of 6 or less, somewhere in between on field sizes in between) wps and 1.5% per competitive entrant on exotics. Exactas perhaps somewhere in between(maybe 1.2% per competitive entrant), So a 12 horse field with a 70-1 and a 90-1 and everyone else under 30-1 is more like a 10 horse field than a 12 horse field.

So a competitive 8 horse field ideally would have an 8% takeout wps and 9.6% takeout exacta and 12% takeout trifecta/superfecta. A competitive 12 horse field would have an ideal takeout of 12% wps, maybe 14.4% exacta and 18% other exotics. Given that our takeouts are fixed, the bigger the field size imo, the closer we get to ideal takeout, and the better our chance of competing and beating this game.

By the way this doesn't mean you cannot make money in 6 horse fields, they are just a lot tougher, and the masses don't have the skills or patience to do so and they just get skinned alive financially (which is why this subject is pertinent to this discussion even though it may seem off topic).

Given that takeouts only seem to go one direction (that is up, not down), big competitive fields are our best shot at a fair game.

By the way I am not speaking for and cannot speak for 20 horse fields and the like, as they are not part of US Racing and I have no experience with them anyhow other than the Kentucky Derby.

Back to to the topic at hand, if Keeneland is going to offer competitive 10 to 12 horse fields in every race there takeout increase is probably not a big deal. That being said, we are dealing with imbeciles (offense intended) making the key decisions in this industry. This is why we the player must take action to drive them to make intelligent decisions, because they can't seem to do so on their own.
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Old 08-12-2017, 12:27 PM   #343
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I don't think your 8% number for win is far off Poindexter. Although it's not pari-mutuel, and it's not in North America, Australia with exchange betting has experimented over the last several years. The industry - as is often the case felt they were not getting enough of a share for purses so they raised rates on exchange win betting in Victoria. Two years later revenue was down and they allowed rates to come back down.

The tax on win wagers of this form is now about 8%. It's where the industry receives the most revenue.
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Old 08-12-2017, 12:28 PM   #344
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above poster got the right numbers, that is approximately what my effective takeout rate is plus breakage after rebate.

normally when a track would raise the takeout it never mattered to me because my rebate went up. this Keeneland move took with raising the signal fee's ahs put them so far out that i am sure they are going to lose a crazy amount of handle in their first meet and i don't thing the hike in rates will mean a thing to their revenue.

i happen to be all in favor of cutting purses by at least 50% and give that money back to the players in the form of lower takeout. the last thing this game needs is to over pay owners and trainers and reward them for ruining this game.
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Old 08-12-2017, 12:59 PM   #345
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above poster got the right numbers, that is approximately what my effective takeout rate is plus breakage after rebate.

normally when a track would raise the takeout it never mattered to me because my rebate went up. this Keeneland move took with raising the signal fee's ahs put them so far out that i am sure they are going to lose a crazy amount of handle in their first meet and i don't thing the hike in rates will mean a thing to their revenue.

i happen to be all in favor of cutting purses by at least 50% and give that money back to the players in the form of lower takeout. the last thing this game needs is to over pay owners and trainers and reward them for ruining this game.
I fundamentally have a problem with a sport that offers different rates for different players. I am not blaming anyone at all who benefits from this but just saying it certainly does not encourage people to play.
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