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Old 02-22-2019, 09:51 AM   #16
Nitro
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Originally Posted by castaway01 View Post
You're seriously arguing that people DON'T bet late when 70% of the money enters the pools in the last two minutes (only exceptions being huge events like the Kentucky Derby)? You're arguing something that is easily disproven in every single race in the country every day and is widely documented. So you sound like an idiot, plus you have your usual snotty attitude to boot. Go away.
There is no argument friend. Just some clarification.

BTW I think you ought to re-read what the points made are all about. Seriously, it isn’t just about “late money”.

And talking about idiots your comment about how much money enters all the betting pools in the last 2 minutes is about as ignorant a statement as I have seen in quite a while.
But not to worry! As far as I know they’re not conducting any personality contests here on PA.
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Old 02-22-2019, 10:00 AM   #17
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34 Dr Z's NFL Guidebook (World Scientific Series in Finance) http://www.amazon.com/dp/9813276428
I found this amusing (very skeptical) as I read it on amazon, they include their 2009-2010 and 2017-18 season betting results. Uhhh, what? Lemme guess, those were the two years they bombed ...
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Old 02-22-2019, 05:28 PM   #18
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Exactly. Below, I've linked a study of a test of the Ziemba pool arbitrage technique featured in 'Beat the Racetrack'. The authors found that the edge now disappears when all the commingled money (ca. 50%!!) comes in after betting closes, an aspect of handicapping with which we are now all too familiar. Apparently in the new edition, Ziemba makes it sound like he can still get +EV bets down at the last minute, but it seems he plays only on the big days, Derby e.g., when there is a guarantee of uninformed money in the pools. However, he does ackowledge that the late money is a real obstacle.



http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc...=rep1&type=pdf
Correction: authors state that 40% of commingled money comes in after close of betting, not 50%, as I wrote. This was enough to wipe out the edge on most, but not all of their bets -- a small advantage remained on some -- but, crucially, with so much of the money coming in late, it's impossible to know which bets these are, so the net result would still be negative. Also worth noting -- this article is from the early aughts, when they issue with late money was not nearly so severe as it is now.

BTW. this doesn't at all negate the underlying mathematical value of Ziemba's algorithm. But the current reality of betting (at least in the U.S. -- this doesn't include Hong Kong) nullifies much of its effectiveness.
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Old 02-22-2019, 07:27 PM   #19
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Zeljko

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Found another podcast with Ziemba. It's a very similar style of podcast, and he covers some of the same stuff. However, most interesting bit is that he mentions a horse betting syndicate that was wagering $1.2 billion per year and making 15%. That's a cool $180 million/year. From context sounds like they did this in ~2010 with 80 employees. Says they now have ~300 people. He mentions it @ 13:35. Pretty sure he later confirms that this is Zeljko (sp?).

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1d6DOZmtzc

F'ing crazy...
Hi Jerry,

Thx. for posting these. If you're interested in Zjelko Ranogajec, below I've posted a link to a fairly recent piece -- unfortunately vacuous and splashy, but with a few relevant details that confirm what I've heard -- that his model doesn't break even -- the rebate gets him into the black. This is what I heard when he busted the Tasmanian tote ca. a decade back. His rebate seems to have expanded along with the size of his business (although not classified as one in AU!) -- it's now a bit over 20%. A notoriously secretive guy, he's fame is relatively recent, although he's been doing this for 35 years -- he started in Hong Kong as a member of Alan Woods' (pre-Benter) team in the '80s. Although said to be a math genius, it seems that his most valuable skill set ( as with Don Johnson) is negotiating killer rebates with gaming establishments.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...t-gambler.html
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Old 02-22-2019, 09:03 PM   #20
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No wonder there are no visible role models to attract any new horseplayers to our game. The game's winningest players operate under virtual anonymity...without realizing the obligation that they carry to provide adequate advertising in order to keep the game alive. It seems that the saying is right: The only ones who teach are the ones who can't do.
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Old 02-22-2019, 09:55 PM   #21
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No wonder there are no visible role models to attract any new horseplayers to our game. The game's winningest players operate under virtual anonymity...without realizing the obligation that they carry to provide adequate advertising in order to keep the game alive. It seems that the saying is right: The only ones who teach are the ones who can't do.
That’s some very interesting insight that not only applies to the horse racing game. You can make similar remarks about the business world. Generally you won’t hear about individual success stories until someone decides to come forward to express their achievements. That’s not to say there are just as many untold triumphant stories where those involved understand the value of discretion.

On the surface the "saying" seems to be very valid. However, you also have to consider those (in the minority) who have led successful lives in their chosen fields and then decided to enter academia in order to share the methods of their accomplishments. This may also take the form of writing about it, but you can’t always determine if the material in a book is fact or fiction.
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Old 02-23-2019, 04:27 AM   #22
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No wonder there are no visible role models to attract any new horseplayers to our game. The game's winningest players operate under virtual anonymity...without realizing the obligation that they carry to provide adequate advertising in order to keep the game alive. It seems that the saying is right: The only ones who teach are the ones who can't do.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach, teach gym.

That old saying is not totally true, though. Warren Buffett has told most of his secrets. It's just a matter of studying him. The hard part is emulating what he does, but some people do -- and they teach others.

Check out:

The Dhandho Investor: The Low-Risk Value Method to High Returns
by
Mohnish Pabrai

And also check out Benjamin Graham's famous book The Intelligent Investor. Graham is the man who taught Buffett.

And enough has been written about horse race betting that there is no reason why a person of average intelligence could not win at the race track. It's just a matter of learning how.

Here's the secret formula:

Find someone who has been successful at something you want to do. Do the same things as the successful person and you should be able to get the same or similar results.
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Old 02-23-2019, 07:35 AM   #23
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my two cents. i have read benter's papers which you can google and read. he is candid about the time and expense he had to go through to get rolling with dough, coming in. firstly he mentions it took 5 years of prep work and lots of start up capital. as a matter of fact there was alot of bickering amongst the brainiacs and the people with the financing, about how they would share the profits.

second of all if you read "beat the racetrack", there is a real- life graph depicting the size of the bank roll during the run of bets. the fact of that graph in the book, illustrates the author was not clearing any profit until the sixth month!

hate to give anyone a rude awakening but even making money in horse racing, requires thorough planning and lots of CAPITAL, just like any business.

moral: there is no easy way.
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Old 02-23-2019, 08:02 AM   #24
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my two cents. i have read benter's papers which you can google and read.
moral: there is no easy way.


That lecture ,after he talks about kelley Criterion and gets into horse racing, in one slide, he shows the equation with greek E as the epsilon. The point that he makes there is: The E ( epsilon ) in horse racing is more quantifiable than the financial markets. Its the deviant of first order logic. But it can be assigned an approx value because E is more measurable in racing than in "real life"

He goes great lengths to say it took 2 years of losses to tweak it to work. It worked for a good while.. Then he adds, it needs constant tweaking because the epsilons values rapid rate of change.

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Old 02-23-2019, 08:32 AM   #25
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yes he had losing years, which i think many don't realize. also there were others besides him that were not successful and ended with large losses.
there is another cautionary tale of speculating on future outcomes. two noble prize winners in economics, started a hedge fund and investors saw it as a "safe bet", if you will, that they would get handsome returns...the end of the story, the hedge fund went broke. one can read about it in a book titled "when genius failed, the rise and fall of Long Term Capital".

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Old 02-23-2019, 11:45 AM   #26
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Whale and Syndicate Talk

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Originally Posted by acorn54 View Post
there is another cautionary tale of speculating on future outcomes. two noble prize winners in economics, started a hedge fund and investors saw it .

re: The Business of betting...



The William Ziemba podcasts are excellent and authentic. He goes on about Ted Williams, Babe Ruth, Bonds, , Red Sox/Yankees, Saratoga,and but he hammers the math too. You have to stick with him because he rambles in and out of topics. You notice though when he started naming names, they went to commercial break and came back on a complete different topic.
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Old 02-23-2019, 02:55 PM   #27
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re: The Business of betting...



The William Ziemba podcasts are excellent and authentic. He goes on about Ted Williams, Babe Ruth, Bonds, , Red Sox/Yankees, Saratoga,and but he hammers the math too. You have to stick with him because he rambles in and out of topics. You notice though when he started naming names, they went to commercial break and came back on a complete different topic.
I noticed that as well. I was getting all ready for the juicy details and they cut away.

The thing that amazes me and that I wasn't aware of before is how connected the hedge fund world is to the elite gamblers. Not just from the chat but from reading Fortunes Formula, Gambling Wizards, etc. You can pretty much trace a line from Ed Thorpe through all scientific gamblers and quantitative hedge funds.
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Old 02-23-2019, 03:45 PM   #28
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I noticed that as well. I was getting all ready for the juicy details and they cut away.

The thing that amazes me and that I wasn't aware of before is how connected the hedge fund world is to the elite gamblers. Not just from the chat but from reading Fortunes Formula, Gambling Wizards, etc. You can pretty much trace a line from Ed Thorpe through all scientific gamblers and quantitative hedge funds.
Not to mention sports analytics. After reading "Beat the Dealer" in college back in the early 80s, it was obvious to me that using advanced statistics in the management of sports teams could give the franchise an edge.

Bill James was an early pioneer of using advanced stats in the sports area, but Thorp started it even if he didn't apply it to sports other than horse racing. Of course, Newton said, "If I have seen farther it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants."

I remember reading about how Thorp devised a strategy for backgammon. That's when it dawned on me that the same line of thought could be applied to managing a sports franchise.
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Old 02-24-2019, 04:16 PM   #29
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It seems that the saying is right: The only ones who teach are the ones who can't do.
Like in any field, you are more likely to meet a teacher who's business is 'teaching'.

I wanted to make a couple scores with a professor who teaches how to supply the medical marijuana industry. It was quickly evident that his circle of competence did not extend beyond selling registration fees, and required text books, to excited students.
There's nothing wrong with that. I think he probably legitimately tries at some level to teach supply as related to his field. He just wasn't prepared to be my face for a score.

Horseplaying is funny, in that actually betting into the pools is often not the highest and best use of a man's higher level of competence and insight. The breeding game, Ownership, wealthy men paying for young prospects what the general public would pay for a house or a sports car... Claiming operations... Betting syndicates... etc.. etc...

I suppose some players are strictly players, but the same basic models cover all this money that is in this business... If you had the ability, yea you could "go take down" Hong Kong or Australia or whatever, but if you could get through the moats, there's a much more fruitful way to apply that valuable skill.
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Old 02-24-2019, 06:49 PM   #30
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No wonder there are no visible role models to attract any new horseplayers to our game. The game's winningest players operate under virtual anonymity...without realizing the obligation that they carry to provide adequate advertising in order to keep the game alive. It seems that the saying is right: The only ones who teach are the ones who can't do.
Usually I agree with most of what you post about gambling, but so many falso assumptions in this post, had to reply. First, most people I know making serious money from gambling do everything possible to stay below the radar, for, I think obvious reasons. If you're talking only about these guys who have achieved public recognition, that was only after many years of huge profits and they did everything possible to avoid the limelight. First and foremost, they don't want to get cut off from betting, but, at that level, they don't want to attract mob interest. Anyone who's seen the Aaron Sorkin film 'Molly's Game' knows what I mean.

As far as teaching what they do, it should be clear that it's all about the math. There's no mystery about the tools they're using. And contrary to your claim, many of them teach. Benter has lectured on his methods and universities worldwide -- one of them is posted in this thread -- and he has coached PdD candidates at Cambridge and elsewhere. Ed Thorp has written books and lectured on his work in blackjack and the hedge fund world. Ken Uston was teaching throughout his life. But, in the case of the horseracing models, at least a background of college-level math is required to even get in the game.

And even for these guys who became successful, it was far from a walk in the park. If you listened to the Ziemba podcast, he discusses how difficult it is to succeed now, especially given the increased competition, and says it would require an investment of ca. $1,000,000 and a year of research just to get an operation off the ground -- almost exactly what Benter described to me in the early aughts, when he was helping to set up teams in the U.S., but only as a consultant.

So, it's possible that some members of the general public can benefit from learning from these gamblers, but only a very small number.

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