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Old 05-22-2013, 06:58 PM   #106
JPinMaryland
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Originally Posted by pondman
Do you mean outside the conventions of a mutual pool?

Guarantee?

That's a horrendous bet in the world of horse racing.

If you understand raybos starting premise: that you can pick any horse in any race you want to, then it's not a bad bet at all. I am sure that a good bettor could find decent 3-5 bets at least every week, maybe every day. I dunno I don't follow racing on every circuit.

Hell you could even prove that to yourselves right here on the forums. Just allow someone who's really good to pick one race a week and try to hit it. How hard can that be?
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Old 05-22-2013, 07:08 PM   #107
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Originally Posted by raybo
I refuse to banter with someone who admits he doesn't understand what I said, but then says that whatever I meant is wrong.
I wasn't meaning to insult anyone Raybo it was more about the level of the discussion. I get your frustration, I wish people here would treat everyone with respect, and try to achieve some sort of rough understanding. Horse racing is a brutal game, and it's impossible to predict how these animals will do.
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Old 05-22-2013, 07:23 PM   #108
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Originally Posted by Stillriledup
I think there are studies that show the lower end of the board is really underbet from an ROI standpoint. Maybe someone can show us (Jeff?) what the ROI is for every odd, i think that you might see 1-5 and 2-5 shots are actually underbet by the crowd, but i don't know what the actual stats show.

As far as horses paying 3.20 who should be 1-5, they come along on occasion, but you're right, i can't imagine there are too many of them laying around.
the last time I saw this ROI vs odds graph, the curve was downward at both ends, and the peak was at that pt. where the odds matched the number of horses in the field. So in a 7 horse race, the highest ROI was at 7:1, approaching but not hitting 100%, prolly 94% or something.

It went downward from there, with the lowest ROI at the edges, the 100-1 shots and the 1-5 shots had the worst ROI.

That's what I recall.
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Old 05-22-2013, 08:08 PM   #109
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Originally Posted by JPinMaryland
I wasn't meaning to insult anyone Raybo it was more about the level of the discussion. I get your frustration, I wish people here would treat everyone with respect, and try to achieve some sort of rough understanding. Horse racing is a brutal game, and it's impossible to predict how these animals will do.
My point was similar but not to the extent you mention. It is not impossible to predict how horses will do all the time. If that was true, none of us could show a profit. What I meant, and I think you understand what was meant by my posts, is that no matter how good a horse looks to you, the odds you are going to receive should at least represent more than its chance of winning. There are very few horses that are extremely low odds where that is true. Yes, occasionally one will find a race where a horse probably has a 60-65% chance of winning, but doubtful you will find many that have a better chance than that, and even then they can still get a bad trip, become injured, be disqualified, not feel its best, or any number race randomalities. The odds just don't justify the risk, IMO, and apparently Thask feels the same way. You couldn't force me to bet a 3/5 horse under gunfire. Heck, I wouldn't even bet a 1/1 for that matter, not to win anyway. Shoot, I wouldn't have bet Secretariat in the Belmont at those odds, sure he was a superhorse, but there was another very good horse in that race also, and nobody on the planet, other than the connections, knew what they were going to ask Secretariat to do early in that race. 3/5? No way.
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Old 05-22-2013, 08:20 PM   #110
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Originally Posted by JPinMaryland
I wasn't meaning to insult anyone Raybo it was more about the level of the discussion. I get your frustration, I wish people here would treat everyone with respect, and try to achieve some sort of rough understanding. Horse racing is a brutal game, and it's impossible to predict how these animals will do.
That post wasn't directed at you. If you got that impression, I'm sorry.
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Old 05-22-2013, 08:28 PM   #111
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Originally Posted by JPinMaryland
You have no way of proving a 3/5 bet is a losing proposition, either.
Missed this one. No I can't prove that a single 3/5 bet is a losing proposition, but I can dang sure prove that betting very many of them is. And, the long term is what matters, not an individual race.

Yeah, I suppose someone, who is a very good handicapper, could pick out a race or two and make some money on such horses, but to me, the risk versus reward ratio is way out of whack in all those situations, and should never be accepted.
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Old 05-22-2013, 10:10 PM   #112
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Originally Posted by Valuist
Its a zero sum game. When one horse is strongly overbet, several other horses become overlays. 3-2 would've been a more realistic price on Orb and the difference between 3-2 and 3-5 is ginormous.
Most of this thread has gone in an uninteresting direction. But this one is interesting.

No, it is not, actually, a zero-sum game. It is a negative-sum game. 17 percent or so is taken out of every win pool. And that's REALLY important for people to understand.

Because of the takeout, it is possible for a race to offer not a single horse with betting value. Indeed, on my circuit (Southern California) we are painfully aware of this fact, because we see so many 5 and 6 horse fields nowadays and it happens quite frequently.

I think the tendency of many handicappers on the subject of value is to think like this: "well, the favorite has his merits, but he's even money, and I don't want to bet him at even money, so I'm going to look for a longshot".

And IF you actually find a horse that gives you betting value, that may be fine. But human nature is to not want to pass races. People HATE to pass races. Both because of gambling compulsion (the desire for action) AND because of ego-- passing a race seems like an admission that one's intellect cannot decipher what is going to happen. (People especially hate to pass big stakes races. I have never met a handicapper who passed the Kentucky Derby when he or she was in a position to bet it.)

So what it actually devolves to is "I don't want the even money, so I will settle on some horse at longer odds" rather than a careful, dispassionate analysis of whether the horse is actually offering value at the price.

(I should add that as bad as this is in the win pool, it gets even worse in the exotics, where players routinely bet exactas without checking probables and bet trifectas and superfectas and Super High 5 without even thinking about which combinations offer value and which do not.)

Orb may or may not have been overbet. Again, even if he was, that doesn't mean Oxbow or any other horse was actually offering betting value. And thus, you have to review what you are doing whether you are betting 3 to 5 shots or 10 to 1 shots, and always think about whether you are really getting value or just looking for gambling action.

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Old 05-22-2013, 10:21 PM   #113
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Originally Posted by dilanesp
Most of this thread has gone in an uninteresting direction. But this one is interesting.

No, it is not, actually, a zero-sum game. It is a negative-sum game. 17 percent or so is taken out of every win pool. And that's REALLY important for people to understand.

Because of the takeout, it is possible for a race to offer not a single horse with betting value. Indeed, on my circuit (Southern California) we are painfully aware of this fact, because we see so many 5 and 6 horse fields nowadays and it happens quite frequently.

I think the tendency of many handicappers on the subject of value is to think like this: "well, the favorite has his merits, but he's even money, and I don't want to bet him at even money, so I'm going to look for a longshot".

And IF you actually find a horse that gives you betting value, that may be fine. But human nature is to not want to pass races. People HATE to pass races. Both because of gambling compulsion (the desire for action) AND because of ego-- passing a race seems like an admission that one's intellect cannot decipher what is going to happen. (People especially hate to pass big stakes races. I have never met a handicapper who passed the Kentucky Derby when he or she was in a position to bet it.)

So what it actually devolves to is "I don't want the even money, so I will settle on some horse at longer odds" rather than a careful, dispassionate analysis of whether the horse is actually offering value at the price.

(I should add that as bad as this is in the win pool, it gets even worse in the exotics, where players routinely bet exactas without checking probables and bet trifectas and superfectas and Super High 5 without even thinking about which combinations offer value and which do not.)

Orb may or may not have been overbet. Again, even if he was, that doesn't mean Oxbow or any other horse was actually offering betting value. And thus, you have to review what you are doing whether you are betting 3 to 5 shots or 10 to 1 shots, and always think about whether you are really getting value or just looking for gambling action.
And, this is something you just thought up? Something new? Something that most of us here don't already know?
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Old 05-22-2013, 10:36 PM   #114
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Originally Posted by raybo
And, this is something you just thought up? Something new? Something that most of us here don't already know?
I was responding to a post that said that it was zero-sum and that if there was an underlay in a race, there must be an overlay. Which does, in fact, indicate that there must be some PA users who don't realize this.

(And more generally, at least some of the post-Preakness posts about betting don't seem to be analyzing the key question, which is not who won but who offered value.)

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Old 05-22-2013, 10:41 PM   #115
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Originally Posted by dilanesp

No, it is not, actually, a zero-sum game. It is a negative-sum game. 17 percent or so is taken out of every win pool. And that's REALLY important for people to understand.

Orb may or may not have been overbet. Again, even if he was, that doesn't mean Oxbow or any other horse was actually offering betting value. And thus, you have to review what you are doing whether you are betting 3 to 5 shots or 10 to 1 shots, and always think about whether you are really getting value or just looking for gambling action.
My point was that when somebody is bet significantly more than they should, it will create higher odds elsewhere. The pari-mutuel points when you make a line still have to add up to 124. If Orb should've had say, 38 (8-5 odds) pts instead of 63 (3-5 odds), that's 25 points right there.

Considering Orb was one of the smallest favorites ever in the Derby at 5-1, run over an extremely sloppy racetrack, it seems to be a stretch that he was a much heavier favorite in the Preakness than horses like Monarchos or Street Sense, who were more impressive at CD. Some of it was probably due to the fact that the 2nd thru 4th place finishers didn't go. I believe some of it was sentimental; Shug is a popular guy and an excellent trainer. You never hear him mentioned in the same breath with the "supertrainers". I think the media clearly was pulling for him to win the Triple Crown. The once or twice a year crowd picks up on that, and most of them are bandwagon jumpers. I doubt they were saying "Goldencents was one of the top contenders going into the Derby, and now, on a dry track and weaker field, he's going to be 8 or 9-1?"
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Old 05-22-2013, 11:32 PM   #116
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Considering Orb was one of the smallest favorites ever in the Derby at 5-1
I take the rest of your points (a lot of it is valid), but you shouldn't read much into the tepid odds of Derby favorites these days. Some fundamental changes have happened to the Derby over the last 20 years or so:

1. The field is 20 horses or close to it every year. Watch a replay of the 1997 Derby, or the 1973 Derby, or the 1948 Derby, and marvel at how small the fields sometimes were way back when. A 5 to 1 shot in a 20 horse field is actually something like a 2 to 1 shot in a 9 horse field-- not that tepid a favorite at all.

2. Trainers no longer even bother to prepare their horses for the Derby with a solid campaign. They put the horse into a stakes race, win, and then go to the Derby with as little racing experience as possible. They don't want to see the horse get hurt and lose their opportunity to run. It was typical to have 10 or 15 starts before the Derby back in the day; nowadays it's mostly 4, 5, and 6 starts and sometimes less. These lightly raced horses haven't established their form nearly as well, and therefore it's harder for bettors to have any confidence in what they will do in the Derby. This makes the Derby more "wide open" than it used to be.

3. Early betting means that the Derby, unique among American races, has a VERY large percentage of its win pool bet by horseplayers who have no idea the current odds. One of my favorite moments in racing every year comes when they announce at the end of the day Friday that the morning line favorite is no longer favored. This literally happens EVERY YEAR. And nothing is a better demonstration of the pathologies of horseplayers. When the only indication of odds is the morning line, which doesn't move, horseplayers will continue to chunk in more and more money against the favorite, who supposedly doesn't offer any value. Then, on Saturday, seeing the odds all out of whack, they bet the favorite back down. (By the way, the dumb television commentators ALWAYS express surprise at there being a new Derby favorite after Friday betting. They don't seem to understand this happens every year.)

But that Friday and early Saturday money still has a big effect on the odds, and as I said, very little of it is placed on the favorite. The result is the Derby favorite almost always goes off at higher odds than he would if betting on the race started after the previous race went off at Churchill and the tote board was visible at all times during the betting.
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Old 05-23-2013, 03:09 AM   #117
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I was actually shocked to find Orb had dropped to 3-5 on sat afternoon, after morning line of what? even money? I didn't see all the broadcast but it seemed every body was picking ORb. That was so odd no one was taking a stand against. Like some have said, it seems like everyone wants to see a TC winner.

Personally, I just try to enjoy one race at a time. If it happens, OK but there's so much fascinating stuff going on it's no big deal to me.

I guess one way to spot an underlay in a big race is to see if there is some sort of psychological effect at work on the crowd. And perhaps a good handicapper can take advantage of it. In this case, there definitely seems a need for a TC winner and so the media was all over this. Plus lets face it, they don't follow horse racing like they used to so they have to try to get peoples attention.

Plus other stuff. He didn't seem like a great dominating horse. He seemed to be just getting it done. His final fractions in Florida did not scream out at me. And there were at least a couple of others in the Ky derby that finished almost as fast as him.

So there's the specific factors at work in Orb's case but then there's also the general factors, that apply to races in general. This years ky derby was a huge meltdown on the front, how much can you learn from that? Plus it was run in slop. That had to effect things too.

So just based on general handicapping principles there were a couple of things that told you he cant be this great.

OTOH what really worried me was that these types can be underestimated. Big Brown was like that. He seemed to be just getting it done, and only later I realized that those even fractions are hard to turn out. Wasn't Drosselmyer like that.

That plus everyone in the media kept picking him, and even if people here weren't picking him, they kept saying things like "he's still probably more likely than the others but he's not a good value bet. "

Finally this was going to be what his 6 race of the campaign? WOw in this day and age it's hard to believe he's that likely to get his 6thin a row. Is he really like a Slew or Majestic Prince or something like that?

I might have come up with Oxbow if I had studied the derby charts a little harder but I dismissed him because of his recent record plus it took like 4 times to break his maiden, come on.

So I figured there was a lot of value in a longshot, I couldn't pass this race. The exotics are often very huge in this race. Just really couldn't put my finger on any of the long shots, I came up with Gov Charlie...

So if you tossed the favorite last week, how did you go about picking a longshot???
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Old 05-23-2013, 08:50 AM   #118
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Originally Posted by JPinMaryland
I was actually shocked to find Orb had dropped to 3-5 on sat afternoon, after morning line of what? even money? I didn't see all the broadcast but it seemed every body was picking ORb. That was so odd no one was taking a stand against. Like some have said, it seems like everyone wants to see a TC winner.

Personally, I just try to enjoy one race at a time. If it happens, OK but there's so much fascinating stuff going on it's no big deal to me.

I guess one way to spot an underlay in a big race is to see if there is some sort of psychological effect at work on the crowd. And perhaps a good handicapper can take advantage of it. In this case, there definitely seems a need for a TC winner and so the media was all over this. Plus lets face it, they don't follow horse racing like they used to so they have to try to get peoples attention.

Plus other stuff. He didn't seem like a great dominating horse. He seemed to be just getting it done. His final fractions in Florida did not scream out at me. And there were at least a couple of others in the Ky derby that finished almost as fast as him.

So there's the specific factors at work in Orb's case but then there's also the general factors, that apply to races in general. This years ky derby was a huge meltdown on the front, how much can you learn from that? Plus it was run in slop. That had to effect things too.

So just based on general handicapping principles there were a couple of things that told you he cant be this great.

OTOH what really worried me was that these types can be underestimated. Big Brown was like that. He seemed to be just getting it done, and only later I realized that those even fractions are hard to turn out. Wasn't Drosselmyer like that.

That plus everyone in the media kept picking him, and even if people here weren't picking him, they kept saying things like "he's still probably more likely than the others but he's not a good value bet. "

Finally this was going to be what his 6 race of the campaign? WOw in this day and age it's hard to believe he's that likely to get his 6thin a row. Is he really like a Slew or Majestic Prince or something like that?

I might have come up with Oxbow if I had studied the derby charts a little harder but I dismissed him because of his recent record plus it took like 4 times to break his maiden, come on.

So I figured there was a lot of value in a longshot, I couldn't pass this race. The exotics are often very huge in this race. Just really couldn't put my finger on any of the long shots, I came up with Gov Charlie...

So if you tossed the favorite last week, how did you go about picking a longshot???
Well, first of all, my program told me to pass the race, regarding a win bet. I have 11 different rankings methods in my program, and a couple of other rankings for class, form, and distance. Orb ranked 2nd in 1 ranking method, which assumed all horses would run their best race that day. Orb ranked 1st in Class and Prime Power+class, largely due to his winning the Derby, which I discounted due to the pace and surface conditions. So, in my superfecta ticket structure I did not have Orb on the ticket and I used the top 2 ranked horses from the method I always use for these big races, Governor Charlie and Goldencents, on the win line, then filled out the other 2 lines with the next highest ranked horses in that method, Mylute, Itsmyluckyday, and Titletownfive. So, I missed the winner, Oxbow (who ranked high only in distance and no better than 6th in any other ranking method) and the 4th place finisher, Orb who I had already tossed completely (ranking high only as I mentioned above and no better than 6th in all other methods). I placed a 10 cent super bet that cost me a total of 20 cents, basically telling you that I had almost no confidence in hitting the ticket, just taking a shot at a decent payout.

By the way, my program assumes a legitimate pace for the pace pressure existing in the whole field, which as we know did not happen.
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Old 05-23-2013, 09:41 AM   #119
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To me the case with Orb in the Preakness was simply a good old fashioned nuts and bolts figure handicapping observation and common sense being applied.After pairing up lifetime tops prior to the derby he topped yet again.At 3 years old especially you can only top and top and top so much before you take the step back.

All the rest of the rationalizations I'm hearing are overkill and frankly crap IMO."His stretch run didn't look good....his closing fractions weren't solid(yes,they were)...it was the pace( fast or slow didn't affect him in Florida)...it was the mud.NO it wasn't any of these things.No sophomore horse can move forward continuously.At 3-1 he would have been a bad bet much less 3/5.Plus we witnessed the same thing happen in the Preakness that happened in the BC Classic last year,idiocy prevailed,nobody contested the pace,and and able horse fiilled the void on an uncontested lead.Goldcents played Game On Dude in this one.Orb played Flat Out.I tell you,for experienced horsemen I wonder sometimes if they understand the running style of their horses and what probable pace actually is.Look at Oxbow and how many races after his big 11 length win it took Lukas to figure out how he likes to win.Half the time these guys know as much or less than we do.Sure they might know about fevers and foot issues like we don't.But they don't understand the basics of what wins races and concede easy leads and scratch their heads afterwards.I find it amusing that handicappers follow them down the rabbit hole with secondary factor rationalizations when a simple,textbook,figure handicapping observation would suffice.Mountain out of a molehill.

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Old 05-23-2013, 12:38 PM   #120
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well I have Orb running the final 1/8 in the Fl derby in about 13 seconds. Is that good for that track? I used to keep track of this stuff, but then I stopped playing, threw out records, had a pc crash; so not sure. The track is deep yes. Is this comparable to the times Big Brown was running down there?
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