Is a Positive ROI Attainable and Sustainable- How Would You Know?

[TheOracle]

Originally Posted by Wizard of Odds

By (1) fitting prior races, (2) validating with hold-out races and (3) further testing with additional races, you might find some subset of conditions that produce a positive ROI (even before rebates). How would you be reliably assured that you could reproduce a similar positive ROI on future races? After testing thousands of models and combinations of variables, how do you know that you merely found that positive ROI subset by randomness?

Even if your conditions reliably produced a positive ROI, how are you assured that the game won't change such that your edge disappears? That your own bets reduce or eliminate your edge?

Are your expected dollars earned for the year greater than you would definitely earn by investing in risk-free U.S. Treasuries?

...Just thinking

From what I have been able to find from tracking, one of the longest trends I have seen in terms of ROI was C C Brown’s Maiden Special Weight Turfers at Belmont for a period of 4 straight years his barn was yielding a 28% return per $2 win place and show wager. From May 4th, 2014 until June 20th, 2018.

http://www.paceadvantage.com/forum/s...ghlight=astute

I believe after June this trend finally ended in terms of profits.

However, it would have required a great deal of discipline and patience to just stick to those bets and even then in year 4 it stopped

I don’t think there’s one thing you can rely on over a period of time like the Treasury it’s a constant search combined with discipline and patience to hopefully come out on top by the end of a season if that’s even possible

[Wizard of Odds]

Originally Posted by Greyfox

Of course there are no guarantees in life.
I'm not kicking anyone.
I'm just stating that in most areas of life, including horse racing, Past Performance is the Best Predictor of Future Performance.
Obviously other predictors, probabilities, and conditions have to factored in to improve accuracy.

That may be true, but is it enough to have positive ROI on select bets? Also, as you seem to suggest, perhaps there are other (non past performance) variables with important value impact such as current post parade body language, amount horse is touted, trainer intent today, etc.?

[classhandicapper]

I have about 4 1/2 years of data. I've found several things there were profitable for samples in the 1k-2k range that contained very few longshots that might have distorted the results. The problem is that they were unprofitable in 2018 even when still profitable over the entire series of data.

So has the game changed, was the original sample too small, or is 2018 the noise and it will return to being profitable again in 2019-2020?

I have no idea.

Originally, I was sure I was onto something because the rating was designed BEFORE I tested it, not after I got to see the results. More likely is that it's a little of everything. I'm on to some things of value, but not enough value to be profitable systematically on their own.

[Greyfox]

Originally Posted by Wizard of Odds

That may be true, but is it enough to have positive ROI on select bets?

On select bets? Yes.
If one insists on playing every race at multiple tracks the challenge is much greater. Not impossible, but the number of bettors who can do it consistently is much smaller.

[TheOracle]

Originally Posted by TheOracle

From what I have been able to find from tracking, one of the longest trends I have seen in terms of ROI was C C Brown’s Maiden Special Weight Turfers at Belmont for a period of 4 straight years his barn was yielding a 28% return per $2 win place and show wager. From May 4th, 2014 until June 20th, 2018.

http://www.paceadvantage.com/forum/s...ghlight=astute

I believe after June this trend finally ended in terms of profits.

However, it would have required a great deal of discipline and patience to just stick to those bets and even then in year 4 it stopped

I don’t think there’s one thing you can rely on over a period of time like the Treasury it’s a constant search combined with discipline and patience to hopefully come out on top by the end of a season if that’s even possible

Hey Wiz

My apologies that ROI was 28% for wins per $2 win wager. The across the board ROI was 13% per $2 win place and show wager

I will combine his full 2018 numbers in this situation in another post

[Wizard of Odds]

Originally Posted by TheOracle

Hey Wiz

My apologies that ROI was 28% for wins per $2 win wager. The across the board ROI was 13% per $2 win place and show wager

I will combine his full 2018 numbers in this situation in another post

No problem....

Was it just randomness? Prospective testing might give us a clue

[JustRalph]

You could do it. But you would have to sit through a ton of crappy unplayable races. That’s what I’m not willing to do........

[thaskalos]

When I first started out in the game, there was a guy named Richard out at Arlington Park...and he was rumored to be a horse-betting GENIUS. When Richard would walk up to the window to place a bet, there would be 5 inquisitive people following him...and this went on for YEARS. Alas, the only constant in life is that "things change"...and Richard eventually met with hard times...and finally disappeared from the game altogether. I always think of him whenever I find myself amidst delusions of grandeur about my own game.

Things change...and the tenuous edge that we may have in this game today could easily disappear tomorrow. That's why they call it "gambling".

[Tom]

Originally Posted by Dave Schwartz

What a mouthful! And spot on.



My New Years resolution was to stop reminding people to just look at their withdrawals vs deposits. It pisses people off.

And remember, it is not profit until you spend it somewhere besides the track.

[TheOracle]

Originally Posted by Wizard of Odds

No problem....

Was it just randomness? Prospective testing might give us a clue

Hey Wiz

I am not sure about any randomness but from what I am able to compile the rest of 2018 for his Maiden Special Weight Turfers resulted in a 25% return overall in this situation going back to May 3rd, 2014

This is due in part to the fact that he had a 7% return from this group for the remainder of the season in 2018 since my last post











He had a $15 winner on September 22nd, 2018 which helped keep the 4 year streak alive

However, it's been going on for 4 years so not sure that it will happen in year 5 for 2019 which would make half the decade

This is the longest streak that I've seen but I don't know how much longer it can sustain itself

[ultracapper]

Im with GreyFox and Ralph in this thread.

And that's after the most God awful year I've had in 10 years.

I'm pretty certain I know what went wrong from Feb-Oct. I've pretty much smoothed it out without really changing anything but work habits, basically. I'm still ultracapping the same way I've been for the past 12 years or so.

[Robert Fischer]

Originally Posted by JustRalph

You could do it. But you would have to sit through a ton of crappy unplayable races. That’s what I’m not willing to do........

Yes.

1. just plain old feel like playing some horses
2. you got a 'watch-list' horse coming up, or a popular stakes race coming up
3. "man with a hammer" misjudgment where you have a couple angles that you can 'hammer' and have to be careful not to rationalize that an upcoming race is a 'nail'...

these are all ever present

[Wizard of Odds]

Originally Posted by TheOracle

Hey Wiz

I am not sure about any randomness but from what I am able to compile the rest of 2018 for his Maiden Special Weight Turfers resulted in a 25% return overall in this situation going back to May 3rd, 2014

This is due in part to the fact that he had a 7% return from this group for the remainder of the season in 2018 since my last post











He had a $15 winner on September 22nd, 2018 which helped keep the 4 year streak alive

However, it's been going on for 4 years so not sure that it will happen in year 5 for 2019 which would make half the decade

This is the longest streak that I've seen but I don't know how much longer it can sustain itself

Starting to make me believe... let's see the future on this one

[HalvOnHorseracing]

You have to remember you are playing against other bettors. If you choose to play at Saratoga or Santa Anita, you are often playing against the best handicappers around. But if you play tracks like Arapahoe Park, Delta Downs, Albuquerque, and maybe even tracks like Emerald or Canterbury.

I may have mentioned this at some other time, but there was one night at Mountaineer when you could have bet every horse on the card to win, boxed the entire field in every race in the exacta, boxed the entire field in each race in the trifecta, and did the same in the Superfecta and you'd have been ahead something like $16,000 for the night. No handicapping, just a big enough bankroll.

One other thing about smaller tracks is that there are occasionally races where the Superfecta pays to "ALL" in the last position. This never happens at the larger tracks. I've grabbed a few pools by betting 123/123/ALL/(two longest shots).

It stands to reason that the more expert the crowd, the harder it is to beat them, and vice versa.

[Wizard of Odds]

Originally Posted by HalvOnHorseracing

I may have mentioned this at some other time, but there was one night at Mountaineer when you could have bet every horse on the card to win, boxed the entire field in every race in the exacta, boxed the entire field in each race in the trifecta, and did the same in the Superfecta and you'd have been ahead something like $16,000 for the night. No handicapping, just a big enough bankroll.

One other thing about smaller tracks is that there are occasionally races where the Superfecta pays to "ALL" in the last position. This never happens at the larger tracks. I've grabbed a few pools by betting 123/123/ALL/(two longest shots).

It stands to reason that the more expert the crowd, the harder it is to beat them, and vice versa.

But that must have been an ususual night where longshots won almost every race. If you bet like that every night, you would lose more than 20 cents for every dollar you bet on ANY track (an exception would be betting into a huge carryover pool)

In order to win big money, you would normally want to bet into the big NY and CA tracks to get into big pools so your own bets don't crush the odds for you.