Tampa Derby Pick 5

[cj]

Since we all (yes, me ) like to complain about short payoffs, only fair I mention the Tampa sequence today.

Four favorites won, paying 4.40, 3.00, 4.00, and 3.00. The penultimate leg was won by the 3rd choice that paid $12. The favorite in that leg was the longest in the whole sequence at 9/5.

The 50 cent parlay calculates to $29.70. Any guesses what the P5 actually paid without looking up if you don't know?

I'll say this, it is one of the craziest payoffs I've seen in a long, long time.

[the little guy]

The X-Country paid well also.

Contrary to the opinions of some, there are multiple ways to attack multi-race sequences.

[PaceAdvantage]

Originally Posted by cj

Since we all (yes, me ) like to complain about short payoffs, only fair I mention the Tampa sequence today.

Four favorites won, paying 4.40, 3.00, 4.00, and 3.00. The penultimate leg was won by the 3rd choice that paid $12. The favorite in that leg was the longest in the whole sequence at 9/5.

The 50 cent parlay calculates to $29.70. Any guesses what the P5 actually paid without looking up if you don't know?

I'll say this, it is one of the craziest payoffs I've seen in a long, long time.

I looked it up...wow

[classhandicapper]

It might be worthwhile to look through thousands of Pick 5 payoffs systematically to see if there’s a repeating bias/inefficiency in the payoffs with 3-4 short priced favorites (looking at ML might help also) that makes a big dent in the track take, but the parlay price is irrelevant. It’s the probability of that combination coming in and the payoff that tells you whether you had an EV positive payoff. The parlay will almost always be less because you are making multiple bets with ever larger amounts of money, but that says nothing about the EV of the pick 5 or any other horizontal. This one is rather extreme though. I’m just too lazy to do the math this early in the morning.

[SG4]

The payouts in both the Tampa Bay sequence & Cross Country were exceedingly generous, quite stumped as to how this happened. My first thought was the 5-1 winner at Tampa was misrepresented and thought she looked more like a 12-1 type shot, but she was bet consistently in all multi will-pays at odds close to her final win price. Personally I thought every winner in the sequences were overbet by at least a point or two, but that was personal opinion, whereas again all the rolling doubles/pick 3's etc pointed out each of these horses at depressed odds. I was used to seeing inflated payoffs like this regularly in pick 5's a few years ago but feel like they've largely disappeared, would gladly welcome more occurrences like this again (especially since I actually cashed in both).

[classhandicapper]

Originally Posted by SG4

The payouts in both the Tampa Bay sequence & Cross Country were exceedingly generous, quite stumped as to how this happened. My first thought was the 5-1 winner at Tampa was misrepresented and thought she looked more like a 12-1 type shot, but she was bet consistently in all multi will-pays at odds close to her final win price. Personally I thought every winner in the sequences were overbet by at least a point or two, but that was personal opinion, whereas again all the rolling doubles/pick 3's etc pointed out each of these horses at depressed odds. I was used to seeing inflated payoffs like this regularly in pick 5's a few years ago but feel like they've largely disappeared, would gladly welcome more occurrences like this again (especially since I actually cashed in both).

I think you are raising a good point.

You have to at least ask whether several of these Win payoffs were huge underlays relative to the horses’ chances and the Pick 5 was actually the more efficient pool. My guess is a little of both, but since you are saying the visible sequences were in line, that Pick 5 looks very generous.

The other problem of course is that if this combination was actually a legit huge overlay, other combinations had to be huge underlays. Since most people play way more than 1 combination, their edge in this particular sequence overall was probably lower than they think even if they had this ticket (maybe even negative). We don’t know because we don’t know the other possible payoffs and it would be different for each player depending on the combinations they used and how much they spread.

[classhandicapper]

If you assume each Win payoff was perfectly in line with their actual chances given the 17% take on WPS the break even price is ~$75.40. (no breakage included)

[Robert Fischer]

Some good points in here.
I'll just add the obvious - 'big day' (i know tampa derby day isn't the biggest racing day c'mon) you have a little extra weekend warriors w/ an opinion on the Tampa Derby who play and add a small percentage to the pools, and probably spread too much.


We've got a lot of horseplayers who read and post.

I know I'd like to read a P5 player break down sequences and have math guys do the work and compare to parlay etc..

[ReplayRandall]

Originally Posted by Robert Fischer

I know I'd like to read a P5 player break down sequences and have math guys do the work and compare to parlay etc..

Oh yeah, does that sound like fun.....

[thaskalos]

Will anybody reveal the P-5 payoff amount...for those of us who are too lazy to look it up?

[cj]

Originally Posted by thaskalos

Will anybody reveal the P-5 payoff amount...for those of us who are too lazy to look it up?

Wow, that this pretty damn lazy if I'm being honest.

It was $184.70, or 6.22x the win parlay.

By the way, I have no idea what classhandicapper is talking about. Of course the win parlay has no effect on the payout and the P5 should pay more, but it is a pretty good baseline to judge value. This was way, way out of the norm.

[Robert Fischer]

Originally Posted by ReplayRandall

Oh yeah, does that sound like fun.....

very funny

had a lot of time to think and not play, and I want to embrace the pick 5.

Twitter

'Win' and 'Pick 5/6' as bread & butter, save for golden opportunities.

__________________
Preparation. Discipline. Patience. Decisiveness.

[ReplayRandall]

Originally Posted by Robert Fischer

very funny

had a lot of time to think and not play, and I want to embrace the pick 5.

https://twitter.com/jason_kassa/stat...42607935135744

'Win' and 'Pick 5/6' as bread & butter, save for golden opportunities.

Jason, where were you when I spoke extensively about pick 4-5's being the "best" value bets in all of racing?

No reply needed.....

[classhandicapper]

Originally Posted by cj

By the way, I have no idea what classhandicapper is talking about. Of course the win parlay has no effect on the payout and the P5 should pay more, but it is a pretty good baseline to judge value. This was way, way out of the norm.

I agree with the point you are making on the price. That was a huge overlay.

I just personally hate the "parlay comparison" that everyone uses because imo it's misleading about the value in horizontal pools.

When some people hear or say "greater than the parlay" it suggests they are getting better value in that pool. That's not true.

If you look at my post on the fair price, you'll see the point.

If you back into the approximate Win probabilities of each of these horses using their win odds, calculate the probability of all of them coming in, the break even point for the Pick 5 was approximately $75.

So theoretically, anything over $75 was a legitimate overlay !!!!

However, there's a lot of room between $29.70 and ~$75 that is bigger than the parlay and still a bad or even horrendous ROI.

IMO, (and I know it's a lot of extra work that no one wants to do), but when we talk about horizontal prices we should be talking about the chances of that combination coming in based on the Win odds vs. the payoff and not parlay prices.

That's the way we think about Win payoffs.

"I gave him a 40% chance of winning and he paid 2-1". Overlay!

IMO, parlay comparisons are not a very accurate way of doing it and sometimes misleading even though everyone does it.

[Poindexter]

As a rule you want around double a parlay in a pick 5, because you have one takeout instead of 5. This paid 6 times the parlay amount but 3 times what you are looking for in a pick 5 payoff but obviously enormous value. The pool was huge so I am thinking the caws zigged when they should have zagged. Meaning the put a lot of money in looking for a huge mid to large payout and ended up with a parade of chalk. As a rule, the best predictor of a horses chance of winning is going to be the final odds. We can all claim that we hate the 3/5 shot and remember when they lose, but if we were able to do so on a regular we would be printing money.

To determine what the fair value on this pick 5 we have to convert each horses odds to his before takeout odds. So if we are dealing with a 16 percent take we have to convert the .84 of fair value to fair value would mean we would have to multiply the final odds of each horse by about 1.19. Or to make it easier you need to multiply 1.19. by itself 5 times which gives you a multiplier of 2.39. Which means before breakage a pick 5 payoff of 2.39 times parlay would essentially be break even. To account for breakage you have to adjust the win odds up and recalculate the parlay. A horse that pays 1.0 to one would have to be adjusted to 1.1 to one-half way between 1 and 1.2 the two odds points he would be between.
So recalculate the parlay after break even multiply x by 2.39 and that would the fair value of the pick 5 based off of final odds.