Redundancy

[Robert Fischer]

For those following along, "redundancy" as it applies to horseplaying is basically a fancy way of saying "coverage".

for example: Steve Crist has his famous ABC system for exotic wagering.

Feel free to add any ideas you have about smart ways to cover your bets.

[cashmachine]

Originally Posted by Robert Fischer

However, provided that our handicapping is accurate, and our bankroll is sufficient, we will do much much better in the long run by simply betting horse "A".

Our handicapping is not accurate, and never will be. This is exactly the reason why we need "hedging" or "redundancy". If your handicapping is accurate then you don't need either, just successfully bet exotics few times and go on vacations for the rest of your life .

[Robert Fischer]

It seems to me that you NEED redundancy or coverage, in the multi-horse wagers.

Why not just play the overlay horses straight??

Lets say we played a Pick-6.
For simplicity every horse was 4-1 on the board, and 3-1 in actual fair odds (25% chance of winning).

You are sitting on a GOLD MINE.
You've got 6 nice overlays in a pick 6??
HUGE EDGE $$$

what are the odds of hitting??

25% 6races = .25^6 = 0.000244141
or 2 hundredths of a percent.

Out of ten thousand plays (good luck finding ten thousand plays like that), you should average 2.4 wins.

You'd be way ahead $$$ , but that is a lot of plays to get your 2.4 wins...

and let's be clear that 2.4 is an average amount of wins for 10,000 plays. There is no guarantee that every 10,000 play sequence will even have 1 winner.

and out of 100,000 plays it would not be improbable to lose as many as 47,151 in a row!

Big numbers.
What it all means, is that when dealing with low% plays, that even if you have a huge edge you are essentially exposing yourself to randomness.



Redundancy/Coverage works when you maintain some of the edge, while raising your hit% enough to reduce some of the randomness to workable numbers.

[raybo]

I know, in my superfecta play, I pick the winner approximately 28% of the time, long term, and I hit the superfecta around 8% of the time, and that's with decent, but not excessive, coverage on 2nd through 4th betting lines (in an 8 horse field, usually 1 w 2 w 4 w 4 or $12 for a $1 super ticket, adding more coverage for larger fields). So, I know, going in, that I'm going to lose about 92% of my wagers, long term. Still, that is more than enough to make a very good profit, even with the possible longer cold streaks over time, as there are also hot streaks along the way. Coverage is necessary for continuity/consistency but excessive coverage can throw a monkey wrench in the mix as your total costs greatly increase with the more coverage you buy.