Post deleted by Mat Sklansky

[raisethatmofo]

[dicelumpY2005]

I have managed to win a modest amount in the past 5 years or so doing 1 thing: sticking to only playing Saratoga and Del Mar. I will wager on triple crown races, World Thoroughbred Championships, special events like those... Otherwise, I watch every race from those 2 tracks, make notes, create "horses to watch" lists, etc.. I've managed to do fairly well since 2000...

[other1]

I know next to nothing about horseracing.. I bet the triple crown races to make them exciting to watch, thats about it..

However.. I've been wondering recently. Could you 'beat' horseracing by turning it into strictly a math problem? It seems to me that given a race with highly disparate odds on the horses, and the relative frequency with which a long shot wins, that there is room for betting systems that would bet on a few favorites and a few longshots in the same race to minimize losses and make occasional big scores. It's something I've thought on and off about for a while. My interest was rekindled when I watched the Belmont at the Borgata racebook this weekend. A guy there won $14k on the superfecta. I asked him how he picked the 4 horses and his answer was that he put $2 dollars down on 40 randomly picked superfectas. $80 risked to win $14k.. not too bad. There were also a few winners of the $130k or so superfecta at the Derby that had done quickpicks. Goes to show that you don't necessarily have to spend a lot of time handicaping to make a nice score.

Anyway, these are just some of my random thoughts..

[jpg777]

Actually the derby super paid about $700+K for $1.

[dicelumpY2005]

In the long run, its about handicapping. Those big payoffs truly involve a great deal of luck. However, in the end I believe in handicapping. Just listen to the analysts on TVG sometime...sure, they don't hit every single race, but with quite a bit of knowledge, they do consistantly throw some nice winners at you...

[Runner Runner]

You must find the overlays in horseracing to make a profit. The juice is huge 15-25%, so finding spots where you actually have an overlay can be difficult. Often, favorites are overbet by the public, so the overlay exists when there is a favorite who is false and you can get decent odds on a horse that can win. Example......8-1 odds on a horse that should be 5-1. You have to keep an eye on the toteboard in order to do this properly, and you usually have to bet late.

It's like sports handicapping, you assess the true odds of each horse winning and you see if you can get a significantly better price on a horse then the odds that you have. If there was a no juice, you could push small edges in the parimutuel game, but since the juice is so high you have to play big edges only in order to cover the juice. This would mean betting maybe 1 or 2 races at any given track on a certain night. Hence the phrase, you can beat a race, but you can't beat the races.

[Indiana]

I was never able to have any real success at it. I bet at the OTB joint here in Indy and I must say that I enjoy having a beer and talking horses with the old-timers...but make money at this?? I don't know anyone who does it for a living with any success. Stick to poker, Indiana