It doesn't matter how you do on any given day except psychologically. And, when your " longshot " runs second and you get nothing you need to remember the times you won five times as much as you would have with a place bet when you hit your exacta savers.

DrD,
I disagree fairly strongly. I think the ONLY time a place or show wager can make any sense is when you are betting against a huge minus pool chalk you think is vulnerable to running out of the pool. But that's not what we're talking here.

I'm certain if you took a look at every 30-1 shot that ran first or second over a large enough sample, you will find a higher ROI betting those horses just to win as opposed to splitting your wager WP or WPS.

If you like a horse at long odds, it's fair to assume you find percieved value because you feel the favorite is underlaid. In other words, a horse you feel is fair at 10-1 that is going off at 20-1 is doing so most likely because a favorite is going off at 4/5 instead of 5/2.

In my mind, the only way to play this horse is to win and in vertical exotics with the non-overlaid chalk contenders. Favored horses (deserving chalk and otherwise) are overbet in Place/Show pools and are increasingly overbet in vertical exotics.

I think if a horse is 4/5 and is deserving, it's fruitless to try to beat the race betting any horse to win or playing vertically. "Deserving" is, of course, subjective but if 40-50% of the pool is correct, you are just not going to find value elsewhere. In other words, if I see a horse at 15-1 that I thought was fair at 10-1 in a race with a short favorite worthy of its odds level, I'm going to pass because it's very likely that I'm wrong in my opinion of the longshot's fair odds and there's no way to beat the place or exacta pool.

I think WP or WPS wagering is a bit of a psychological phenomenon people use to cash tickets and, to an extent, preserve bankroll on a short term basis.

So I think the only time to bet a horse at what I percieve is an overlay price is when there is a false favorite simply because there is no other way over the long run that makes my horse an attractive overlay. And given that the bad chalk is increasingly overbet in the vertical pools, I think it's mandatory to use my horse in verticals with the other non-chalk contenders. These are the kind of races and betting opps we live for and you have to get your money in the the right way when you can.

Sorry to ramble. Thats my opinion.

Sent2Stud
 

While I agree with a lot of what you said I think you are making a mistake in the latter part of your post, or perhaps I am misreading you, as suppose you like that 15-1 shot ( and I understand what you mean when you say maybe you were " wrong " ) but also think the favorite is deserving. Isn't that a situation where at the very least you should have an exacta with your horse under the favorite ( and perhaps a small reverse )?

As an add-on, not relevant to what you posted necessarily, I think people need to pay more attention to how much exactas pay when a strong favorite runs second. To me these are far and away the best value payoffs available. I can't tell you how many 3-1 shots I have seen beat odds on favorites with the exacta paying more than double the win price. If a horse is considered over 50% to win the race just imagine what it's chances are of finishing second....especially when the second or third choice wins the race. It's worth noting.

I'm re-thinking the highlighted part of what I wrote. It turns out to NOT be easy to substantiate it.

For a 15% track takeout, the average return for a $2 place bet should be 1.70. When btwind says that favorites are overbet in the place pool, I think that means that $2 bet on all favorites must return an average of less than 1.70.

Let's say we look at 500 favorites and take the average payout of a $2 place bet on each one, including using $0 payout for the losers. If our average comes out to be $1.64, which would suggest that place bets on favs lose at 18%, is that difference from $1.70 statistically meaningful? I don't think so. I estimate the standard error of the mean* on those 500 bets would be 0.14. That's more than twice as large the 0.06 difference between $1.70 and $1.64. That, in turn, means there there is a very good chance that the "real value" for place bets on favs is $1.70, even though our 500-bet average is $1.64. In other words, the difference of 0.06 would be statistically meaningless.

To get the standard error down to 0.03, you'd need to look at the place payoff of 10,000 favorites!

I'm putting the details and math in a footnote, so that if I'm making a blunder, someone can point it out.

--Dunbar

* If we looked at 500 $2 place bets on favorites, about half of them will return $0, and the rest will return $2.10 up to $7 or more. But about 2/3 of the payoffs would lie in the range of $0 to $5. So we can estimate the standard deviation (of place payouts on favorites) at about $3.

When you take an average of something, you can estimate the uncertainty in that value with "the standard error of the mean". You get the standard error by dividing the standard deviation by the square root of the number of values in your average. For 500 place bets, the square root of 500 is 22. So, the standard error on the mean would be $3.00/22 = 0.14.

If you are trying to demonstrate that 2 numbers are different, you'd like them to differ by AT LEAST one standard error, preferably two standard errors. In the case of distinguishing a 15% takeout from a 20% takeout, the difference in average values (0.06) is much less than even one standard error after 500 bets.

If we looked at 10,000 favs, then square root of 10,000 is 100. The standard error becomes $3/100 = 0.03. Now, an observed difference of 0.06 would be meaningful. (because it would be 2 standard errors.)

What I just wrote in my previous post also applies to the "Contest" between place bets and exacta bets, except even MORE so because of the larger range of payoffs involved. (a larger range of payoffs results in a larger standard deviation.)

Unless one side is WAY better than the other, it is going to be impossible to detect the difference with any sort of statistical confidence without looking at thousands of place bets.

With that in mind, I see no point in tracking an additional 250 place bets, as I had said I would earlier. To resolve the Contest issue, we need someone with a huge queriable (is that a word?) database of results, like I think Cramer used to do for Barry Meadow's monthly publication.

--Dunbar

btw, I think the 3 posts above by btwind and S2S are particularly good.

OK, I understand no place betting. But, assuming a $100 total investment, how much do you play with your longshot on top/win bet compared to underneath in exacta... $70/30? $80/20? $90/10?

I guess it's nuanced, as most handicapping theories are. The shorter the deserved favorite, the less likely you are going to get any value elsewhere, win-wise or in the verticals. I suppose the Exacta play you mentioned is viable, but only if you're getting the right prices there. Usually it's not there, at least to the extent that you're beating the t/o. And some of it depends on personal style and preference. For me, unless the Ex pool is real favorable, I'd rather pass on races like this and look for a better (or maybe just different) single race opp.

As a general rule, there is more likely to be value in the play btwind mentioned than any other play.

I spent a fair amount of time looking for overlays in the exacta pool, given 2 assumptions: (1) that the win odds are approximately correct, and (2) that the odds of a horse coming in 2nd to another (particular) horse coming in 1st can be approximated by artificially removing the 1st place horse from the odds list and recalculating the odds on the remaining horses. (the Harville formula assumption). There are many races where either or both those assumptions are poor. Still, IMO they are a good starting point for evaluating bets in the other pools.

In the exacta pool, the situation that most often showed value was precisely the one that btwind singled out--using a heavy fav as the 2nd part of an exacta.

I found that result surprising, because the tendency of many bettors to play an exacta box works against it.

--Dunbar

Thanks and I appreciate you sharing as well as BTW's thoughts. I do think the Exacta pools are very important. When playing from home, I use two computers. One is tuned into the Exacta pool grid about 90% of the time. To me, it's the biggest advantage of wagering over the internet.

Dunbar...



...give it a rest already....will ya?