Excellent ROI for your exacta boxes. (I'm assuming you're counting the box as 2 bets.)

Your lowish ROI for win bets, given your fine hit rate, is probably due to being constrained to provide a daily best bet opinion at this particular venue. I have no doubt that if you were providing a daily best bet (or bets) covering a number of tracks, allowing you to better pick your spots, your ROI would probably be around $2.40 or so. I haven't played PID much at all, as I'd said I would. I get the sense, however, that it's every bit as difficult, if not more so given the quality of horses, than WO. And, GG, HOL, SA, and TP, are ****in snacks compared to WO.

Does this have anything to do with Youbet now showing users their ROI and % on almost any bet they've made?

For example, apparently I've placed one (must have been drunk) wager on jockey Chad Murphy for an ROI of 1145%.

And 8 bets on Patrick Husbands for an ROI of -100%.

WOW...Ramon Dominguez 28 bets, -100%. Ramon and I are 0-28 on Youbet the last 11 months!

The quality of horses has been dreadful there this year. Some horse in the 1st today was 12-1 ML, was 100-1 in his first two starts, showed nothing, and opened at 4/5. Closed at 7/2 and won after looking hopelessly beaten on the turn.

What's hilarious to me is Doug's ROI, writing for the Erie Times-News, is so much better than the biggest racing coverage newspaper in the country's daily 5 handicappers (who all average worse than the takeout on their BEST meets, and play into an infinitely larger pool.)

Yes - the box is counted as two bets.

I've had a $283 one that was 2nd pick over top pick and a $156.40 top pick over 2nd pick that have helped to inflate the ROI for that stat.

The high win rate has a lot to do with picking winners. My largest win mutual through the first 19 racing days is only $17.40 .. but I've had 11 winners pay between $10 and $17.40

A lot of my clever - more esoteric type longshots I've put 2nd .. and that has really helped the top 2 in an exacta box stat.

My best bet of the day is now 10-for-19 (52.6%) with a $2.66 ROI after today. I've hit with my last six in a row. They've paid $11.00, $3.60, $3.20, $6.20, $3.40, and $4.20

Well, I'm a better handicapper than those guys. I think even those guys would agree if they got to know me.

But there have been some conditions at this meet so far that have been highly favorable to me.

In Week #2, 18 of the 32 races were won in wire-to-wire fashion. In week #3, 20 of the 32 races were won by either post 1 or post 2 .. and a good deal of the 12 horses who didn't win while starting from down inside got to the gold rail.

So, you've had a real constant bias in play.. and it wasn't until the very end of 3rd week that the riders started to pick up on it and ride more aggressively.

That's been a bigtime help.

I have no doubt you are a better handicapper than them. You actually take time in your selections instead of automatically deferring to the ML favorite. Analyzing biases and trends are a significant part of handicapping, regardless of whether that's been beneficial to your ROI in the current short run. My point was more that your opinion has to be even more right because of the size of the pools- a $1000 bet actually changes the odds at PID.

Did you see the 1st race today that I was referring to?

If you were fishing, you'd have to throw 5 of those back. Set some new benchmarks for public handicappers: start by championing a 5:2 odds minimum for win bets.:rolleyes:

Speaking of hard-to-believe percentage and ROI's, Calvin Borel's in the month of May was an almost unfathomable $3.47. Even if you remove the Derby from the equation and the $102 payoff, he still was $2.66.

Borel actually had 6 consecutive profitable years riding two-turn dirt races at Churcill Downs from '95 to '00.

Over that span he was a combined 127-for-620 (20.5%) $2.64 ROI


However, he's just been out of this world in those two-turn dirt routes at Churchill since 2006.

2006: 23-for-67 (34%) $7.22 ROI

2007: 15-for-70 (21%) $3.73 ROI

2008: 17-for-69 (24%) $2.22 ROI

2009: 10-for-21 (48%) $9.80 ROI

Combined: 65-for-227 (29% wins) $4.86 ROI

Combined record of graded stakes over span: 11-for-20 (55% wins) $22.64 ROI

Jealous? I'm watching Belmont replays right now; what are you doing?
p.s.-See above and bet MTB in the Belmont.