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.
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Curlin and Hard Spun finish 1,2 in the 2007 BC Classic, demonstrating how competing in all three Triple Crown races ruins a horse for the rest of the year...see avatar
photo from REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
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