Show Parlay

[Dunbar]

Originally Posted by jman5581

The moral of the story, should someone want to take a couple hundred bucks and parlay it on one show bet for 17 races (just pick a favorable race on the card), they could make about a thousand fairly quickly. At about round 10, I would have made approximately 350% return.

Last time I did the showvivor contest I managed to stay alive 12 rounds, so I think making it to 10 is very achievable.

Anyone serious about their money realizes that this is a substantial return in comparison to other alternatives available to make money!

You suggest that succeeding for 10 rounds is relatively easy, and yields a return in the 350% range. A 350% yield means a profit of 2.5-1. If the bet was fair, the chance of winning a 2.5-1 bet is 29%. For the 10-race show parley to be a good bet, you'd have to win it more than 29% of the time. Do you think hitting 10 show bets in a row has more than a 29% chance of happening? For that to be true, many of the individual show bets would have to be paying better than fair odds. I see no reason to believe that's the case.

IMO, you had a lucky run in two samples. I'm not saying that it isn't a fun way to try to build up a profit. You may get more bang (in terms of time/$$) for your buck than many other ways. But in pure $$ value, I don't see any advantage over just taking a 5/2 shot to win.

You can do a test of this over in the "Contests" forum, if you really think it works. (See randall's ongoing place vs exacta test as an excellent example of how to proceed). Because the odds involved in your test are so low, you would only need to do maybe 20 attempts to get a reasonable estimate of how good the idea is. (the more, the better, however) You would need to specify the number of total attempts ahead of time, then you'd need to post the 10 show bets ahead of time before each attempt. (you don't need to post all 10 at once, but each "pick" would have to be posted before its race.) I'm pretty confident you'd end up with a negative ROI.

--Dunbar