Will Pays versus Actual Pays

[Socalman3]

In the late Pick 5 at Belmont today the Will Pays for the winning combination were saying that the payout would be $1106 for 50 cents.  The actual payout was $755.25.  There were no late scratches nor any non-staters nor surface switches. It was the favorite and there had been a scratch in the last leg that was declared after the first leg, so there should have been some money from that horse, but could that be enough to make such a big swing in the payoff?  The horse that was scratched was 6-1 ML.

[BitPlayer]

The math does seem to check out.  Assuming it was bet like a 6-1 shot in the P5, the 6-1 shot would have taken around 12% of the pool.  The winning favorite in the 9th paid $6.50 to win, representing about 25% of the win pool.  When the P5 money on the scratched horse is shifted to the favorite, the P5 money originally on the favorite goes from collecting the full net pool to collecting around 25/37ths of it, reducing the payout from $1106 to around $747.

[Socalman3]

BitPlayer Wrote:
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> The math does seem to check out.  Assuming it was
> bet like a 6-1 shot in the P5, the 6-1 shot would
> have taken around 12% of the pool.  The winning
> favorite in the 9th paid $6.50 to win,
> representing about 25% of the win pool.  When the
> P5 money on the scratched horse is shifted to the
> favorite, the P5 money originally on the favorite
> goes from collecting the full net pool to
> collecting around 25/37ths of it, reducing the
> payout from $1106 to around $747.

thank you very much for the time and effort on this. It sounds like I don\'t have a legitimate complaint.  It stinks because the top two choices were 2.25-1 and 2.35-1 and were dueling in the stretch -- although it didnt look close at the end, with a sixteenth of a mile to go it could have gone either way.  The difference in payoff between the two was the 2.35-1 horse was coming back $1200 and the 2.25-1 we now know paid $755.  i feel like a lot of other tracks show the impact of the scratches by showing what the payoff is to the scratched horse.  You can figure out who the favorite is at that time by the fact that its payoff matches the scratched horse. I vastly prefer that style of will pays to NYRA style of will pays which can be shockingly misleading. Of course, with the other, you need to be prepared that late money can change who the favorite is.