apologies for beating a dead horse.....

[P-Dub]

I agree with Frank.

Pool size has a lot to do with it. Saratoga routinely has nice payouts, so does So Cal tracks.

Hit a P4 at Saratoga with a 9/1, 23/1, 4/1,4/1.  .50 paid $6915. Parlay around $2700.

Not saying pool manipulation isn\'t possible, but the pool size - along with a longshot that looked good on several products, had a lot to do with the lighter payout.

[richiebee]

Pulling very hard for Raid-az this weekend in a wild playoff scramble

[Mathcapper]

It's true that the Pick 4 payouts will rarely (if ever) be right in line with the win parlay. This is because (as RickB mentioned) the pools aren't indexed to one another. Unless the odds of each winner in the sequence are exactly the same in the Pick 4 pool as they are in the win pool, the payout is not going to be the same.

Longer sequences like the Pick4 have wider individual variation because multiple horses with win odds out of line with the multis compound the effect. But over the long run, the payouts converge with those expected based on the takeout-adjusted win parlays.

Also keep in mind that, because you're only getting hit with the takeout once in the Pick 4 (as Jerry noted), the Pick 4 payout should not match the win parlay anyway. At NYRA tracks, the Pick 4 should actually pay, on average, 53% more than the raw win parlay.

Looking at the results for the Dec 3 sequence, it doesn't appear that anything nefarious was going on. My guess is that what you are seeing is emblematic of a longshot bias in the multis (longshots are overplayed in the multis vis-à-vis their win odds). The same phenomenon was discussed in the recent Bruce Jenner thread.

I did a small study a few years back on Pick 4 payouts vs. their parlays. The sample size was only 83 sequences, but it shed some light on this phenomenon.

On an overall basis, considering it was such a small sample, the payouts came surprisingly close to what was expected based on the takeout-adjusted win parlays. On average the Pick 4\'s paid approximately 60% higher than the win parlay, versus an expectation of +50% more than the parlay.

Of the 83 sequences, 34 of them paid less than the expected +50%, while 49 paid more. 13 of them (15%) paid less than the raw win parlay.

When I sorted the results by parlay size however, I found that of the 11 $2 parlays that were above $4K, 6 of them (55%(!)) paid less than the raw win parlay. This implies that the public is betting longshots at a higher rate in the Pick 4 pools than in the win pools.

The Dec 3 sequence seems to be a case in point (that sequence btw, should have paid $3,175 based on the takeout-adjusted win parlay, not the $2,080 based on the raw win parlay). The FL shipper Shangala was 27-1 in the win pool off a 15-1 ML. If you assume for a moment that the odds in the Pick 4 pool of the winners of the other 3 legs coincided with their win odds, that implies that Shangala was around 8-1 in the Pick 4 pool.

This particular situation may be less an indication of a bias by the public toward longshots in the multis than it is evidence of astute betting by sharp horseplayers. That filly had a string of solid recent figures. An argument could be made by anyone using Jerry's figures that she should even have been the favorite. The only mystery is why she was let go at 27-1 on the board, but certainly she warranted strong play in multi-race bets.

Another thing to consider is that when dealing with longer-priced horses, it doesn't take much in terms of variation in win probability to change the parlay estimates dramatically. Shangala's 27-1 odds equates to a win probability of 3.0%. If she was, say, 15-1 in the Pick 4 pool, that translates to a win probability of 5.3%,  only a couple of percentage points higher and so small on an absolute basis as to basically be considered noise.

If you assume that both Shangala and the winner of the first leg (Legally Bay) were around their morning lines in the Pick 4 pool (15-1 ML and 4-1 ML, respectively), the Pick 4 paid just as expected - around +50% more than the parlay.

It's also possible that the longshot bias in the multis is partly due to the lower minimum wagers, as TheBull posited. The study I did was a few years back, on the SoCal circuit, and I don't recall if the $.50 minimum was in place at that time. But there's certainly a pronounced longshot bias in Gulfstream's Rainbow 6 bet, as I discussed in another post, that may be partially due to that bet's $.20 minimum causing players to spread deeper and to subsequently underbet favorites, as I think Jerry had suspected.

Rocky R.

[TGJB]

The thing about this is it\'s easy to tell IF a) the right information is put together, and b) someone knows enough and cares enough to look. If it\'s lots of individuals, with bet structure that makes sense, there\'s nothing going on, maybe just a lot of our guys. If it\'s a couple of guys playing big punches on 1/1/A/A, or if ALL the will pays in the last were way low, that\'s not just a red flag, it\'s a red flag convention.

I reached out to a couple of people on this, they\'re checking and said they will get back to me. But it\'s not clear the questions are answerable the way data is kept. Which speaks to what a minor league operation this business is.

(Last sentence was written after a good breakfast, when I\'m in a good mood. It could have been a LOT harsher).

[Boscar Obarra]

While it\'s good to be on guard against fraud, I think it unlikely these are any kind of past posting affairs.

 If you could see all the p-3 p-4 p-5\'s you\'d probably be shocked at the number of underlaid payoffs that exist IN ADVANCE of the results.

 I see it all the time in exactas.Very low payoffs combining two longshots. Means nothing , most of the time. When one randomly wins , you hear the \'they knew\' calls.
 
 That said, why not make the multi\'s available to the public via a download AFTER the pools are closed. That would eliminate all the angst some seem to have about strange payoffs.

 No reason for these to be a state secret. A simple comma delimited text file will do .

 And where is the realtime odds updating we were promised this year?