Preakness Place/Show Pools

[Niall]

To All - havent seen any mention on this board of the generous place/show payouts on the Preakness or maybe I just havent seen . . . I always thought that as a rule of thumb with an odds on favorite you only play place/show if you expect said fav to finish off the board. Did so many horseplayers just pound for the win on BB that it created a skewed pool? Something to look for in the Belmont? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[fkach]

I played him to place and mentioned it the other day. It is worthy of discussion because it\'s a source of profits.

It these big races, it\'s not unusual for all the unsophisticated gamblers to bet on longshots to place or show. That goes double when there\'s a standout because they don\'t want to bet the favorite to win and don\'t understand that if the favorite comes in, it will depress the place and show prices of their own horses. Finally, most more sophisticated bettors are trying to make scores in the exotic pools. They totally ignore the place and show pools and allow the overlay to remain. It must be natural to equate large scores with higher long term profits because almost everyone thinks that way (either that or it\'s more entertaining and that\'s what they really want deep down inside).  

So you will often see the place and show pools totally out of whack.

The thing that makes it even more lucrative on big race days is that the pools are enormous. So you can punch a big ticket without much fear of knocking 20 cents off the price (which is catastrophic for place and show betting). This kind of betting is really limited to the large tracks and larger pool days. Even though there are overlays at the smaller tracks, you often can\'t bet enough to make it worthwhile because you start impacting the price.