Robo Betting

[TGJB]

I can tell you he can tell me with a great degree of accuracy what the win odds will be at Saratoga before the first flash.

[Rick B.]

TGJB Wrote:
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> I can tell you he can tell me with a great degree
> of accuracy what the win odds will be at Saratoga
> before the first flash.

He\'s wasting his time at the track, then; he should
be on Wall Street, with the Big Boys.

All these years, I was led to believe that a given
mutuel pool is independent of each and and every
other pool, and now along comes Jones with evidence
of \"near perfect\" correlation of the win pool to
ALL of the serial pools...driven only by the highly
predictable force of horseplayer betting behavior...

...and he has complete records for 10 years of it
to prove it!

I\'m sold! Where do I send the money?

[TGJB]

He has his laptop set to automatically convert the multiple race pools into win odds and they come out damn close. Having said that, a) Saratoga has big pools, which smoothes out some rough edges, and b) there are always going to be occasional situations where a horse gets hot-bet and they only go into the win pools.

There have been lots of situations where a horse has been 6-1 with 3 minutes to post, Rocky says it will be 3-1, and it ends up 3-1 or 7/2.

[miff]

Rick,

Some rather famous charters in NY and elsewhere.Think you may be seeing differently but there is zero \"edge\" to knowing where the board will open or close in the second half of any DD pool.Traditional charters somewhat thwarted by robotic late money and racings antiquated software cycle.In the earliest of my gambling days in NY,a young Jewish math whiz was just gambling(beating the game) off charting at Yonkers and Roosevelt,big time harness tracks at the time with fairly liquid pools.

Not sure Im reading you correctly that you would send someone money for that info,it\'s useless other than showing where \"they\" are  betting.Lotta charters/math guys on the Bowery!

Mike

[Rick B.]

miff Wrote:
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> there is zero \"edge\" to knowing where the board
> will open or close in the second half of any DD
> pool.

I disagree.

If I know in advance that a horse I want to bet in
race 2 will close at 2-1, and I can structure my DD
bets in race 1 so that I can get a composite 5-1 on
my horse in the 2nd leg...wouldn\'t that be some useful
information? I think so.

I\'m just skeptical that such (relative) precision on
win pool odds can be obtained simply by crunching the
numbers on any or all of the serial pools -- before,
during, or after the betting period is open. I would
need to see the program code,or the various formulae
involved, and I can imagine what the answer would be
if I asked to inspect either or both...something like,
\"Fat Chance!\"

[miff]

Rick,

Hear you, that\'s not an edge to me, can see what you mean though.
As far as precision, it does not exist but many will come very close, very often to predicting based on what they see in charting.

Mike

[FrankD.]

Sorry Guy\'s,

I just can\'t see it; as miff says I know many math/computer guys that ended up in the Bowery. This game is a million miles away from an exact science.

What possible advantage is knowing the probable odds? The horses still have to complete the circle and odds are merely a reflection of public opinion. In this day of \" robo betting\" it\'s not even an opinion it\'s a bunch of big bettors plunging into the pools with every logical conclusion; hoping to break close to even and grab their 7-12 % rebate money.

It\'s not handicapping, it\'s not finding an angle, TGJB we had this very discussion on Saturday. The dead rail horse is one of the few angles \" A sharp guy \" has anymore in this age of robo betting, information over load and blabber mouths spewing every bit of semi inside information.

My main focus is on pick 3 and pick 4 horizontal wagers for 2 reasons.
A) I\'m betting into a 8.33 % or 6.25 % take out by spreading out in 3 or 4 races.

B) Without pool manipulation which we also discussed about hacking into an existing pool via the all all button or changing a number; the horizontal pools are uncontaminated by the \" robo or batch betting programs\" because they cannot reflect the odds 2 or 3 races in advance.

IMHO this is a bigger issue than drugs, illegal or stacking of legal drugs.

Good luck,

Frank D.

[Mathcapper]

Hi Frank – Agree with your rationale for playing the horizontal wagers (see study results below). Have to disagree though on those wagers not being a reflection of the prior race odds (see same study results below). The computer guys use a couple of different techniques to estimate the likely odds of upcoming races for which they cannot see into the pools. On a related note, some of the computer guys are indeed just arb guys looking to bet as much as they can and collect the rebates. Many of the teams however, actually have a great deal of "handicapping" programmed into their algorithms. They typically use a multinomial logit model composed of upwards of 100 factors (ie. performance figures, trainer stats, jockey stats, finishing position, etc), often refined using things like exponentially recency-weighted averages, to assess each horses true probability of winning. And while some of them have indeed gone bust trying to get their systems to work, many have gone on to launch what are widely considered to be the most successful professional gambling ventures of all time (even Benter and Woods lost their intitial $100k stake before going on to make $100's of millions apiece).

Miff - I don\'t know what "charters" are and I'm not a computer guy, but for me - and I think I agree with Rick on this - the "edge" comes from knowing whether or not you're going to get the value you think you are on the horses you're wagering on. If you're looking at keying a horse at 3MTP because he's an overlay at 6-1 but you know he's going to go off around 3-1 (and thus be an underlay), that constitutes a nice edge to your bottom line IMO.

There's also a huge arbitrage opportunity in the Betfair pools, but the liquidity isn't there yet in early prerace wagering.

RickB - I understand your skepticism, I shared it myself when I first looked at this stuff (btw, when I say "near-perfect," I'm referring to overall long-term results, not all individual cases).

I first became aware of the merit of using parlays to estimate multi-race payouts (and upcoming race final odds) back in 1993 when Steve Crist gave a presentation at a DRF Expo on the topic with respect to Pick 6 payouts. One point he made is that an adjustment needs to be made to account for the difference in takeout between a win bet and a multi-race bet, along with (and more importantly) the fact that you only get hit with the takeout once in a multi-race wager. Because of this, a multi-race wager should generally pay a good deal more than the straight win parlay.

For instance, at the SoCal circuit, where the win takeout is 15.43% and the Pick 6 takeout is 23.68% with a 30% payout to consolations, the Pick 6 should pay (1-.2368)x(1-.30)/(1-.1543)^6 -1 = 46% more than the straight win parlay on noncarryover days.

Similarly, at NYRA, which has a win takeout of 16% and a Pick 6 takeout of 15% with a 25% payout to consolations, the Pick 6 should pay (1-.15)x(1-.25)/(1-.16)^6 -1 = 81.5% more than the straight win parlay on noncarryover days.

For the record, here's the Pick 6 results of the 1993 winter Aqueduct meet Crist examined, along with the other meets I've tracked:

Aqu'93 (39 noncarryover days): Estimated average payout was $15,368 (49.1% more than straight win parlay); Actual average payout was $14,265.
Dmr'97 (33days): Estimate: $25,498; Actual: $25,959
Hol'97 (29 days): Estimate: $23,760; Actual: $20,289
Bel'98 (38 days): Estimate: $13,524; Actual: $10,196
Dmr'98 (32 days): Estimate: $39,570; Actual: $31,804
Sar'98 (25 days): Estimate: $25,656; Actual: $20,212
Sar'12 (27 days): Estimate: $18,275; Actual: $14,641

The correlation is even better when looking at the average payouts for Pick 3's, Pick 4's and Pick 5's:

SA/Hol'12 (80 days): Pick 3 Estimate: $75; Pick 4 Actual: $72
SA/Hol'12 (80 days): Pick 4 Estimate: $123; Pick 4 Actual: $114
SA/Hol'12 (80 days): Pick 5 Estimate: $516; Pick 5 Actual: $509

The same concept applies to the Daily Doubles, which at NYRA should pay on average 15.5% more than the equivalent win parlay (at SoCal they should pay 8.11% more).

The correlation between the odds based on the doubles pool and those of the win pool allows me to estimate final odds for horses in every race that has a daily double associated with it. There's no rocket science involved – it's just a matter of plugging the correct equations defining the mathematical relationship into an Excel spreadsheet. It's a closed-form solution, but you do need to look at all of the combinations in the pool (at least for those involving the first few favorites from the first leg anyway), because the doubles-based odds are interdependent. If you base final odds estimates on the win pool odds from the first leg rather than those of the doubles, the results will be less accurate, especially when dealing with a long-priced winner in the first leg.

I don't keep records on their precision, but after doing it for thousands of races now, I've found that the majority of the time the estimates are very close to the final odds. Of course any one individual horse's odds can vary a bit (for instance a horse that is 8-1 in the doubles may go off at 10-1 in the win pool) but when looked at on an overall basis over thousands of races, the correlation is excellent. You see more variation at high odds, but that's simply because the difference between the winning probability for a horse at say 35-1 and one at 45-1 is very small.

I have toyed with the idea of tweeting the final odds estimates at the beginning of each race to help Serling and company with their prerace prattle about this and that horse's value based on odds that are nowhere near where they're going to end up, but it's a lot of effort on my part and I doubt they'd pay any attention to it anyway – LOL. I wouldn't mind doing it for a day's card though if anyone's interested in seeing how they stack up to the true final win odds. Or if you're ever up at the Spa seminars, just ask me and I'd be happy to tell you more about it.

Btw, you can find a good deal of the academic literature providing supporting evidence for the efficiency of wagering pools in general amongst the papers presented in an anthology called, "Efficiency of Racetrack Betting Markets:"
http://www.amazon.com/Efficiency-Racetrack-Betting-Markets-Edition/dp/9812819185/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376494947&sr=8-1&keywords=efficiency+of+racetrack+betting+markets

Best,

Rocky

[miff]

Hi Math,

Charters are simply people who observe the exacta or DD pools to see where sharp drops or blowouts show up esp for certain outfits. Some do not handicap,they just follow the money flow.They believe they can distinguish dead pieces from live ones by charting.

Re the over used word \"value\" a quote from  Tony the Gypsy(speedboy desciple 1965 about)\"Kid, every sucker talks value as they tear up their tickets.Like beauty,value is strictly in the eyes of the beholder and most need glasses\"

Guy never worked a day in his adult life.

Best,

Mike

[Mathcapper]

miff Wrote:

> Charters are simply people who observe the exacta
> or DD pools to see where sharp drops or blowouts
> show up.

Miff – Thanks for clarifying. I've actually been doing something like that myself with respect to DD pools since my Dad showed me how almost 30 years ago. We used to (and I still do) simply divide the morning lines of the horses in the second leg into their respective DD payoffs, which gave us a pretty good sense of who was getting bet by the "sharp money," especially when public handicappers didn't mention the horse. I've done a separate study covering over 2,200 such horses from June'10 to Feb'12 showing that a win wager on each of them virtually eliminates the track take (-2% ROI) without any handicapping whatsoever, which is surprising when you consider that these horses are all big underlays relative to their morning lines.

I usually find that this "sharp money" is not confined to the DD pools – it also shows up in the win pools, as the final odds tend to agree with those estimated by the DD pools, just like they do for all the other horses in the race.

On rare occasions this is not the case. For instance, in this year\'s Belmont (I rarely see "sharp money" in big races like this btw), Palace Malice was a huge \"play\" in the DD pools at 7-1 off a 15-1 ML. I kept waiting for his win pool odds to drop from the 13-1 they were sitting at, but with an enormous pool like that I knew it wasn't going to happen.

Rocky

[miff]

Yes,big days attract more dead money than on a regular day.Good days to step out as chop is somewhat mitigated.

[Boscar Obarra]

https://www.thorograph.com/phorum/read.php?1,81163,81163#msg-81163


 Of the many \'disciplines\' that can be applied at the track, probably the least well understood is what goes on in the betting pools.

 And a simple, unsophisticated attempt to track and mirror  \'smart\' money will most likely result in an early demise of your bankroll.

[richiebee]

FrankD. Wrote:
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>
> I just can\'t see it; as miff says I know many
> math/computer guys that ended up in the Bowery.
> This game is a million miles away from an exact
> science.


Frank:

A little disappointed in you and Miff for falling behind the times. Hipsters have
been seen slinking around the Bowery recently and you could do a lot worse than to
end up there.

Frank, I read that the owner of the Alabama favorite is a Schenectady homeboy.
Will he be prepping for the race at Uncle Ben\'s Saturday morning and/or
celebrating there afterwards?

Outstanding weather continues upstate and downstate, hope it stays through Labor
Day.

[FrankD.]

Rocky,

I hope to see you this weekend. You sure made a splash with your first post after years of observing on here!!!! LOL.

My point on the horizontals \" not being fully contaminated\" should have been clarified, that their programs do not have access to the will pays and probables 2 races out. It seems this is where the last minute bombing comes in per the exacta pools where it is noticed the most.

Obviously when making a pick 4 in the 2nd race they have that info for the first 2 legs and are at the mercy of the morning line & their handicapping software going beyond that.

Boscar is a good one to weigh in here as he has been a pool watcher and charter for over 30 years. Before co mingling of pools you could see the moves in the exacta pool of the raggies/Thoro guy\'s and spot that money. I had a lot of TV time with my clip board in the 80\'s.

TGJB mentioned he would like to see wagers limited to a certain amount once you get to 2 minutes to post to protect pool integrity some what.

It\'s funny because last Saturday this was the major topic of discussion at the table.

good luck,

Frank D.

[Topcat]

FrankD. Wrote:
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> Rocky,
>
> > TGJB mentioned he would like to see wagers limited
> to a certain amount once you get to 2 minutes to
> post to protect pool integrity some what.
>
> It\'s funny because last Saturday this was the
> major topic of discussion at the table.
>
> good luck,
>
> Frank D.


\'WAY too easy to circumvent by any monied, well-organized group, alas . . .