Hong 'King' Kong

[magicnight]

Should have noted you were right too, Boscar.

Some other notes on Hong Kong vs US ...

Avg field size for HK is 12.49, versus 7.87 in US

Avg starts per horse, per year, 7.57 in HK versus 6.28 in US

Avg purse in HK - 107,914 Euro per race, versus 15,811 Euro in US

Avg handle in HK - 12.4 million Euro per race, versus 184,000 Euro in US

Finally, HK returns a shade more than 84% of handle to bettors. Yup. A blended takeout of less than 16%

Of course, you only get to play two days per week in HK. Wonder how many racing dates NYRA will be running in a couple of years.

[TGAB]

I\'ve taken a look at the Group I races. There\'s 49 horses, some of which we don\'t even have in the database, all of whom need work to fill with no guarantees that we have all the requisite data necessary to do the job. It\'s a no go.

[phil23]

Thanks for considering it Alan. Cheers.

[Boscar Obarra]

I hadn\'t come across the takeout rate.  When you say blended, is it lower for win?

[magicnight]

\"When you say blended, is it lower for win?\"

Can\'t say, but I would guess so. The \"handle\" page in that PDF I linked to summarized all betting by country (handle, returned to bettors, %).

[magicnight]

Worst countries for takeout ...

Turkey - 50%
Venezuela - 44%
Brazil - 30%
Argentina - 28%
France - 25.7%
Japan - 25.1%

The best:
Ireland - 10.9%*
Great Britain - 11.1%*
South Africa - 11.2%*
Australia - 14%
Hong Kong - 14%

Those takeouts marked with * are via bookmakers. Those countries also have tote betting with much higher takeout, but 99% of the handle in those countries goes through the bookmakers (one of the reasons it is so expensive going to the races in UK and Ireland).

Australia also has a tote and bookmakers, but both return 86% and the handle is split fairly evenly between the books and the tote.

[Boscar Obarra]

Turkey - 50%

Is that how the country got named?

and Japan at 25% ?  didn\'t expect it to be that high and no fig given for USA, presume it\'s because of all the wildly differing takeouts.

[Boscar Obarra]

While enjoying tonights spectacular and bringing my excel code up to speed to handle some Hong Kong pool peculiarities, I found this pdf

http://www.horseracingintfed.com/resources/worldmedia/icha_2007/chang_2007e.pdf


I think those low takeouts reported INCLUDE the 10% house rebate for LARGE individual bets, so the rate mere mortals pay is

17.5 for win and 25% !!! for exotics.

[tmon]

It used to be that the USA got all of the extra horses from the UK. Now if they get up to a certain RP number they\'re quickly sold off to HK. We get the ones just below that level and the maidens who aren\'t rated.