ROW Pick 4

[Rick B.]

TGJB Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Rick, you\'re right. All favorites are created
> equal, none are worth betting against, and the
> public is the best handicapper. And the most
> likely winner is always the right bet.

Jeez, talk about assertions, even if coated in
dripping sarcasm.

One of them is true: the public is the best win
handicapper, always has been. Ask your math guru,
that Rocky fellow.

When TG tries to beat the favorite in ROTW every
week, it is TG intimating that \"all favorites are
created equal\", in that they all stink and can be
tossed.

How has that been working out? About 45 / 55,
over time.

[Rich Curtis]

\"When TG tries to beat the favorite in ROTW every
week, it is TG intimating that \"all favorites are
created equal\", in that they all stink and can be
tossed.\"

Rick: On a typical weekend, across the country, how many favorites do they try to beat, and how many favorites do they not try to beat?

[TGJB]

\"The public is the best handicapper\".

You know this how? By how some of them do against others of them?

Re those assertions, they\'re yours. To put it another way, for your conclusion to be true, they would have to be true as premises.

And on the 45/55 thing, even if we accept that split, this ain\'t betting football. If you\'re right 45% of the time and get 3-1 (for example) I\'m pretty sure you\'ll make out okay.

[Rick B.]

Rich Curtis Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Rick: On a typical weekend, across the country,
> how many favorites do they try to beat, and how
> many favorites do they not try to beat?

Dunno. Talking ROTW only.

[Rich Curtis]

So am I. ROTW only.

[elkurzhal]

Guess nobody played the Jan 9th ROTW where the suggested play was keying the favorite on top?

[Topcat]

Rick B. Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> TGJB Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Rick. The whole point of ROTW is to demonstrate
> > how what we do is different than what the
> public
> > does. That\'s HOW we choose which race to do.
> It\'s
> > not a coincidence.
>
> TGJB, I get it.
>
> IMO, this is the worst place to try to battle
> \"the
> public\" -- as a group, they are the most
> efficient
> handicapper in the game.
>
> So, the TG ROTW Analyst\'s first task each week --
> \"select race with disposable favorite\" -- is to
> play
> into a ~ 55% disadvantage. If he chooses wrong,
> it\'s over before any other work is completed.
>
> Am I wrong? Too simple? I\'m listening.



On a day-to-day basis, the soul of the game is to isolate and fade vulnerable favorites -- especially if markedly-overbet.   Always happy to steer clear of races featuring what can be fairly-labelled as solid -- and fairly-priced -- favorites, a circumstance which typically doesn\'t leave much value to be had on outsiders.   But races featuring overbet chalk which appear eminently-beatable figure-wise, pattern-wise, and/or (too often, alas) PHYSICALLY . . . I\'ll look to work those, pretty hard.

[TheBull]

I think the main point here is that yes there are a ton of races looked at on a daily/weekly basis where the top 2-3 favorites look tough and there doesn\'t look to be much value underneath. Those are probably 50-60% of the races across country these days, with field size shrinking and the public at large becoming smarter.

The point of ROTW is to find a race in the other 40% where there is a reason to either key a runner who offers value, or structure a play around beating the favorite(s) who will be overbet. That stat about the favorite being first or second x % of the time may be true; no one is disputing that. The ROTW is generally designed to isolate the y % of the time that the favorite isn\'t expected to be first or second based on TG methodology/data. If Jerry\'s assertion on the race is that the top 2-3 favorites look strong, I would assume they would not be considered for ROTW, as that provides little value to the customer base. He isn\'t in the business of telling us stuff we already know.

[ringato3]

Trying to lay low with the ponies while the quality of racing in my home region, NY, is extremely poor....

But can\'t resist this thread.  Certainly no shill for the house here, but Rick you make ZERO sense.  Everybody knows that favorites win more races than longshots.  What exactly would be the point if Thorograph had their choice of every major race over a weekend and decided to put up a race where the sheet numbers suggested the favorite would win?  Yippee.  I can pay $2.95 for the DRF and see that.  I (and the customer base), need to see something that justifies paying $25 vs the $2.95.

And  besides the obvious business sense from a TG perspective, playing short-priced underlays because they are the most likely winner is a DUMB strategy.  The best bet isn\'t the horse most likely to win.  It can be, but the game is a bit more complex than that.  Sure, you can \"stand\" with a short priced favorite in multi-race bets and potentially build value around the \"stand\", but within a race, betting the chalk because he has the best chance to win is a nice strategy to be ground into the ground with the 16 to 25% rake.

This is like your 10th attack on the ROTW in the last year.  Perhaps a different topic might suit you?  Like how you bet $3.40 shots and make a living off of it?

Rob

[SoCalMan2]

ringato3 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Trying to lay low with the ponies while the
> quality of racing in my home region, NY, is
> extremely poor....
>
> But can\'t resist this thread.  Certainly no shill
> for the house here, but Rick you make ZERO sense.
> Everybody knows that favorites win more races than
> longshots.  What exactly would be the point if
> Thorograph had their choice of every major race
> over a weekend and decided to put up a race where
> the sheet numbers suggested the favorite would
> win?  Yippee.  I can pay $2.95 for the DRF and see
> that.  I (and the customer base), need to see
> something that justifies paying $25 vs the $2.95.
>
> And  besides the obvious business sense from a TG
> perspective, playing short-priced underlays
> because they are the most likely winner is a DUMB
> strategy.  The best bet isn\'t the horse most
> likely to win.  It can be, but the game is a bit
> more complex than that.  Sure, you can \"stand\"
> with a short priced favorite in multi-race bets
> and potentially build value around the \"stand\",
> but within a race, betting the chalk because he
> has the best chance to win is a nice strategy to
> be ground into the ground with the 16 to 25%
> rake.
>
> This is like your 10th attack on the ROTW in the
> last year.  Perhaps a different topic might suit
> you?  Like how you bet $3.40 shots and make a
> living off of it?
>
> Rob

As has been said elsewhere, I think the basic topic here is fully covered in the book \"Fooled By Randomness\"

[Rich Curtis]

In a crowded field, this ROTW-tossing-favorites complaint is one of the most ridiculous ones ever to appear on this board. Next up, someone will probably complain that the ROTW is intimating that people should never play non-stakes races, should never play races on weekdays, or should play only one race a week.

[Mathcapper]

Rick B. Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> TGJB Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Rick, you\'re right. All favorites are created
> > equal, none are worth betting against, and the
> > public is the best handicapper. And the most
> > likely winner is always the right bet.
>
> Jeez, talk about assertions, even if coated in
> dripping sarcasm.
>
> One of them is true: the public is the best win
> handicapper, always has been. Ask your math guru,
> that Rocky fellow.


Rick B. – it's true that in aggregate, the public gets the probabilities right, but that doesn't mean you can't create a probability estimate of your own that is better than the public's (ie. one that identifies overlays and underlays, which is essentially what the ROTW analysts are doing each week).

I'll defer to Bill Benter, who explains it much better than I ever could:

\"An important feature of the parimutuel system is that public betting tends to produce odds that conform to the public's estimate of the horse's probability of winning. This is sometimes referred to as market efficiency, in the sense that the public betting forms an efficient market which accurately reflects all of the available information about the horse's chance of winning. The independent actions of the individual bettors – the invisible hand of the market you might say – cause them to effectively set odds which are an accurate reflection of the horse's chance of winning.

[Looking at] actual Hong Kong racing data - a sample of about 6,700 races - I've broken down the public betting on those races into ranges. There were 4,906 cases where the public had bet between 0 and 1% of the pool on a particular horse. Those cases averaged out to have 0.007% of the pool bet on them in that case. The actual frequency of winning actually worked out to be exactly 0.007% as well, so the public in aggregate – all the horses they put in that range – their probability estimate was quite accurate. Looking right down the range, you can see that in every range the public gets the probability about right.

You could summarize this situation by saying that the fraction of the pool bet is approximately equal to the probability of winning. This then leads to the problem in horse racing – the fact that the fraction bet equals the probability of winning, and given the track take, then the expected return for a bet on any horse in any of those ranges is uniformly -17%, which is the track take.

You could state that the problem in racing is that the native expectation is minus the track take. What's needed then to overcome that in horse racing is you need a new and different probability estimate for the horse's chance of winning.

You could ask the question at this point, 'Well, if we established that the public's estimate of the probability is approximately right, how can you have a different estimate of the probability? I thought we just saw from the chart that the public had the probability right.' Well, the truth is that there can be more than one probability estimate for the race, and they can both be 'true' estimates, or I prefer to use the word 'unbiased' estimates. It all depends on your state of knowledge, what estimate you would put on the horse's chance of winning.

Let's look at the exact same set of races, and let's say you were a person that had zero knowledge of the horses or anything about them.  And all you could say when you looked at a particular race, when you look at the number of entrants in the race – in this case the races all had around 12 horses in them – and you would make an estimate on each horse then that each horse's probability of winning is 1/12, or 8.8%. So a zero knowledge person would have ranked all of the horses in all of those races as each having an 8.8% chance of winning, and if he had done a chart summarizing how he did, he would find that he was correct – the average probability he gave those horses was 8.8% and lo and behold they came in exactly 8.8% of the time. It's not a good estimate, but it's correct – it's unbiased, it's not an over or underestimate of the horse's probability of winning.

Now let's move to the other extreme, call it the omniscient estimate. If you were God, or the God of horse racing, and you were able to correctly estimate the winner in every race prior to the race, your probability estimates would look like this: in 6,700 races, you were able to assign a probability estimate of 100% to the winning horse, and 0% to all the other horses. This also is an exactly correct probability estimate, it's unbiased. It's very much different than the [prior example], or even the [first example] which showed the public's estimate.

Obviously we're not omniscient, and we don't have zero knowledge, so we want to try to make another estimate that will be different from the public but also true. What we talk about doing here is making a fundamental estimate. The fundamentals that we use to predict the outcome to determine the true worth of a horse are facts about the horse – past performances, the conditions of the race, the skill of the jockey – all of the fundamental factors that go into actually presumably determining the race outcome. This is not the lazy man's way to make money at horse racing. This is a big effort. To set out to fundamentally create a comprehensive and accurate probability estimate for a horse's chance of winning a race is a very big project, but you're well rewarded when you do this.\"

-- Bill Benter, 12th International Conference on Gambling & Risk-Taking


Rocky R.

[TGJB]

That\'s pretty good. But hopefully his computer isn\'t programmed with 1/12th coming out to 8.8%.

[miff]

Since God was mentioned here, can say that when asked to explain/quantify overlay/underlay in norm,he said he had no idea and the existence of such is pure perception but no reality.

[FrankD.]

From the book of Miff 23:5
The board has gone Biblical!!!!!