Some good bets on exotics & place & show

William T. Ziemba

Chapter 3 in Exotic Betting at the Racetrack, 2019, pp 27-38 from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

Abstract: The racetrack win market is essentially efficient like the stock market. The odds on average represent closely the chance that a given horse will win. There is the favorite-longshot bias. Favorites are shunned and they return more on average than they should. Longshots on the other hand are greatly preferred by the betting public and they are heavily overbet. The bias is most extreme for the greatest favorites and the greatest longshots. There used to be modest profits that could be made by betting very extreme favorites to win but these gains were quite small — in the 2-5% range at best and only on favorites at odds of 2-5 or less and now do not exist. By adjusting the track payback by the favorite-longshot bias as in Table 1.3 the win odds can be used to estimate accurately the chance that a given horse will win a specific race. This information is a key ingredient that yields the winning systems described in this book. The systems are for exotic bets such as the exacta, quinella, daily double, triactor, superfecta Pick 3, 4, 5, 6 and place pickall and the straight bets to place and show. The reasons why we can win in these other betting markets are:Each of these betting pools involves a more complicated payout structure that is more difficult for the average or even expert bettor to understand and even more importantly — to evaluate properly. Many, if not most, bettors do not seem to understand how the payoffs are computed.The outcome of a bet in each of these pools depends on the finish in the race of at least two or possibly three or four or more horses rather than just the one as in win betting.In the exotic bets there are many more combinations to consider. So it is very likely that some combinations are overbet (especially since the public likes to wheel many of the improbable horses) and some are underbet. Hence there is a good chance that one or more seriously underbet opportunities will be sufficiently good to warrant betting on.In the place and show pools the level of betting activity is quite small and the favorite-longshot bias is even more extreme hence it is very likely that underbet place and more frequently show bets will arise that are very profitable wagers…

Keywords: Efficient; Inefficient; Racetrack; Betting; Market; Exotic Betting; Race; Handicapping; Strategies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A1 C1 L83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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