Originally Posted by
indio
You couldn't be more wrong. Horse racing is a sucker bet to begin with, but Win pools especially. With almost always 12 options or less (often less than 10), the Win bet is almost impossible to ever find any true value because you have on average a close to 20% rake on every pool. Even with a large section of pools made up by wagers from idiots, the chances that a market is so inefficient as to offer any real value (where the payout exceeds the true probability) is slim. It does happen on occasion, but I practically guarantee ANY horse bettor who makes any volume of WIN bets during a year without some sort of rake reduction or payout enhancement will lose. If someone were to bet strictly long shots, they just might get enough variance over a years time to swing their way to eek out a small profit, but that would be highly unlikely.
Let's look at the 3 main factors working against any WIN bet.
1. TAKEOUT - This factor alone will make WIN bets a -ev play for the player almost every time. Every racetrack in the country is taking out between 15.5% to 25% of every WIN pool. Can you imagine playing a poker game where the house takes $20 out of every $100 pot? How do you think you'll do after playing for 12 hours, even if you're the best poker player at the table?
2. BREAKAGE - This is the ultimate Fck You to the player. As if taking 15-20% isn't bad enough, the player gets additionally gouged by the archaic method of breakage. This is where the track always rounds DOWN to the nearest .20 cent mutual price (NY will round down to the nearest .10 for smaller payouts). This means that if the true mutual price of a winning WIN bet is 4.19, they will pay 4.00 as opposed to the more logical 4.20. This has a gouging effect that really effects the true price, but especially at shorter priced horses. Not only is this practically criminal, it's also laughable that in today's world of modern technology and predominant account wagering from a computer that pools can't be offered right to the penny.
Let's say there is $104,000 in the win pool (before rake and breakage) and there is $39,950 bet on the #3 horse. This would mean the market is giving him a 38.4% chance of winning, and you're looking at a price of +160. Now let's first take 17% out of the pool. The track (and state government) takes $17,680 leaving $86,320 which means our track odds are now +116 (big difference from+160). But that's not the end of it. Let's say the horse wins, it should have a mutual payout of 4.32 , but you wont actually see 4.32, they are going to round DOWN to 4.20. So we end up getting +110 on the bet. What they did was skim an extra $2425 off the pool, and the real takeout becomes 19.3% in a supposed 17% takeout pool. Good luck ever showing a profit.
3. BETTING AGAINST YOURSELF- With the exception of the very largest handle tracks at Santa Anita, Belmont, Keenland, etc., most WIN bets actually reduce your payout with even a medium sized $300 win bet. Take a track like Emerald Downs for example. There might be $10,000 total in the WIN pool. Lets say you really like a the #1 horse in a five horse field who is currently 2-1 on the odds board. Out of that $10,000, there is $2767 bet on the #1 horse, so after they take 17% off the top, the odds are 2-1. Now, lets say you bet $300 to win on the #1 horse. The pool goes to $10,300 and now there is $3067 bet on the #1. Your $300 bet just changed the odds board from 2-1 to 9-5, but alas we wont even see 9-5. If the pools close right after our bet, the pools would produce a mutual price of 5.57, but they are going to round down (gouge) to 5.40. So what in essence happened was, we like the #1 horse who had 27.6% of the pool money bet on him (odds of +260), they took 17% off the top ( odds of +200), we bet $300 to win on him and our odds dropped again (odds of +179) and the horse ends up winning and they employ the standard breakage and we get paid off at odds of +170.
While there is almost never any real value in racetrack pools, the best places to find them are in exotics where there are numerous combinations. Sometimes, a pick 3 that has fields of 10+12+12 (1440 different possible combinations) can produce the occasional +ev payout, especially since chalk combinations are usually heavily over bet, and at some tracks, you might be the only one holding a winning ticket at the end of it.