Making the Right ADW Choice. The Choice (for many of you) is Right in Front of You

 I flipped on Yonkers last night and saw their promo that they run most nights for their ADW. 

• 8% rewards on all Yonkers wagers
• 10% winning deposit bonus, so if you spend $10 on a bet, get back $100 for $90 profit, they give you another $9. 
• 100% deposit bonus (up to $100). 

No, this isn't CAW stuff, but frankly it's pretty damn good. 

Let's go through it for a second. 

Let's deposit $1,000 at Yonkers, which is $900 plus the $100 bonus. 

Let's pretend we don't know much about handicapping but we have some betting skill. Here's the post index at the Hilltop oval:

Posts outside the top, say, 4 are not great. Posts 1 through 4 beat the average loss by a few points, generally. 

With our $1,000 bank, let's bet every rail horse to win. 100 bets of $10 each. 

We cash around 20 out of 100 bets; these bets are eligible for a 10% bonus. 

Our $1,000 bet returns us 8% back ($80). 

And we got started with a free $100. 

We're pretty much beating the takeout and we haven't done anything but take advantage of a promo and better pricing.  

If this sounds rudimentary it's because it is. 

But it's also what CAW teams do. They do it with scale. 

Why, if you play this track, do you not take advantage of this? It's a potential thousands and thousands of dollars a year for your bankroll. They even have 5% rebates - regardless of volume, yes, even if you bet $25 a day - for many other tracks. 

It's good for Yonkers - they get pool sizes up - and it's good for players - they make more money. 

They aren't the only ones if you shop around. I don't know for sure, but I believe Iron Bets probably offers cash rewards. So does Horseplayerbet.com. There are others. 

I know the CAW debates get people in a tizzy, but they're not going anywhere and the real betting world is what it is. We have to adapt the best we can.

Canadian players with HPI have zero choice in this country, but players who play at the big track ADW's who do not offer rewards do have a choice. What in the world is stopping you from making the financially correct one?

Have a great Thursday everyone. 

Uniform Judging is (Unfortunately) a Pipe Dream

When you see a potential riding or driving infraction that affects the outcome of a race, how many of you are confident in the ruling? Show of hands. None, okay, me neither. 

Brett Sturman wrote an article on HRU this weekend that focused on a few rulings of late (this case in harness racing) where he was completely confused. One of them (about going inside pylons) was bonkers and the other (I was involved in this one, and it cost me a lot of scratch) regarding the breaking rule that defied everything we've been taught to believe. 

Both of the sports we bet seem to be discombobulated with the rules. 

In runner-land things like herding are let go (at times, sometimes not) where the outside horse loses momentum and loses the race by a foot. It kind of depends on which track the infraction (or non-infraction) occurs. All I know is when I see the inside jock yank the horses head right to make contact or stall the outside runner (and I bet the outside runner) I start having some very bad feelings. Again, at some tracks the feelings are more frightening than a Wes Craven movie, at others I am only mildly terrified. 

In harness-land, things can be, like Brett wrote, like living in Blair Witch, where your next door neighbor is Regan from the Exorcist. Depending on the track, things can be called almost the polar opposite. 

At the Meadowlands it's not uncommon to see a horse pitched who alters a horse who is nowhere near the action involved, simply because a driver gets antsy and changes his path. At Mohawk, things are called much more in-tune with the Thoroughbreds (mostly) where it needs to affect the finish. 

I think we bettors do not expect to agree with every decision. Much of it is subjective. But is it too much to ask for the sport to take it seriously? 

As Brett alludes, on the ruling at Batavia Downs, the real judges were out of town, and were replaced by out of state judges who judge at a country fair circuit. No, I'm actually not kidding. How is this possible in a sport with billions shoved into the windows?

Flip on twitter and you'll hear a lot of gripes about the sport. Some can surely be invalid or sour grapes. But can we blame anyone for being negative when a billion dollar sport treats these decisions involving a ton of money with such carelessness?

I was asked to help with this issue years ago in Canada, and we did bang out some uniform rules. It didn't work as planned but I can say, at least in this country, we see better than most. In the U.S. with all the jurisdictions it was a different story and I think it's a complete mess. 

Whatever the case, the problems seem so systemic that confidence can't help but wane when we talk about a sport professionally running its judges booth. It's a pipe dream, and as long as it is, we'll continue to gripe about it, almost on a daily basis. In my view, it's not a bug anymore, it's a feature. When we open a form or program, it's simply a part of our world. 

Have a great Monday everyone. 

Winning Player Post Follow Up - 3 Building Blocks to Win More Often

I got a lot of horseplayer feedback on this weekend's post about how often different subsets of winning horseplayers end up green. Thanks for that!

I promised a follow-up, so here we go. 

I'd like to leave aside the volume players in this discussion, because let's face it, most people aren't going to start playing $4 million a year through the windows. It's hard enough to compete nowadays with CAW's flooding that zone anyway. 

I'd like to examine the lower volume spot-type players. These are very seasoned folks who've developed a way to beat the game. We can, in my view, learn a lot from them. 

Picking Spots, Keeping an Even Keel

First, these folks win only around 40% of racedays, which means a couple of things, i) they aren't hammering the chalk and ii) they have developed a winning mindset that allows them to lose more frequently than they win and still keep playing week by week. 

Finding spots where the betting pools have made a mistake - playing horses from say 3-1 to 7-1, and in many cases higher - is a big part of their games.  It's definitely a learned skill, but in my view, many people on my twitter feed have this skill. Keeping an even keel (and executing these opinions in the proper way) is the bugaboo.

The Defensive Trap

Despite strong handicapping skill, many are still underwater and I believe this is where the second point comes into play -- they've developed the winning mindset. And because they win, this mindset allows them to play free. 

What do I mean by playing free? It's quite a bit about what ITP got flamed on twitter about for so long - they don't care even one iota if they win or lose the bet, they just want to ensure they bet their opinion properly. 

That involves, as I see it, not falling into defensive mindsets. 

Here's an example:

When a good (but not winning) player sniffs out a 9-1 horse, he or she often plays it defensively. This involves boxing up the horse with the chalk, taking chalk underneath, or in supers, or tris, or trying to group it with a chalk double to get "extra juice" on the bet. I can't tell you how many times I see this.

It's exactly wrong.  

When I ask a player I know who is sharp who he likes in a certain race and he tells me a 15-1 shot that ends up winning, I look at who ran on the bottom. If it's a first or second choice, I know he's dead. If it's a 6-1 or 10-1 horse who looked like they could clunk it up, I ping him to see if he scored and I usually get back, "I got the exacta". And he doesn't bet it for $3 or because he bet a wheel. 

When we think about this mathematically it makes sense. We like a 9-1 shot, so we probably don't like the chalk. Even if we like the chalk some underneath and don't like anything in the ex, we should just be betting win. Why have a $20 winner and a $40 exacta with a short shot we don't really like? 

For further evidence of this, listen to the Sport of Kings pod with Chris Larmay sometime. When he has an opinion on a 10-1 shot, when do you hear him say he's going to bet exs or tris with the favorite? Never. 

The defensive mindset is strong and it's very hard to shake. These players never acquiesce to it. 

We Need to Learn to Race

For many folks, winning 40% or less of the days is not a viable path in developing the winning mindset skills the great players tend to have. Bankroll management and emotional control is a steely beast to stab on the jump. 

I have a couple of (stolen) suggestions that may help.  

Mike Maloney (for my money one of the greatest to ever play this game) has spoken about not having to big game hunt. With limited bankrolls so many players seek glory in pick 5 pools when they should be betting their opinions in pick 3 pools, or doubles. 

Personally, I have pivoted from spending $X in pick 4 and 5 pools to maybe 1/10thX on those pools. I play pick 3's, doubles or vertically at much higher rates in this new CAW land. The nearer the pool the more transparent they are, and I am eliminating some risk. 

The effects of this are obvious, and twofold, i) You cash more tickets, giving you added confidence in your play, and ii) your bankroll is less swingy, reducing the probability of tilting, and overextension. 

Second, and this one is partially stolen from ITP:

No matter how much we like the horse, we don't have to bet every pool around him or her, searching for glory scores. If the bet - whether it be an ex, tri, double or pick 3 or pick 4 - is not there, it's not there. 

This tip is personally difficult for me, even to this day, and I have to continually check myself. 

Recently I loved a horse which I considered one of those "bet of the year" things we tend to prattle on about. He was 5-1, and I frankly hated the pick n's around him, and didn't really like anything underneath. I spent oodles of cash on exotics anyway, because well, I'm dumb. 

The horse won. I didn't cash a single exotic. I wasn't even close. I made money on the race because a $12 winner is good, yet felt I lost miserably. I don't know why I still put myself through it, but no one said this game was easy. 

In the end, I believe that before we reach the Groovy sprinting skill and Affirmed mental toughness of the 40% winning days player above, we have learn to race. Learning to race means (in part) more winning days than losing days to give us confidence we can do it.

Sure we can split pick 6 tickets with friends, or take stabs at carryovers, but big game hunting or having to sweep pools because we love a horse tends to lead us into some very bad places. 

Summary

First thanks for reading and please share your thoughts on twitter or elsewhere, and second thanks to the players who chatted with me. It's a weird game. We compete, yet we're open to talk about this difficult, passionate game. 

Have a super rest of the day everyone.