An Old Time Angle is (Partially!) Responsible for Low Harness Prices

Last night at Mohawk we saw what we often see at the harness races - an extremely well-bet horse who was picked nowhere, off a 10-1 morning line. 

He closed from last, won like a good thing, and immediately my iPhone (yes, I sold out to the man, RIP Blackberry) lit up with a message I see often nowadays - "How did they know". 

In this case at least, I honestly don't think "they" did. 

The horse was driven like it had no shot; driver Bob McClure didn't even take cover when he could've; old-time trainer Roger Mayotte trying to put one over on us is as believable as the last AI video I saw on twitter. 

I think this was a case of old meets new. 

The old being a good old-fashioned class drop - the horse raced well against much better and was dropping against lesser. And I firmly believe this old angle is being used by CAW teams everywhere, especially in this day and age where trainers play the class drop game like coveralled maestros. CAWs rely on data, and the class drop data (especially at places like Yonkers) shows high impact values. These impact values, coupled with low win takeout after rebate, can trigger some very low prices.  

I'm spitballing, of course; the alchemy of a modern harness CAW team is beyond my knowledge. Hell, I can barely get any harness data because Trackmaster/Equibase wants an arm, a leg and a first born to even check my hypothesis. But I see this way too often now. 

What exacerbates it in my view, are the CAWs themselves, in tandem with the current group of players who are getting smarter and smarter. 

This horse, coincidentally named Get the Green. was heavily bet in the pick 3's off his 10-1 ML. Two or three years ago players would ignore it as a computer glitch or a smaller pool phenomenon, but today they pay attention. Even the telecasts, which rarely paid attention, are broadcasting where they think final prices would go. 

When this happens I think we see a multiplier effect - people see the sharp money, know the horse is going down in price and is probably live, and they want a piece of it. This drives the price down even further. 

There's a lot of rumors that CAW teams are staying away from multis because of this signal, i.e., showing their hand which hurts their vertical prices.  Transparency is the best disinfectant, and the more we plebs can see, the more we can act on. Wondering if CAWs are going to play games with this may be the next step in the in-play wagering landscape we'll have to navigate.

The harness racing braintrust - if they care about it, which I am not convinced they do - would have to be very creative with conditioned sheets to combat this problem. Let's face it, participants love class drops; "wait until next week for a lower class and a better post" should be written on this sports' epitaph. But for better prices and more handle, it's probably a good idea to at least think about it. 

Have a super Monday everyone. I hope the windows have been treating you well. 

Using the Racing Markets to Enhance ROI

There was a video posted today that I think can help some pure handicappers who sometimes struggle with betting. It's from Pizzola, and it solely focuses on betting markets, and betting market moves. 

In 1986 or 1996 or 2006, the odds board mattered - it was a free information source - but in 2026 it probably matters more than ever before. Understanding it, in my view (and it appears Rob, who is a successful sports bettor) is of utmost importance. 

A couple nuggets from the video - 

"The Gut Check". If you love a horse (in the video's case, a team or player prop) and the market is well outside your price, the chances you missed something is undeniably strong. Did we miss that the horse was buried in his last? Is the race condition built for this horse and there's a hidden big class drop we didn't see? Is there something nefarious at play? Is the pace scenario completely different than we imagine?

Time after time after time I find when my numbers are outside the market I missed something. 

On Chris's pod awhile back I noted that in 2006 if I saw a 8-1 horse I loved and had 3-1 I would likely bet with both fists, but in 2026 I am extremely cautious, oftentimes not betting the horse at all, or betting someone else. 

No, not all the time - I am against the market many times a month - and Rob addresses it in the video. But recognizing the characteristics and the patterns when the market is telling me I am wrong is a massive part of my current play.

Rob "treats the market movement as a free data input", and I thought this is very informative. This is exactly what CAW's do, and again on Chris's pod I talked a about an old story. It was regarding the legendary bettor Alan Woods going after a Triple Trio carryover in Hong Kong. He was watching the Betfair markets and said to his posse (as they were ready to fire hundreds of thousands of dollars into the pool) "I think we might be wrong on this lean boys". If a guy who is a defacto market maker in Hong Kong pools pay attention, we sure as hell should be. 

I think the warm and cuddly one ITP said years ago on twitter that he could take a sports bettor like Rob, hand them a betting exchange with 5% win juice, teach them a few things and within months they'd be very competitive betting horses. I think one of the reasons he said that is because high level sports bettors can read markets better than most, and they put aside their egos enough to gain an edge with it. Recognizing if a market is real or memorex is super important today. 

Have a nice Thursday everyone. I hope you enjoy the video.

Sports Streaming Costs & Racing Pricing - Both are Probably Built to Fail

I was recently wondering where to watch an F1 car race in the U.S. and saw it's on Apple, after ESPN lost the rights.  This app, to just watch a car race, joins many other subscription sites that are needed to watch sports. Like Amazon's to watch Thursday Night Football, Netflix's to watch Christmas Day NFL games, and Peacock's to watch an NFL playoff game (and I'm sure I'm missing many others). 

The U.S. congress has began looking into these practices. Leaving aside that I don't blame you if you cringe when the government does such things, it's probably a discussion worth having, right?

Americans are pretty rich (disposable per capita income in the US is around $63k versus Canada's $35k for example), but when is the cost too much even for them? One would think it has to come, and the market will have to correct. But there to me is the problem.

The sports broadcast market is so fractured, to change pricing and distribution, you have to unravel TV deals that are 5 or 10 years out, with five or six or ten different entities. And we can't forget player power - the first time the NFL salary cap is proposed to be reduced, there's going to be hell to pay from the NFLPA. 

Demand can go down and revenue can crack, but to fix it, the response will be like solving several Rubik's cubes (without AI) with your hands tied behind your back.

I can't help but think it's a lot like our sport. 

Horse racing moved to excess as a monopoly - we got tons of money in from government and slots, handle was growing with the Internet betting advantage - and nothing moved. It was virtually the status quo. 

Then the cracks game; handle fell, interest fell, and the sport lost gamblers to other games and vocations. This happened year after year. Every one of us saw it and lived it. 

And still nothing moved. Takeout is as high or higher than 10 years ago; than 20 years ago. Effective takeout with CAW's has risen even more than that. 

The retail player has been demolished, and continues to be, while the sport did and does virtually nothing (ABR party buses and Youtube influencers don't count). 

This sport - just like the streaming environment - is complex, with tentacles and fiefdoms as far as the eye can see. It can't solve multiple Rubik's cubes, hell I don't think it can solve one, even with AI.

For McDonald's, global supply change issues with the pandemic resulted in a 40% increase in menu prices from 2020-2024. Because consumers expected it, the gravy train of high prices helped profits at the food giant..... until they didn't. 

When demand fell, McDonald's (and others) pivoted. Suddenly, less than a year later we could order $4 meal deals for breakfast and $1 coffees again. 

McDonald's saw the change in demand and had no choice but to respond. It was fast and commensurate - it was exactly the way things should work. 

Racing could never have hoped to have done that. And, in my view (which might be worth what you pay to read it), logically the sports leagues will find themselves in the same boat at some point. The NFL and MLB and F1 are structured a lot closer to the 5th at Churchill than they are to a fast food joint. 

Have a nice day everyone!