Horse Racing Can Do What Amazon Can't

Yesterday, the WSJ had a super-interesting article on Amazon's strategy with their connected homes, and Alexa speakers. 

Since the early 2010's, the retail and tech giant had a plan. Sell speakers and peripherals at or below cost, and with hundreds of millions of people in possession of them, they will buy Amazon products.

This is not a new concept. In what feels like a hundred years ago, Chris Anderson of Wired wrote the seminal work in the software as a service space called "Free". Give away free trials, get in front of people, and sooner or later they will pay. 

This, however, failed miserably at Amazon. People don't "pay", they just use the speakers: 

"Hey Alexa, is Irad going to force his way out in the third?" 

According to the article, Amazon has lost billions and they're remonetizing. 

What doesn't work for Amazon, though, does work for horse racing. 

But this sport sadly never embraced it. 

This is rebating. By giving lower takeout back, bankrolls last longer, and people can become long term customers. Even those of you who don't get CAW rebate money know this well. Each and every one of us bet that $37 that's deposited the next day in our accounts. 

What do long term customers do? We open the PP's. We bet. We buy horses. We visit racetracks. We plan trips around big events. We spend lots of money on the sport. 

The fewer of us there are, the fewer hands go up at horse auctions. Flights are booked for the Final Four, not the Haskell. 

Horse racing, like so many others businesses and verticals who have, could've made "Free" work.

They just never really tried. 

Have a really nice day everyone.

Some Betting ABC's

I got an email alert on my electronic mail today that Blogger (the software that hosts the PTP Blog, among maybe three or four other big blogs) has eliminated bot traffic. Not only will this hurt my prodigious blog advertising revenues, I will lose a whole lot of Russian readers. 

Despite this, I trudge on. 

ITP posted this for discussion on the Twitter box last week.

You’ll do much better and have a chance to actually win if you spend 3 minutes per race looking at 80 races and bet your best 8 races than you will spending 30 min per race on an 8 race card and betting all 8 races. https://t.co/cDbBFueB5Q

— Inside The Pylons (@InsideThePylons) June 25, 2024

What do you think?

In today's day and age, I could not agree more with the warm and cuddly one. 

If we eliminate i) short fields ii) maiden races where we don't have a clue and iii) any other races with a strong chalk with no holes, we're left with a handful of races per day. Working from there and building around those races is probably sound advice. 

Software makers and the mean old CRW modelers have been on this for awhile, in fact. 

I remember Jeff Platt designed his jcapper play modules to weed out any races with 7 horses or less, for example. 

I know it's difficult to not want to dive in and invest heavily in a short field Grade I dirt card, but in most cases it's not mathematically wise to send it in on those, or anything that looks like them. 

So, the first letter on the ABC's of betting (I have to work hard now to get traffic so each blog will have a proper listicle) is : 

Yes, ITP is wise, don't bet races with short crap fields; find the best races, then bet. 

Meanwhile, I'm really liking the analysis by some track talking heads nowadays. They've always been good at 'capping, but there's a lot of bobbing and weaving going on. There's also a whole lot of rider, or driver and trainer content through interviews. 

That brings me to the second point. Let's call it "B" because I titled the blog with letters: 

Listen with your ears, but bet with your eyes

"The trainer of the 7 said he didn't get a lot of fitness into him, so he might be a bit short."

Oh no, let's pitch. 

But the horse is 5-2 on the board, we see his work tab isn't perfect, loved his works or qualifier, and we went through the entire field and concluded this horse doesn't have to run a big one to win. The rail horse is going too short, the 4 wants grass, the 8 is going to the back of the bus (for harness friends). 

The trainer doesn't know that, we do, and the crowdsourcing concurs. Our 33% chance for this horse is paying $7.80..... so we bet. 

Trainers have a lot to worry about with their horse, and asking them to handicap a given race at a given time is like asking me who I like in the Euro soccer thing when I don't even know what offside is. Most times, if you're good a trainer should be asking you about their horses chances, not the other way around. 

I'm not saying information is not valuable, it certainly can be at times. But if we have confidence in ourselves, betting what we see, not what we hear is "EV". 

The last of our betting ABC's today is pretty simple. 

Learn from Tony

Having kibitzed with the venerable Mr. Zhou the past couple of years you learn quickly Tony makes a lot of sense when it comes to making scratch. 

And he offers a couple gems right here, for free, devoid of Russian bot traffic  -- 

Bet wisely & Being right is irrelevant. 

This concludes my first post-Russian-bot blog post. I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you all have a great week. 

Ray Cotolo's Hot Dog Stunt Elicits Strong Industry Reaction

We'll all remember Memorial Day '24 because of the Met Mile as the day Ray Cotolo dressed up like a hot dog. 

Hope @RayCotolo auctions the used hotdog suit for aftercare pic.twitter.com/KzmeOjGivP

— Stalk the Pace (@StalkThePace) May 27, 2024

I highly doubt Andy Serling or Mark Patterson could pull off that look, but Ray, well, it's like he's worn that outfit his entire life. 

Industry reaction was swift. The Nancy Takter stable twitter feed was none too impressed. 

What an embarrassment for our sport 🤦🏼‍♀️

— Nancy Takter Stable (@NancyTakter) May 27, 2024

Reactions ran the gamut. Some were confused, some perplexed, some mad, some hopeful, some called for generational change. 

"This triggered me", wrote Inside the Pylons on X formerly known as whatever. "I gave my life to dressing up as Hoosier Buddy each and every day and was fired mercilessly. It brings back horrible memories."

"I'm just glad it knocked the story about the stewards getting their race distances from a cartoon image on the program out of the headlines", typed an unnamed NYRA exec. 

"I love hot dogs" wrote Nick Salvi. 

"Ray had to be on Lasix because he was out of his mind, which is why it needs to be banned" said the Jockey Club. 

"This was a bold statement, a reminder in the world we live in. Harness racing is existential, a part of our being. I think Plato wrote ...." typed Tinky before getting cut off because he forgot to pay for this month's blue checkmark. 

"Our sport has to be professional and this wasn't it. I am outraged" typed an unnamed harness driver, who just last night moved over to let his buddy up the rail, changing the outcome for $115,432 of bettor money that was wagered on the race. 

"I don't like this sort of thing," said trainer Bob Baffert. 

"I'm just going to retweet DeRosa's reaction," noted Nico via DM. 

"Mangled horses are rumoured to be in hot dogs" said Joe Drape in an Op/Ed in the New York Times.

"I don't know how this type of publicity grows the sport," typed Alix Earle on Instagram. 

"This is way worse for the sport than how some jocks not named me force their way out of a hole and put the horse into the hot dog cart on the tarmac", said Irad Ortiz junior. 

"This is exactly why I want to expand the Bet with the Best podcast to live video" said Chris Larmey. 

"As your commissioner I have a bold statement to make after I ask Pat Cummings what he thinks," noted Mike Repole. 

"This is why racing needs HISA" noted HISA. 

"Thank god I don't broadcast racing anymore", DM'd Michelle Beadle.

"Racing is dead" typed Ed DeRosa.

"Racing is dead" typed Nico.

Those are some notes from the heavy hitters. As for small hitters like me, thank goodness Ray Cotolo is a part of this sport. Jeff Gural dressed as a hot dog just won't cut it. 

Have a nice day everyone.