The Horse Can't Lose

Mark Cramer's book, Value Handicapping, was the first book I ever read about making odds lines. It provided me with a good gambling lesson, namely, anything is possible. If you have a horse in the race, that horse - somehow, someway - never has a zero chance to win.

For casual football fans that lesson was proven yesterday, when the New England Patriots came from an impossible spot (about a 1% chance in the 3rd quarter) to win the Super Bowl.

Yes they needed a lot of 'luck' that involved a lost fumble (it's about a coin flip on who recovers one), a catch that could not be caught three times if you threw it a thousand times, an actual coin flip in OT (not even giving the other team a chance at a score) and about ten other things. But, they had a "chance".

When something weird happens we tend to see a lot of this:

Somehow, a series of fortunate or unfortunate events (depending on your perspective) resulting in a surprising result, gets turned into "the math is wrong." No, it's not wrong. Don't slag the math just because you don't understand what it's saying.

For us as horseplayers, or gamblers, the math is all we need and it's the primary pass/fail decision maker. Yep, the Falcon's can lose, but if someone gives you 50-1 you don't want that side, at 150-1 you do. It's the same thing we do in horse racing, almost each day.

If you use the words "the horse can't lose" it's probably best to do it as hyperbole, because if you truly believe that, you probably just took a major bath on the Falcons. And it will take a lot of short-priced wins to get your money back. 

Have a nice Monday everyone.

Packaging the Derby Preps

There were three Derby preps yesterday, which is always nice for fans. Two of the races had potential superstars, and one had the top seeded Derby horse in training. Even though it was early in the season, when we should take results with a grain of salt, I don't think anyone was disinterested in the preps.

What I often wonder is, why weren't the preps packaged in a way where, say, the three races are raced in sixty minutes? With this timing tweak, TVG, XBTV, and major track signals could show all three preps at proper intervals in packaged form. A one hour Derby prep "show" with three scheduled races seems to me to be effective marketing for this sport (or any sport). It would probably increase handle in each of the races, as well.

As a sport, I think the Derby (through Churchill Downs Inc.) does things better than most. But I don't think the sport can't do better. Always improving is at times elusive, but should always be a goal. In a sport like horse racing - where people don't talk much with each other - it's not easy, but it should not be something that can't be overcome.

One nice incremental improvement, was the use of Facebook, by NYRA:

Nice to see a U.S. racing entity finally use a distributed video platform correctly (GP uses YT but only embeds on own site) https://t.co/B8CjHX2sxP

— dana byerly (@superterrific) February 4, 2017

That's solid.

Notes:

In HRU today there was an update on Meadowlands' racecaller Sam McKee. Sam is a wonderful man who loves the sport and is nice to anyone, no matter who you are. We wish him a speedy recovery.

Also in HRU, a look at how other entities and companies like Google and the NFL have explored new avenues through investment; and how that pertains to horse racing.  Testing, experimenting and investing in potential revenue streams is important. Racing, with a defacto internet betting monopoly, funded in a major way through alternative revenue (revenue that will decrease, not increase over the next 25 years), is ripe for the same thing.

Enjoy your Super Bowl Sunday everyone.

Progress in the Sport - We Learn Things if You Let Us

The Pegasus' timing was wrong. How do we know? Because some people - not employed by Gulfstream or Equibase or any alphabet - had access to video, and the brains to decipher what they were seeing.

10 or 15 years ago no one would've even known.

Meanwhile, January's handle numbers were released.

Hold it, who is the person with the funny avatar? Where are the real numbers, the ones from the industry?

They're not being published until the quarter is over.

Reporting of handle has progressed, and it's gotten better, but it's not coming from the industry. Social media discussions, and some (like o_crunk) with access to the numbers, have provided that progress. We are smarter because of it.

As above, we don't need a degree in statistics to figure out that January was a decent month for the sport, with the tracks in the middle down a wee bit.

This industry data has still not been unleashed; it's really been about one or two people doing some datamining. But think what might happen if it was?

Maybe there would be study of what bets are working; subsetting weather data with handle; the number of races, time of day, day of week, types of races, card length, post dragging.... all of those things may be analyzed by smart people, interested in the sport. For free.

Ditto with timing. Smart people having access, and offering solutions to run-up, timing issues and just about everything else that goes into a past performance.

The sport will learn something if they become more transparent and open-minded. It can increase revenues for the sport, and make life better for customers.

Note:

Thanks to Brandon, I see Swedish handle was about $US1.4B last year, up another 6%.  Sweden's economy is about the size of Pennsylvania's. And this is all bet on harness racing.

"ATG has, on behalf of the sport, has invested considerable resources to reverse any negative years and meet the sharply increasing competition in the gaming market"