Bettor Education is So Difficult

I was listening to a betting podcast last week, and the two protagonists spoke about how difficult it was to educate sports bettors on some basic ideas. In this case, it was line shopping, i.e. getting the best price (or the lowest juice). 

The pod guest runs Betstamp.com, which is a cool resource that curates all lines and gives you the best deals for the side or total you want. He noted (from countless conversations and comments) things are going better, but he still sees this reticence of buying in to how important it is. 

We see a similar reserved view in horse racing when it comes to takeout. Or ticket construction, or odds lines, or getting the best of it. 

We're all not dumb. We can do basic math. We know if we get paid $110 on a bet instead of $105, over time we will be many thousands ahead. 

We also know that almost every person who is a success at sports betting or racing concentrates on such things. And again, unless we have some sort of mental block, we know following the process of successful people is smart. 

Why is this so hard? I don't know for certain, but I can think of a few theories. 

I think many of us are so used to losing, we can't see how just getting a fraction better price can make a difference. 

I think many of us are paralyzed by liking an opinion so much, we are unable to grasp the probability it will lose. "I'll bet that game at any price!"

And, I suppose, many just want action. Price is this weird thing those betting geeks look for. 

I think - and this is particular to racing, but also applies to sports betting with wild bets or parlays - with exotics we can make a score that was not a mathematically a sound bet, but since it hit we repeat the process, hoping to hit again. We take a lot of false signals as bettors and make them immutable truth. 

I believe whether we're betting horses or sports, setting the table properly gives us a chance to win. 

That means taking advantage of deposit bonuses, signing up for multiple books, getting rebates, betting low takeout and passing on the high, and working on making proper tickets. I think those provide us with the habits needed to get the best of it, enjoy the game more, and at the end of the year have more money than we started with. 

I know that's hard, and many of us struggle with it, but in my view it's the only path that makes any sense. If we're not trying to get better at betting, we're doing ourselves a disservice. 

Have a nice Monday everyone. 

The Rulez

It's a fun day on the twitter today, because of a rider named Christophe Soumillion, who, with his best Tom Wilson impression, decided to elbow another rider off a horse. Not while they were hanging around the paddock, or behind the gate. No, while they were going 35 miles per hour. 

Seeing this in some states would be considered attempted murder, one might expect a lengthy suspension and fine, and I guess that's kinda what he got - a two month ban. 

However, this two month ban starts after the biggest meet in France, including the Arc. 

Meanwhile, over in another sport, it was tough to watch Dolphins' QB Tua Tagovailoa spun to the turf with the force one would expect when a 320 man who can bench press several moose spins you to the ground. It appears he's okay, like our rider friend above, but that was scary, and could've been career ending, or worse. 

In Tua's case, what happened was something the league cracked down on a few years ago. When a lineman grabs a QB, he can not, under any circumstance, spin him around to the ground with any force. It seemed to work, and linemen were careful in those particular situations, avoiding the 15 yard personal foul. Then the league and refs, bowing to coaching and fan pressure, pretty much stopped calling it. 

In racing's case, we have yet another, in my view, complete joke. In a sport where riders take days over winter vacations with the fam, or Christmas, the powers that be let this man ride for millions, then he can take his vacation. For potentially killing someone. 

People complain about the rules. But we are not complaining about the rules, we're complaining about the rulez; this muddy, inconsistent, sometimes maddening morass of what, we do not know. It'd be nice if they stuck with it, and called things right, because not calling it right can have terrible consequences, but I'm not holding my breath. 

Have a nice Friday everyone. 

Looking Deeper Into the Mail-It-In Race

For those of us who like to try and scope out pick 4 and 5 tickets, we all know the mail-it-in race. It's a race where nothing particularly catches our eye, and the logicals look, well, logical. In our mind we convince ourselves we can get by with the 2, 3 and 5 and we're done with it. We have bigger fish to fry in the other legs where we have strong opinions. 

Sometimes these races can bite us, because we did just that - the same thing everyone else is doing. 

Recently, I loved a sequence at Gulfstream, where two horses looked like strong keys. When I reached the 5th leg of the pick 5, I saw the quintessential mail it in race. It was one of those Gulfstream maiden claimers, with three first time starters, two from a well known barn with nice works, one from a mom and pop barn who looked okay, but meh,, and one horse who looked to have decent figs, with the rest of the field dreadful. 

Looking for other ideas I decided to check the track cappers. But they were mailing it in too, with comments like, "this barn doesn't fire with firsters, but these two firsters worked well" and they picked them one-two. 

Maybe I needed to mail-it-in, too. But, thinking about it, I thought I should do a little more work and look deeper for opportunity to zag while everyone zigs. I decided to look at the mom and pop firster. This barn had one first time starter earlier in the meet who was 30-1 and didn't hit the board. Yawn. However, it was probably worth watching a replay, and what I saw was definitely interesting. The colt showed strong speed from the inside rail post, made the lead, and carried it right into the lane, at times looking like a winner. Then the horse just stopped, coming 6th or 7th. Interestingly, he was not back in two months later, so one could assume something may have happened to him to make him stop. 

Their current FTS's works were fine, spaced well and the horse looked fit. 

In a mail-it-in race, is this not a strong A horse at 15-1 morning line?

Typing this you can assume what happened - the horse engaged all the way around the track, was asked at the top of the lane and won by a widening 5. He was the sixth choice in the pick 5 and other serial bets. 

He was a perfect horse, in a perfect race. The modelers and teams couldn't be on the horse, and everyone was mailing it in. 

Mail-it-in races are sometimes exactly that - a race to get by with three or four logicals. But when we have to convince ourselves the logicals are the winners, after we see hole after hole in them, they aren't so logical at all. This type of race can often present us with an ideal chance to dig deeper and strike. 

Have a nice Tuesday everyone.