VALUE LESSON

We repeatedly harp on here how you can blindly bet an entire card—be it boxing, ufc, horse matchup, etc.(w/o handicapping)—and turn ‘in the long run’ a profit by betting ‘any and all the plus prices only’. This past Saturday’s boxing was one example:

7 matches only threw one winner(shoulda been two—judges atrociously blew one match)—yet that was enough to yield over one unit profit for the day.

Here’s another one from today:

EHorse Xchange offers Head to Head 2-Horse Matchups during the weekends. Today there were 7 or 8 from three tracks. We missed the first couple—but got to the last six.

Here are the ‘approximate’ odds of the contenders “when we looked at them”:

Aq 8th:  3/5 vs 8/5

CD 8th:  4/5 vs 6/5

CD 9th:  3/5 vs 7/5

Hol 5th: 1/2 vs 8/5

Hol 7th: 4/5 vs E

Hol 8th: 4/5 vs 6/5

It just so happens that all 6 entrants with + odds won—but that is not the point. The average odds of the winners were 6½/5 or +131. At those odds you only need to hit at a 43½% rate to break even(covers exchange commissions too)… if you go 4-6 from 10 races played, you almost break even… if you’d only gone 2-4 from today’s 6 races, you’d be fairly close to break even. If you broke even @ 3-3, you clear almost 1 Unit profit.  A barely above break even 4-2 would net 3¼ Units—almost 54% profit for the day on total amount risked! Today’s actual net was almost 8 units / 133%.

Now, let’s take the other side—let’s say you spend a coupla hours handicapping the card and decide that all the faves are superior. Their avg. odds are 3½/5 or 7/10…requiring you win @ 59% clip to break even. Of every 10 races, you have to average 6-4 record to break even. In today’s example, if you went 3-3, you’d lose 1 Unit(commissions factored in)…. 4-2 would’ve allowed you to clear 3/4 of 1 Unit….5-1 would net 2¼…6-0 a big 4.

 

SECONDARY LESSON RE HORSE MATCHUPS

 

Doesn’t pay to spend too much time handicapping them—an odds-on horse in a head to head matchup could be just the lesser of two longshots… or a contender that winds up surely beaten for the top spot during the race… In either case it likely won’t be persevered with late…ditto for his rival—in effect a coin toss.