Interesting listen. Thanks for posting that. I have a couple of comments.

I’ll start by saying that I don’t play exotics involving more than two legs (either horizontal or vertical) for the reason ITP mentioned. Since my handicapping skills are not strong, the more choices I make in structuring a wager, the more likely I am to make a bad one that kills any value I may have built up in my other choices.

That said, one of the comments ITP made about the A-B-C system of structuring multi-race bets did not make sense to me. Based on what I’ve heard from talking heads, I think he is right that people tend to make the mistake of designating horses as A’s, B’s, and C’s based on win probability rather than expected value. His comment about not making a favorite a “C� does not, however, make sense to me from a purely mathematical perspective. If you are allocating horses based on expected value (or edge), and a ticket with all A’s in the other legs has an expected value of $1.30 per $1.00, and the expected value of a bet on the favorite in the last race is $0.80, you want to bet the favorite as a C with all your A’s because that ticket would have an expected value of $1.04. If you also have a B in one of the earlier legs, the ticket with one B and the rest A’s will have a lower expected value than the all-A ticket, say $1.20. You do not want to bet the favorite as an A or B with that ticket because the expected value would be only $0.96.

I was also interested in ITP’s comments about lowering bet minimums. He indicated that, because of his big bankroll, he did well with big minimums because could afford to cover more combinations than small-bankroll players. He then said that lower minimums are bad for both types of players. To me, parimutuel wagering is a zero-sum game. If someone is doing worse, someone else is doing better.