Re: Computer-Robotic Wagering (950 Views)
Posted by:
Mathcapper (IP Logged)
Date: November 20, 2015 09:50PM
JimP,
Have to say, I haven’t seen any evidence of a breakdown in the correlation between the Will Pays and final win odds in recent years. And I’m not talking about a small sample either. I track the Will Pays for hundreds, if not thousands of races every year, and have habitually done so for close to 35 years.
Does every horse in every race go off right in-line with its Will Pay? Of course not. But in general, on an overall basis, they come pretty close. If anything, the correlation seems to have gotten [i]better[/i] over the years, which may be attributable to the computer guys pushing each pool towards what they consider to be fair value.
Make sure, as Bit noted, that you’re not using longshot winners from the prior race in your estimation. There are a couple of other issues related to the limitations of using just the one set of Will Pays rather than the entire set of DD combinations to estimate the odds, but in general, if you’re doing it right, you should be seeing pretty good correlation.
For instance, in the last race I did today, the bigA finale, it was clear from the Will Pays before the first flash of the tote was even up that that Pletcher firster was going to go off at odds-on of around 1/4.
These are the estimates I had, along with the corresponding final odds:
#3: 6.6-1 => 6.9-1
#6: 9.2-1 => 10.3-1
#8: 28-1 => 31-1
#9: 21-1 => 18.3-1
#10: 0.3-1 => 0.3-1
#11: 12-1 => 22-1
#12: 16-1 => 9.9-1
These results are pretty typical of what I see on a race-to-race basis. There might be one or two horses that are a little out of line, but overall they’re usually pretty close.
As Boscar noted, and as I see happen all the time, the vast majority of these late odds shifts are simply the win odds moving closer into line with the odds in the doubles, or to what is the public’s probability estimate. And like he says, that’s not something that’s going to change if you close the betting 2 minutes to post.
Btw, the giant pools you see on days like the BC and Triple Crown don’t necessarily mean the correlations are going to be better. In the 2013 Belmont for instance, Palace Malice was 13-1 in the win pool, but he was 7-1 in the doubles, which is a pretty big disparity even in a regular pool, never mind in the massive pools like we see in the Belmont. When these kinds of things happen, it’s sometimes a sign of some “smart money” action, be it inside information/drugs, the computer guys, or even us fellow high rolling sheet players.
The win pool is generally the more efficient pool and where you see the smart money vis-a-vis the doubles, but in this case, I took it to mean that some serious money was pounding the horse’s odds down in the doubles to well below the public's win probability estimate.
Rocky R.