What happens when you forecast a significant player edge pool at a $0.10 minimum wager? You turn gambling into an up-side only investment. Thanks to focusing on carryover wagers, I can mark 10/11/19 as the day that I became the “Whale” for a race and identified a near no-risk situation to take advantage of. Just months ago I was the guy loading $100 into my account, time after time, to fire on full takeout bets, only to watch it drain away slowly before reloading. I was the every day regular Joe trying to hit the big score. Saturday I bet $2,000 on a single race without a second thought. I want better for the every day player, and I hope this insight helps.
As I was watching the feed and tracking the money bet into the high 5 of the 8th race at Indiana Grand, with 5 minutes to post nearing, I saw the new money total hadn’t yet reached the $10,955 carryover total. I knew this situation would present itself at some time, but certainly didn’t expect it to occur with a $0.10 minimum wager. At this point, based on the rate the new money was coming in (or wasn’t coming in!), I knew I could basically buy the pool. There was no super straight-forward favorites or combos, so I didn’t concern myself with someone zeroing in to hit it 100 times to dilute the payout. I deposited $2,000 into my account, and the first thing I did was box the entire field for $672.00. Yep, I boxed every single runner, so in the absolute worst case of handicapping or horse racing luck, I may take down the whole pool. From there, I used my handicapping to punch many, many tickets to weight the likely combos, and finally I further pressed my opinion. I want to be clear that boxing the field and the resulting ticket construction wasn’t ideal, but with the carryover-weighted pool, it didn’t need to be. It was the best I could do on my phone with 5 minutes to post.
The total carryover going in was $10,955; the new money pool closed at $17,530 for a 41% players edge. In the end, I wagered all $2K and took out nearly $5K from the pool by hitting the wager 28 times. From a ROI perspective, this is nothing to shout from the mountain tops. From an absolutely risk free money grab, I think it’s certainly worth mentioning. Another way to look at it is, I had about 11% of the new money wagered, and I took out about 18% of the total pool. Again, not great if I was actually “gambling.”
At this point you may be wondering why I would share this valuable information instead of keeping quiet and waiting for the next opportunity to do the same.
The answer is that I absolutely despise the financial structure of horse racing. It’s not sustainable, and I want the game to prosper long term. The only way for it to change to be a fair game to the players, is for the players to take control of the pools they wager into, demanding a fair shake. If everyone who comes across an article like this decides to take action and play their money into better pools, slowly there will be shift away from the 20%+ takeout and jackpot wagers. I know it’s fun to blame the tracks for the sh*t wagers that are offered, but the blame lies squarely on the players. The tracks run a business, and business is good when the dumb money comes flying in on a 40% takeout wager daily….only to lead to a massive carryover opportunity where everyone gets involved and results in a $1M+ pay day for the track.
Lastly, to point out just how clueless the masses are when it comes to smart wagers, the superfecta pool in the same race at Indiana Grand out-handled the super high 5. There was nearly $11K in dead money seeding the $0.10 High 5 at a +41% player edge, and people are firing away at a -21.5% takeout superfecta. You can’t make this stuff up. Here is the chart:
Players are habitually betting into the pools they know and putting absolutely no thought into the value of the wager. If you’re one of those folks, please start thinking about the pools you wager into more and more each day, and let’s send a clear message to the industry that we demand a fair shake.
Now go get that late pick 5 carryover at GPW!
