To help people cope with Stronach 5 withdrawals, we’ve got some Stronach 5 content for you. The genesis of this project stems from a listener’s comment about tracking the show’s Stronach 5 ROI. Is the ROI higher in weeks that the recommended tickets included A’s with Two B’s? As a loyal listener of the podcast and a data-driven decision maker, I was happy to pull this analysis together. It helped that I already had most of the data in Excel, for reasons I might discuss in future posts.
First, let’s take a look at the ROI of the tickets provided on the podcast before dissecting them further. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that no one is pleased with a -$1.00 ROI through five weeks of the show. It’s a small sample size. And on the bright side, it can only improve! If you had copied the show’s wagers exactly, you would be down $2,091. (Note: my analysis does not take into account scratches which would reduce the ticket cost)
| Wager Type | N | Ticket Cost | Payout | Total Return | ROI |
| ITM Published Tickets | 5 | $2,091.00 | $0.00 | ($2,091.00) | ($1.00) |
On a week-to-week basis, the structure of the published tickets changes. For example, the March 13th bets included All A’s with a $2 base bet and A’s with One B with a $1 base bet while the March 6th podcast tickets included All A’s, A’s with One B, and A’s with Two B’s, all with a $1 base. This is the crux of the question posed by the listener. Is the ROI higher in weeks that include the tickets with A’s with Two B’s or not? Through five weeks, that answer is: NO. Although, you probably should have been able to guess that since we haven’t cashed a ticket yet. There have been three weeks thus far that have included A’s with Two B’s in the ticket structure.
| Wager Structure | N | Ticket Cost | Payout | Total Return | ROI |
| All A’s & A’s with 1 B | 2 | $647.00 | $0.00 | ($647.00) | ($1.00) |
| All A’s & A’s with 1 B & A’s with 2 B’s | 3 | $1,444.00 | $0.00 | ($1,444.00) | ($1.00) |
If you’re like me, you’re probably asking, what would my ROI be if I had also bet the A’s with Two B’s tickets in the two weeks that didn’t include those? The answer: a positive $0.12! You would have needed to invest another $533 on top of the $2,091 already wagered, for a total of $2,624, but you would have been rewarded with a $2,929.80 payout on March 13th.
| Wager Structure | N | Ticket Cost | Payout | Total Return | ROI |
| All A’s & A’s with 1 B & A’s with 2 B’s | 5 | $2,624.00 | $2,929.80 | $305.80 | $0.12 |
As I previously mentioned, the wager structure changes on a week-to-week basis. The next question I found myself asking was would my ROI improve if I chose not to increase the base amount of the published wagers above $1, but use that money to play the A’s with Two B’s tickets? Since we already know we would have cashed one of those tickets on March 13th, we know the ROI is greater than negative $1.00. In this case, it’s actually a positive $0.38. For only $29 more than the ITM published wagers, I’d be up $809.80 rather than down $2,091.
| Wager Structure | N | Ticket Cost | Payout | Total Return | ROI |
| A’s & A’s w/1 B & A’s w/2 B’s-$1 Base | 5 | $2,120.00 | $2,929.80 | $809.80 | $0.38 |
One thing I will caution on the strategy above is that it goes against one of the key tenets of betting horses (and one that I subscribe to) in that if you have a strong opinion, the amount of your wager should reflect the strength of your opinion. As PTF and JK alluded to at the beginning of Show 123, always including the A’s with Two B’s may result in a short-term positive ROI, but in the long-run, sticking to a budget and your strongest opinions should outperform. I’ll keep monitoring and updating this analysis once the Stronach 5 is offered again and hopefully have a couple more interesting Stronach 5 posts in the future.
I think the analysis needs to start with a simpler question: how have the A’s performed relative to the B’s? The easiest way to answer that is to imagine you bet $2 to win on all of the A’s and on all of the B’s. Would the ROI be higher for the A’s or the B’s?