Less Combo's please

Being I like to wager on horse races, I will sometimes use my blog to obviously post about horse racing and wagering related things.

This post I want to talk about using multiple horses in wagers to create more combinations and/or so called saver bets.

I hear from so many about how horse racing is hard to beat, to be able to be profitable, etc. There seems to always be some excuse as to why it is nearly impossible to be profitable betting the ponies. With all these excuses I have learned that quite often the player never wants to blame themselves. I mean what if it was simply a matter of players wasting or giving away money. Now mind you a player still needs to be able to handicap races and be able to find value in their wagers, if you can't do that then you should never take playing the races seriously and just bet for entertainment value like other forms of gambling.

So many players today all want to play exotic bets. These are races where you pick beyond the simple win, place, show wagers of an individual race. These wagers can be both individual race wagers or multiple race wagers too, the common theme though among them is the ability to create tickets with multiple combinations to increase your chances of winning. There are plenty of sources on the net if you need to look up exactly what types of exotic wagers are available, these will also vary from country to country too.

Let's use the exacta wager for example, this is picking the horses who will finish 1-2. We will just use $1 as the base of the wager amount in these examples.

Our horseplayer has handicapped the race and he has selected a few horses he likes we will just use letters as the order of choices. A, B, C, and D A obviously being top choice and so on. Every combination made will cost you $1 example A/B=$1 A would need to finish first and B second. With there being 4 choices and two places you get 12 combination total (4 chances for the 1st place and 3 for second because one of them has to win that is therefore 4*3=12 combinations) With there being 12 combinations in total one could "box" these 4 choices and pay $12 for the ticket and if any of these 4 horses come in 1-2 doesn't matter you will cash on it.

For some they think ok wow that makes it easier, just create as many combinations as I can so I better my chances to "win" or "cash". Do we stop to think hey wait a minute there can be only 1 winning combination. So no matter how many ways we try to make combinations every one we spend money on that doesn't win effectively lowers or profits when we do win and still equals up to being more money lost regardless if there is a winning combination or not even. How many wasted combinations are played everyday all over, how much money has horseplayers lost doing this, how many horseplayers are more successful playing these multi-combination tickets and how many are actually less successful or not as successful as they could be?

Say in this race the finish comes in B/D and the payout is $100. If you boxed the 4 horses it cost you $12 to play so you automatically in this winning situation lost 12% where had you played B/D straight for $1 you would have only taken a 1% loss on the profit. Mind you I am not considering takeout of the pool at all, that is a non factor since it is calculated and removed before. This race our bettor wins $88 profit for his $12 wager, and so far sure this sounds great who wouldn't want to win like this all the time right? OK well winning that $100 and betting $12 4 horse exacta boxes only lets you wager basically 8 more times, your original $12 wager plus 7 more $12 wagers not coming out of your pocket.

Now this run you might not win on say 7 out of 8 races and then the last race you A/B combination comes in and it only pays $20 so now you cleared $8 profit and your original $12 wager. This allows you to make one more $12 ticket and $8 left to do whatever with. The player got lucky to win the B/D combo that paid $100 as this allowed him to keep wagering longer. In this example we saw 9 races in total being wagered on with basically the end result $8+ROI and our original $12 back.

Let's just see had the player simply said I am just going to wager $1 straight on my A/B combination and with the same outcomes as before. This time the player loses 8 out of 8 before the 9th time hitting the A/B combo for $20. So the player lost $8 in the prior 8 races. then wagered $1 on the current race, they won $20 for a $19 profit plus they still had $3 left over from their original $12 they started with for a grand total of $23 dollars now. They could pull their original $12 investment and be left with $11 to wager with and betting $1 straight wagers gives them another 11 races to bet. So we might not "win" as often but when we do win we are profiting greater and not wasting  or losing as much money.

One might think well you bet more combinations in hopes to hit the better paying combinations, winning $100 is better than winning $20. I understand this concept, but then i will say why not eliminate the under/low paying combinations and then it will increase your profitability when you do hit the longer shot ones. Just by removing A out of the 1st place saves you $3 every race and not using A at all saves you $6 every race. Say you bet 10 races a day 5 days a week that is 2600 races a year saving $3 a race you would put back $7,800 more in your pocket and if you just took the A out totally and saved $6 per race you automatically put back $15,600 in your pocket. So if you bet the full $12 box you would wager $31,200 a year, if you only wagered BCD/ABCD for $9 you would wager $23,400 and if you just did BCD/BCD for $6 you would wager $15,600 a year. Betting $1 straight A/B would only cost you $2600 a year.

If our player is betting the full $12 box and even at say an average mutual payout of $100 they would still have to win 312 races or basically have to average $100 mutual every 8.4 races just to break about even. The player who only bets the straight $1 A/B and say average about $20 per mutual would only need to win 130 races only once every 20 races on average.

Ok so lets say our player can accomplish winning on average every 20 races with their A/B straight combo. Now just imagine if say the average mutual is $30 instead of $20. Then suddenly you end up with $3,900 or $1,300 profit. or about 33%ROI I think even averaging $30 mutual payouts on A/B combinations is not out of the question and could easily be an obtainable goal. Some might say well winning $1300 isn't much for a year, but I say it isn't the amount I am showing you in the example it is merely based off of just $1 investment and the ROI is about 33% so the more you increase your base wager the more money you make . For sake of the post I am using obvious nice easy numbers, reality is a bit more complicated but it still is obtainable.

Those that wish to keep using the more combinations is better, I will say this much. If you want to do that great go for it, but really think about eliminating any under or low paying payouts and replaces those combinations with higher ones so maybe box BCDE instead of ABCD. Basically the more combinations you use the bigger the payout you should be shooting for, play to be trying to hit those signers don't waste your time with anything less, justify your reason for not being able to take a stand.

I think a good player would be one who for the most part is able to take a stand and be confident to bet more along the straight line, but will still see the races where chaotic order of finish is possible and then will take a risk on trying to capitalize on it and bet a wager with lots of combinations that will still result in a solid payout.

Myself personally I really do believe in that the fewer times you wager the better your chances to show profitability. Every wager is a risk and we certainly can't win every race. So for me it is more about betting less often but wagering more when I do bet. Like instead of playing a bunch of $1-$2 wagers I would rather play a few $20-$40 wagers and take my chances instead. Time is money and the more time you spend on handicapping races, placing wagers, waiting around to watch races, and everything else you invest into i you are just cutting more and more into your profits.

That is why I think for the most part poker is such a waste of time and that there really isn't as many profitable players as they would make you want to believe. I have to imagine the majority of poker players are all playing at the lower end of the spectrum as far as $ level they are playing at. So they have to typically invest a lot of time in order to win little in my eyes. Tournaments are notorious for taking long periods of time and unless you place very high in them you essentially just keep lowering the value of the money you win. No  matter what you have to be in the game in order to see hands being played in poker, so you have to invest time and keep investing time until you come across something you want to play, then you have to hope others play into the hand, and hope that you or others bet into it to maximize your potential winnings and then you have to hope that some knob didn't stick around to catch something to beat you. I mean doesn't that just sound like a waste of time?

Horse racing you can basically for the most part know everything about every race going to be run the night before. You can virtually plot out all the wagers that meet your criteria. Then all you have to do is be able to submit your wagers in or just hang out at those designated times. Once you place the wager you don't even have to watch the race if you don't want to. I just think players need to be wiser on how they wager, eliminate unnecessary spending. If we are mindful of that alone I think it could seriously create a lot more profitable players.