WagerMate is more enthusiastic about Suddenbreakingnews than I am…
…but as a show of faith, I’ll make a small win bet on 4.
I’ll box 4, 5, and 11 for the exacta.
For the superfecta, I will bet 4, 5, 11 over 4, 5, 11 over 1, 3, 4, 5, 10, 11 over 1, 3, 4, 5, 10, 11.
5-1-3-11 — so, no tickets to cash.
WagerMate likes Nyquist…
…but I won’t make any win bets.
My exacta bet: 3 over 2, 5, 11.
My superfecta bet: 3 over 1, 2, 5, 11 over 1, 2, 5, 7, 11 over 1, 2, 5, 7, 11.
Have fun!
Version 3.5 of WagerMate has been released. It has one major new feature: it uses a new track-to-track variant.
That one improvement gets us more than a 1% point increase in both the Win Rate and the ROI. Here are the back testing results on my 2009-2013 data, with the default filter:
This indicates that if you blindly followed WagerMate’s picks you’d lose 7%. If you only followed the picks for turf races, you’d win 1%.
By now, you should know that’s not how I really think you should use the WagerMate results — I want you to combine the WagerMate results with your own handicapping work. If you use the WagerMate results, instead of starting with an ROI of -20% (due to the takeout), you’re starting at -7%, and that’s a big difference.
Good luck!
The two favorites, Nyquist and Exaggerator, came in first & second: 13-11-5-14, so we missed on the win bet, but made a little profit on the exacta.
The $24 exacta ticket paid $30.60.
WagerMate likes Outwork…
…but I think it make sense to include Nyquist in most of our betting.
I’ll bet on 9 & 15 to win, figuring there’s no value in Nyquist.
I’ll bet 9,13,15 over 9,11,13,14,15 in the exacta.
Good luck!
Won $107.50 on bets of $108.00 for an ROI of… 0%. Didn’t have a great weekend except for the $95.70 exacta in Race 9. A couple of WagerMate’s recommended bets were canceled due to scratches.
Here’s the positive spin: by blindly following WagerMate, I broke even (lets not quibble about the 50 cents) — imagine how well you can do if you do some actual study & handicapping.
WagerMate likes a lot of long shots for the Breeder’s Cup races again. I’ll place $2 win bets on every horse that WagerMate says has an ROI over 25% — that’s 7 horses on Friday, and 15 horses on Saturday.
I’ll also place $1 exacta box bets on the top 3 picks in each race.
Here are the Friday picks…
Here’s what WagerMate thinks about Saturday…
Hope you enjoy the weekend!
The latest version of WagerMate, build 338, has a couple of minor improvements in it:
I’m working on improving the track-to-track variant. It may take a couple of months to do all of the calculations, and insert the new work into WagerMate.
5-6-7-1
So the $9.00 superfecta bet paid $28.50.
Not bad, but, betting the exacta may have worked out better — I was hoping for long shots in the third and fourth spots.
WagerMate’s pick for the Belmont Stakes is American Pharoah… just like everyone else.
I’ll try a superfecta: 5 over 1,6,8 over All over All.
WagerMate was right about American Pharoah (but, so was everyone else).
WagerMate and I were wrong about Firing Line. On to Belmont….
WagerMate likes the same three horses it liked in the Kentucky Derby, in the same order:
I feel obliged to bet them in the trifecta this time.
I don’t like American Pharoah as much as WagerMate does; I still like Firing Line, so I’ll bet it to win.
I’ll also bet a superfecta 1/2/8 over 1/2/8 over 1/2/8 over All.
18-10-8-15
So a $1 exacta bet paid $36.30; not bad.
Did I recommend betting WagerMate’s top 3 picks in the trifecta??? No? 50 cents woulda turned into $50.50. Happy to have to the top 3 picks in order, but really, these were not long shots, so I can’t claim this was magical.
WagerMate likes the favorites…
…but the only value there is Firing Line, so I’m going to bet on it to win.
I’m going to mix El Kabeir into my exacta bet, because Calvin Borel is riding: I’m going to bet on 7/8/10/18 over 2/7/8/10/18.
Enjoy!
WagerMate likes a lot of long shots for the Breeder’s Cup races. I’ll place $2 win bets on every horse that WagerMate says has an ROI over 100% — that’s 6 horses on Friday, and 19 horses on Saturday.
I’ll also place $1 exacta box bets on the top 3 picks in each race.
Here are the Friday picks…
Here are WagerMate’s picks for the Saturday races…
Good luck!
TrackMaster improved the security of their site yesterday — and now an old Microsoft bug might impact some WagerMate users. If you see this “Download failed” message:
… it might be because of the bug. The problem is in Windows XP SP2 (it is fixed in XP Service Pack 3). If you want the gory details, Google on “SHA256RSA XP”.
You can use the Control Panel to find out what version of XP you are using.
If you’re using XP SP2, you’ll have to say goodbye and upgrade to a newer version of Windows. Microsoft has given up on repairing XP SP2, so there will never be a fix.
Sorry for any inconvenience.
The latest version of WagerMate has a new feature…
You can now use the default WagerMate speed figure, or use the TrackMaster speed figure instead. You can even use the average of the two figures.
Here are the results when I use each of the three settings on my 2009-2013 data to look at Win bets (in this example, I’m not using any WMST file to filter out bad bets, so the ROIs aren’t very good). 
The “Average” setting has some nice attributes:
If we use the new “Average” setting and the default filters on my 2009-2013 data for back testing…
…WagerMate’s picks get an overall ROI of -8%. It’s interesting to note that the Turf Sprint bets would have paid a 3% profit over this span..
So, we don’t get guaranteed profits, but I think it’s nice to have an advantage in our handicapping — without applying a bit of our wisdom or experience, we’re way ahead of the game.
This report, using the default settings, shows the ROI per year on my test data…
I see a sudden drop-off in performance after 2010. I blame the rise of the computers. Our competition has gotten stronger, so we have to work harder than ever to make a profit.
I’m going to drop the 2005 data from my standard back testing. Partly because it’s old, but mostly because it makes WagerMate look too good. I want my back testing to be as realistic as possible.
P.S. Oops, I try to remember to use the ROI switch that says “1% means a 1% profit”, but in this figure I had it set to “101% means 1% profit”. Sorry.
That’s why we run the races….