Breeder’s Cup Fun

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WagerMate doesn’t recommend a “Best Bet” in any of the Breeder’s Cup races (but does like Big Bane Theory in Race 1 on Friday).

In spite of WagerMate’s advice, I’m going to bet on each of the Breeder’s Cup races, just to keep it interesting.

I’ll keep it simple: $2 to win in each race on WagerMate’s top two picks, and a $1 3 horse exacta box — for a total of $10 per race.

I’ll use the Contenders Report to make the bets…

Friday…

Breeder's Cup 11-2-2012

Breeder's Cup 11-2-2012

Saturday…

Breeder's Cup 11-3-2012

Breeder's Cup 11-3-2012

Enjoy the races & good luck!

Build 322

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The latest version of WagerMate, build 322, has a couple of minor improvements in it:

  1. WagerMate ignores horses with morning lines odds over 20/1.
  2. WagerMate ignores horses that have raced 15 times and never won.

That leads to a slightly improved ROI…

Build 322

Build 322 ROIs

Required Odds

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I use the “Rqrd Odds” field of the WagerMate reports to make conditional bets with my ADWs.  In essence, the Required Odds determine the lowest odds I’m willing to take.

Here’s how WagerMate calculates that number.

1) For each dollar bet at post time odds of X/Y, the payout will be (1 + X/Y) dollars.  A bet at 6/1 odds will return about $7 for each $1 bet (1 + 6/1), or $14 for a $2 bet.

2) WagerMate calculates a probability of winning for each horse, the “Win %” field in the reports.  If the probability of winning is 19%, then we’d expect our horse to win 19 out of 100 such races.

Imagine a $2 bet on each of those 100 (hypothetical) races — for a total of $200 bet.  We expect to win $14 in each of 19 of those races, for a total return of $266.

That’s an ROI of 33% (a profit of $66 divided by an investment of $200).

3) The expected payout, in dollars for each dollar bet, is
Expected Payout per Dollar = (1 + X/Y) * (Win %)

In our example:
Expected Payout per Dollar = (1 + 6/1) * (0.19) = 1.33

4) WagerMate assumes we want an ROI of at least 20%. That’s an Expected Payout per Dollar of 1.20.

So 1.20 = (1 + X/Y) * (Win %)

Rearrange that to get the Required Odds: X/Y = [ 1.20 / (Win %)] – 1

For our example: [1.20 / 0.19] – 1 = 5.32

WagerMate reports that as 5/1.

Triple Crown Summary

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Two things to keep in mind: 1) WagerMate didn’t recommend betting on any of these races, so we were just betting for fun; 2) Making a profit is fun.

Triple Crown Summary

Triple Crown Summary

If you’re keeping score at home, please note that because I used conditional bets for the win bets on the Preakness & Belmont, and two of our choices became too popular, we didn’t end up betting on Creative Cause or Dullahan.  That saved $4.

I got 75% of the superfecta again — could have used some help from Dullahan.

Belmont Stakes, again

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Sorry to hear that I’ll Have Another will be scratched.  Here is WagerMate’s Contenders Report, rerun with that new info:

Belmont Stakes Contenders Report

Belmont Stakes Contenders Report

My revised plan:

  1. A conditional win bet on Dullahan at 3/1 odds.
  2. An exacta box on 3/5/6/9
  3. My superfecta bet will be 3/5/6/9 with 3/5/6/9 with 1/3/5/6/9 with 1/3/5/6/9 for $7.20.

Enjoy.

Belmont Stakes

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WagerMate doesn’t want us to bet on the Belmont Stakes — but I can’t resist.  Here’s the Contenders Report…

Contenders Report for Belmont Stakes

Contenders Report for Belmont Stakes

My plan:

  1. I’ll do a win bet on Dullahan if I can get 7/2 odds.
  2. My exacta bets will be 3/5/6 with 11, and 11 with 6.
  3. My superfecta bet will be 3/5/11 with 3/5/6/11 with 3/5/6/11 with 1/3/5/6/9/11 which should cost a whopping $5.40.

Have Fun!

WagerMate Version 3.4

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I uploaded a new version of WagerMate today.  The most noticeable enhancements are:

  1. WagerMate is using a better source for the “Race Conditions” (under “Race Details”) on the View Card tab.  The old source was limited to 400 characters, and that meant the text was sometimes truncated.
  2. WagerMate is smarter about distinguishing graded stakes races from non-graded stakes.
  3. The Preference menu lets you pick your preferred format for ROI.

Here’s an example where the Race Conditions are complex, and are now shown in their full glory…

Race Conditions

Race Conditions

As for the ROI change: the menu looks like this…

Preference Menu

Preference Menu

Up until now, WagerMate has said that a profit of 5% was an ROI of 105%.  Most people call that an ROI of 5%, not 105% (although one of my ADWs calls that a “$1 ROI” of “+0.05”).

The default format is now the “5%” format, so we’ve joined the mainstream.  I’ll try to use that format from now on in this blog.  I’m not going to go back and modify old entries though — I think that would violate the blogger’s code of ethics.

Here’s what my back testing (on about 4 year’s worth of data) looks like in the new format:

321 Back Test Report

Build 321 Back Test Report

Preakness follow-up

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Good race!  No great insights, but a few minor points:

  1. WagerMate picked I’ll Have Another to win; 3 of the 4 horses in the Contenders Report finished in the money.  None of the top three were long shots, so this isn’t surprising.
  2. I ‘won’ the exacta — if you define a payoff of $9.30 on $12 worth of bets as a victory.  I’d prefer to actually make a profit.  When the two favorites finish first & second, the payoff won’t amount to much.
  3. I picked the wrong long shots to finish fourth, leaving me with 75% of a superfecta.
  4. NBC has no clue about broadcasting races.

Preakness, conditionally

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WagerMate doesn’t recommend any Preakness bets, so like I did for the Kentucky Derby, I’ll just be making some small fun bets.  Here’s an excerpt from the Contenders Report:

WagerMate indicates that I’ll Have Another is the most likely horse to win, with an 18% chance of winning.  But notice that the horse’s ROI is 63%, meaning that, on average, if this race was run 100 times, you’d expect to lose 37% of the money you bet.  Good horse, bad bat.

I’m going to take WagerMate’s advice and bet to win on Creative Cause and Daddy Nose Best, because they both have ROIs that are better than break-even (more than 100%).

I’ll actually use even more of WagerMate’s advice — I’ll be making conditional bets, based on  the Required Odds in the Contenders Report.  The Required Odds are the odds you need to get in order to have a good bet.  So, I’ll take Creative Cause at 6/1, and Daddy Nose Best at 8/1.

I will box 6,7,8,9 in an exacta.

I will spend $19.20 on this 10 cent superfecta: 6,7,8,9 with 5,6,7,8,9 with 5,6,7,8,9 with 5,6,7,8,9,10,11 for $19.20.  That combines WagerMate’s picks with some less-likely horses I like in fourth (continuing the theme “combine WagerMate’s picks with your own work”).

Good luck!

Scratches

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Typically, I’ll use WagerMate the night before a race to start my handicapping.  At that point, the “also eligible” horses are still included, so if I click “Scratch Horses” on the Handicapping tab…

…I’ll see every horse on the card…

When I do the same thing a little before post time, WagerMate will download the latest scratch data, so that I see near-real-time information about the horses running…

If my pick for the race has been scratched, I can simply re-run the WagerMate simulations — WagerMate will automatically exclude the scratched horses.

You can also use this window to manually “scratch” any horses in the race, if you have a reason to exclude them (e.g. post position).  This screen shot shows that I’ve told WagerMate to skip horses #1 and #2 when running the simulations.  When I re-run the simulation, they’ll be treated as if they were scratched, and WagerMate will pick other horses to bet on.

Two horses manually scratched

Good Example

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The Kentucky Derby provides a good example of how to use WagerMate.  WagerMate offered four contenders, none of them favorites.  I always advocate combining WagerMate’s advice with your own handicapping knowledge and insights.  That’s what I did on Saturday.  Frankly, I didn’t have a lot of conviction, so I just made small fun bets.

I bet $2 each on the four WagerMate contenders.  When I’ll Have Another won, those bets yielded $32.60.

I also boxed Bodemeister with the WagerMate picks in different ways, spending a total of $14 on exactas.  The $1 exacta paid me $153.30.

I scrimped on the trifecta, betting $13.50 on 5,6,10 with 5,6,10,19 with 4,5,6,10,19.  I coulda woulda shoulda included #19 to win on that ticket…  The 19-6-5 50 cent trifecta paid $766.40.  Oh well, maybe next year.

The take away: use WagerMate’s ideas in combination with your own work (e.g. “fast favorites sometimes do well”).  WagerMate can point you to picks you might have otherwise overlooked.

Derby Fun

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WagerMate doesn’t see a “Best Bet” for the Kentucky Derby — it recommends you skip the race.  But that’s no fun….

I’m going to bet (small) on WagerMate’s top 4 picks in the Contenders Report, and think of them as “Just for Fun” wagers:

  1. DULLAHAN
  2. I’LL HAVE ANOTHER
  3. DADDY NOSE BEST
  4. CREATIVE CAUSE

Good luck!

WagerMate’s Performance — Build 318

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Part of the process of releasing a new version of WagerMate is back testing.  This figure shows how the new Build 318 of WagerMate performs, using the default strategy.  This is based on about four year’s worth of data.

318 Back Test Report

318 Back Test Report

So, if you blindly followed all of WagerMate’s suggestions, you would have won about 22% of your bets and got back 96% of the money you bet (i.e. a 4% loss).

In one sense, that’s terrible — we’d lose money!  But in another sense, this is incredibly encouraging — before we’ve even applied a bit of our handicapping skill, we’ve changed the rules of the game.  Everyone else is playing a game with a 20% takeout, but WagerMate users are playing a game with a 4% takeout.

If you can use your own experience and wisdom to sort through WagerMate’s selections, you should be able to improve on these results.  If you have enough data to do your own back testing, you should be able to develop a better strategy than the default strategy built into WagerMate.

Of course, Your Mileage May Vary.  Making money in back testing is not identical to making money with real bets.

Build 318

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I uploaded a new version of Wagermate today.  Most of the enhancements are minor.

Here’s something convenient: when you’re working on the back testing tab to perfect a strategy, you can make it apply to just dirt races or just sprints (for example) by using the new checkboxes.

Back test tab with new checkboxes

Back test tab with new checkboxes

I’ve taken to saving my strategy files with names that indicate what surface and distance they pertain to, like “DS long shots.wmst”.

A First Strategy

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If you follow WagerMate’s out-of-the-box betting advice, it will do a reasonable job of handicapping — but, you’ll be placing the same bets as every other WagerMate user.

I hope you’ve learned how to use WagerMate’s filters to develop your own strategies and how to save them as WMST (WagerMate STrategy) files.  Strategy files let you bring your own personal experience and wisdom into the WagerMate handicapping process — you’re customizing the process.  It’s easy:

  1. Click Start Handicapping, and let the simulations finish…
  2. Set some filters
  3. Click Save Strategy

Here’s a very simple strategy applied to the 2012 races to date…

Main screen with a filter

Main screen with a filter

…it simply sets the filters for Recency, Maximum Morning Line Odds, and Good Last Race Required.  Using this strategy for back testing  on the races run so far in 2012 yields:

Sample Back Testing Report

Sample Back Testing Report

Does this mean you can expect a 20% profit (an ROI of 120%), turn pro, and live happily ever after?  Possibly not….

A few things to keep in mind:

  1. This is a tiny sample — just 41 races.  My experience is that we need a back testing strategy that works on hundreds of races before we start to have faith in it.
  2. When I applied this simple filter to my entire set of data (about 4 year’s worth of cards and charts) the results weren’t quite as good:

    Back Test Report on large sample

    Back Test Report on large sample

  3. Although the average profit for the 4 years was 5%, the best year showed a profit of 23% and the worst year showed a loss of 7% — so the road to riches is not smooth.
  4. Just because something works in back testing doesn’t mean it will work in the future.

You can download the related strategy file.