Posted on
12/20/2007 3:44:38 PM
Off Track Horse Betting Trends – Law of Averages
By Brian Mulligan
There are a lot of ways to skin a cat and one thing that clever horse bettors find out through experience is that there is a multitude of ways to approaching the game of horse racing.
Often times clever horse bettors have to go back to basics to get back on track.
They may be in a bit of a horse betting funk, or they just may need to get their collective equine betting engines oiled up for a particular meet but here is one tried and true method that can put horse bettors back on track and back on track in a hurry.
All you need is the entries, the past performances compliments of the Daily Racing Form, a pen, a calculator and a huge wallet for the subsequent earnings.
Honest horse bettors know that some races are pretty much inscrutable. You can look at a certain race for hours on end and still not be able to make heads or tails of the entrants.
Enter the average earnings theory.
When I was working nights as a Teamster in California, driving, unloading and caring for diesels, during the breaks I would get out the old calculator, the Form, a cold drink and a piece of paper and assess how much each horse in a race had made per start.
Of course, the fellow workers voiced the theory that I was an idiot, a crazy, and a no-good dreamer that would just be driving trucks for the rest of his life.
I think they were wrong.
What I found out over the years that average earnings was a great way to find out who was the real class of a claiming race.
Horse bettors for decades have fought over the term class and what it means but in reality it’s just like life and money makes the world go round.
If a cagey hard-working horse bettor just does his work, ascertains how much a horse makes every time he steps on the track, it becomes much easier to eliminate pretenders and isolate contenders in any given claiming race.
When I was trucking, it was back in the mid 1970s, but the average game still works.
Take the 9th race at Hollywood Park on November 25 for instance.
Ten lined up for the $16,000 seller going 6 and a half furlongs and after you got the calculator out, it was evident that some horses fit, and some didn’t.
The top earner per start in the race was Semi Lost, and he finished second beaten a half. The second top earner was Forest Danz, and that runner won and started off a $14.90 buck exacta at a cool 14-1 for the investment.
Take it a step further and there is more. The show horse was not in the top five in average earnings and he was ahead of the 4th and 5th finishers in the race by a half-length.
The fourth finisher was the 5th best average earner in the field and went off at 44-1 and the 5th finisher was the third best average earner in the field at a fat 5-1.
Clever horse bettors obviously can see the value here and with a little time and a bit of arithmetic; bettors can turn a claiming puzzle into a nice payday.
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