Stats for favorites at Saratoga and Del Mar

[BitPlayer]

According to a tweet from Craig Milkowski, betting favorites was not a bad proposition at Saratoga and Del Mar this summer.  At Del Mar, 38.4% of favorites won, with an ROI of 0.94 (out of 1.0).  At the Spa, the numbers were 37.8% and 0.95.

[Boscar Obarra]

Interesting.  Wonder how many were \'paper\' favorites and how many got that way due to \'smart $\'

 The raw figure would suggest the latter

[JR]

Suffer the fool in me kindly but I don’t understand how betting favorites would have been a good prop if the return on every dollar bet was 94 or 95 cents respectively.

[skitimber]

Imagine if you start with that 94 to 95 cents and then (not easy) get rid of just a few false favorites.  The point is that it is a good place to start looking for solid bets (with no takeout, you could make a great living just betting favorites) and, conversely, when you bet against the favorite, you are effectively up against an even greater takeout than what\'s posted.

Not sure if it still holds, but way back when you could simply wait for 2 - 5 (and lower odd horses) to run, because they had a positive ROI!

[rezlegal]

Are you certain the roi was based on a $1 bet? As a general tule ( see T Graph  data) published roi data is based on a $2 bet.

[BitPlayer]

Yes, I could tell from the raw numbers (which were included in the tweet) that ROI was based on $1. The point of the tweet was that, with a good rebate, you\'d be in good shape. By way of comparison, the Meadow book, using a much larger sample, pegged the ROI from betting on favorites at $0.83.  Of course, most jurisdictions have larger WPS takeouts than NYRA and Del Mar.

[Boscar Obarra]

The point is, favorites outperformed their odds

[TGJB]

It would be interesting to run the same study for morning line favorites. Also, to break it down by trainer. Gargan\'s horses ran a whole lot better when they got bet, for example.

[JR]

Ha! Sorry. I’m a little lit but I was afraid the suggestion would be to not bet the losing favorites. What bull.

[JR]

Doesn’t that depend on the average odds for the favorite? I didn’t see that posted.

[JR]

I’ll stick to CDs

[JohnTChance]

Question:

Did ANY eastern-based horse ship cross-country and win at Del Mar this summer? What are those stats?

[TGJB]

I didn’t see stats on the east-west shippers, but they did better than I thought they would.