TGJB Wrote:
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> Speaking of 1/9, someone has to explain this net
> pricing thing to me. Huge minus place pool, 5
> horse field, the one that ran second pays 6.40 to
> place.
I don\'t have the exact numbers from the Apple Blossom, but I was monitoring them right up to post time, and what I remember is that Zenyatta had about $555K of the ~ $600K place pool, and Taptam had about $10000. This is close enough for illustration.
I\'m not going to get into any discussions of varying takeouts here, because while that was one of the problems net pool pricing was designed to address (the other being currency translations), it just muddies up the answer to the question at hand: how the heck did that (non-heavy favorite) horse pay so much? So I\'ll just use 20% as the takeout, and be done with it.
Finally, let me stress that this is MY understanding of how it works. Plenty of horse racing web sites mention net pool pricing, and try to explain how it works, but I could not find any definitive source for the EXACT calculations; what follows is what I have cobbled together from 2 years of on-again, off-again farting around with the calculations. I think I finally have it very close, if not completely correct, but if anybody out there wants to chime in with corrections, etc., PLEASE DO SO! I promise to not be offended -- I just want the damn thing solved.
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Under the old pricing model, the place calculation would be over pretty quick:
Total place pool: $600,000
1. Subtract takeout from gross pool: $480,000 remains.
Well, the rest of the calculation (remove money bet on Z and Taptam, divide remainder by 2, allocate winnings back on a per dollar basis, calculate raw price and round down for breakage) is moot at this point -- there isn\'t enough money left to give the winners back their *bets*, let alone the mandated 5% minimum return. There are $565,000 in winning place wagers to be paid at 5 cents on the dollar, and calculation shows a minus pool of $113,250 is needed to pay the place bettors, all of whom receive $2.10.
***
Under the new pricing model, the order of calculations are tinkered with, yielding obviously different results,
The total place pool is still $600,000, and the amounts bet on all the horse remain the same, but the first step is different -- the \"net\" winnings are derived first:
1. Total pool $600,000 minus $555,000 bet on Z, minus $10,000 bet on Taptam = $35,000
2. Remove 20% takeout from $35,000. $28,000 remains.
3. Split the $28,000 amongst the winning place bettors by horse -- $14,000 to the Z place bettors, and $14,000 to the Taptam place bettors.
4. Calculate raw price for each place price:
Taptam: $10,000 wagered minus 20% takeout = $8000. Add the $8000 to the $14,000 from step 3, for a total of $22,000 available to be paid back to the Taptam place bettors. Allocate this amount per dollar wagered, which is $2.20 to $1, for a payout of $6.40.
Z: $555,000 wagered minus 20% takeout = $444,000. Add this to the $14,000 from step 3 for a total of $458,000, and...you still have a minus pool situation, to the tune of $124,750.
So, the takeout is the same, but the dollar amount of the minus pool goes up under my net pricing example.
I\'ve been told that the agreement under this model is that the host track is no longer stuck with the whole minus pool, that it is allocated back to each entity based on the percentage of bets each entity has booked to that pool. True? Again, chime in if you know.
