First time, long time. I’ve had the privilege of meeting many of you at the Spa seminars over the years, but never felt compelled to add to the discussions here before. I did want to respond to some comments made in this thread however, in order to clarify a couple of things:
Rick B. Wrote:
> Which might be a meaningful comparison, if anyone
> actually made parlay bets anymore.
> Second-guessing winning payoffs on serial bets is worthless.
> They pay what they pay.
> Attempts at correlating \"this pool\" to \"that pool\" is an exercise
> in mathematical masturbation.
The assertion that win pools cannot be correlated to their respective multi-race wager pools based on the equivalent win parlays is erroneous. Just because people don’t bet parlays anymore doesn’t mean the mathematical relationship no longer holds.
There is absolutely and unequivocally a nearly perfect long-term correlation between multi-race payoffs and the equivalent win parlay. The empirical evidence supporting this (both in academia as well as that done by myself) is overwhelming. And it’s not just the Daily Double that correlates – it works just as well for the Pick 3, Pick 4, Pick 5 and even the Pick 6. I’ve got comprehensive records comparing Pick 6 payoffs to their equivalent win parlays for a variety of meets from the 2013 spring Gulfstream meet all the way back to the 1993 winter Aqueduct meet, and they all show a near perfect correlation.
The correlation between win pools and the multi-race pools is so good in fact, that by looking at the doubles pool from the prior race, I can calculate to an amazing degree of accuracy what the final odds of all the horses in the upcoming race will be – before the wagering for the race even opens!
And I’ve found that the correlations are just as good when using smaller pools at minor tracks. There are times of course when a particular horse’s final odds vary to a significant degree from those indicated by the doubles, but those cases are more the exception rather than the rule. On such occasions, the win pool, which tends to be more efficient, gives a better indication of a horse’s true probability of winning.
This leads to the second point discussed in this thread – the concern over pool integrity and late odds changes. When estimating final odds based on the equivalent win parlays from the doubles in the prior race, one quickly sees that what appears to be huge last-minute shifts in odds by the so-called “smart money” is in actuality completely predictable. In the vast majority of cases, the big changes in odds after the race goes off are simply the final odds getting in line with those already established by the previous race doubles.
The beauty of all this is that if one uses this approach, he no longer needs to be concerned with the vagaries of the prerace odds. Armed with a good idea of what the final odds for a race will be, he can construct his wagers long before the race goes off, with the confidence that he will be getting the value on the wagers that he’s identified.
