apologies for beating a dead horse.....

[SoCalMan2]

....but every time I end up hitting a pick 4 that I think should pay huge, I end up getting significantly less than the parlay would pay.  It is driving me nuts.  I feel I am being cheated.  Today\'s example.....I hit the late Pick 4 at Aqueduct, payoffs for $2 are $16, $4.10, $57, and $17.80.  I was expecting that would pay at least $2k for a 50 cent wager and possible more.  My payoff for 50 cents was a measly $1031.50.  Can you math geniuses tell me if I am right to feel ripped off or maybe I should rejigger my expectations.  I played this sequence because there were large fields with a few false favorites that I thought were beatable and some long horses that could come in ($57 horse was a 3yo filly who had won 6 allowances at FL but those races didn\'t count towards her eligibility for the NW1X first level state bred feature -- her figures put her right there with (I would say better than) the 7-5 favorite that she soundly beat).

[TGJB]

Less than half the parlay, Rocky can tell you what it should be on average with only 1 takeout.

And a perfect example of the kind of thing that should be looked at-- if we could look at bet structure.

[SoCalMan2]

TGJB Wrote:
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> Less than half the parlay, Rocky can tell you what
> it should be on average with only 1 takeout.
>
> And a perfect example of the kind of thing that
> should be looked at-- if we could look at bet
> structure.


I do not see how I can keep betting pick 4s if this is a regular occurrence like it is starting to be for me. This is the second time this year I have been severely robbed on a pick 4 payoff liked this. I wonder how many times I would have been robbed, but never even hit the ticket.  I have to say that this is really discouraging.  I lose my pick 4s frequently but play for the big tickets to come in thinking I do not need that many of them to make me good.  IF the big tickets are not there any more even when you hit them, it doesn\'t make sense to even try.

[SoCalMan2]

Just looking at the chart and the will pays now.  I happened to have the horse that ran second in the finale.  It was a 32.25 to 1 shot.  If that horse had won, it would have paid $66.50 to win and the 50 cent pick 4 of $16, $4.10, $57, and $66.50 would have paid only $3517.50.  In percentage terms, probably just as bad a rip off as what I suffered, but in dollar amounts, it would have been an even bigger theft.  If I did my math right (and that is a big if), I was only robbed $1050, but if the 10 horse had won, I would have been robbed about $4200.

I guess it would have been better if I had been robbed the $4200 since I would have at least cashed for more than the other way around, but when you have to start looking at things that way, it all becomes very discouraging very fast.

[Rick B.]

SoCalMan2 Wrote:
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> I do not see how I can keep betting pick 4s if
> this is a regular occurrence like it is starting
> to be for me. This is the second time this year I
> have been severely robbed on a pick 4 payoff liked
> this.

The problems are:

1) The expectation that P4 payouts will always be favorable
to win parlays.

It may have been that way at one time, and there is a math
guy here (Rocky) who can reportedly demonstrate a pretty tight
relationship between pick X pools and win odds, but the fact
is that the betting pools are NOT indexed to one another, so
there should be no expectation that they will perform to
a certain measurement, day in and day out. (I always suspected
this \"correlation\" would change once long-term averaging and
increase betting efficiencies came into play...see next.)

2) Where (else) are you getting screwed? Everywhere? Or just
where robot betting is allowed?

If it\'s the latter, my guess is the robot users are now keying
in on the serial bets and passing on the win pool. If my guess
is right, you can stop playing serial bets now; you won\'t beat
those guys.

[FrankD.]

Consider its a winter weekday at Aqueduct, pick 4 pool was only $244,098 with a
24 % take out and the $2 pick paying $4,126 that leaves 45 winning $2 tickets.

If 2 guys singled the Jacobson even money shot and saw the same thing as you with the FL horse and bet $20 pick 4\'s they took out half of the pool.

The handle wasn\'t even 6 million for the day, get used to it you have 5 more months of it Aqueduct! Put that sequence into a 20 million Saturday pool at the Spa and you would have got paid right.

Good luck,

Frank D.

[Boscar Obarra]

That about sums it up. Small pools with a higher percentage of \'sharp\' players involved.

  Didn\'t look at the card, but if the FL 30-1 shot had the profile you say, no way it was that long in multis, where people naturally spread into anything that has a shot.

  So if she  was 20-1 , that alone accounts for 33% of the discount from a parlay .

[FrankD.]

Last but not least I just looked in the red board room and TG analysis had the pick 4 if you went 3x3x3x3=$40.50 for a .50 ticket!

Along with:
6th  $212 exacta
7th  $ 17.40 exacta & $39 tri
8th  $198 exacta, $2,504 tri and a key win bet on the FL horse

[TheBull]

Condolences on that SoCal. I know how frustrating it is to plug away, and plug away only to finally hit and have a deflated payout. It\'s not just limited to weekdays either, although certainly more likely given pool size.

Ive noticed this trend for a few years now. My thought is that the 50 cent base wager may be affecting things. People who invest x amount of money in a pk4, can now get twice the coverage for the same x amount of dollars. Their likelihood of hitting goes up a decent percentage causing them to hit more frequently. This entitles more players to a piece of the pool.

Yes, they would only hit for half the amount, but just think how many times the ticket played for a dollar would lose. On a dreary weekday in December, it doesnt  take too many formerly losing dollar base tickets that now have turned into 50cent winners to have a significant impact on payout.

The amount of winners at the minimum base end of the wagering has gone up, while the amount at the high end (2 dollar + base wagers) have remained the same. The big player who plays pk4s for 2 dollars or 5 dollars etc, isnt going to change his play or frequency of hitting just because the minimum base dropped to 50cent. All the change to 50cent minimum did is increase the amount of people who get a share of the pool.

Tracks with 50cent tris are becoming similar too. Hate to say but you may have stick to wagers with higher minimum bases, like doubles. I notice double payouts continue to be normal, while pj3s, 4s, tris etc are trending in the wrong direction. Thoughts??

[billk5300s]

There are a lot of folks that play along with the analysis.  With the small pools it would only take a few players to make the $40.00 investment.  It\'s a credit to the quality of TG products.  Another point is that hitting the four horse parlay would cost substantially more than a 50 cent pick 4.  You would need to hit the parlay cold to make it feasible to do.  With that said maybe the comparison is similar to apples to oranges.

[miff]

DD at Aqu just paid $729, the parlay \"only\" like $600

[Tavasco]

Proving (again) some races get by even the most astute handicappers. Most don\'t.

[Boscar Obarra]

fwiw, DD\'s are less likely to be ripoffs than other pools, exacta\'s included. Not exactly sure why.

[miff]

Same sequence p3 paid $4900, parlay figured like $3,000

[SoCalMan2]

miff Wrote:
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> Same sequence p3 paid $4900, parlay figured like
> $3,000


I guess my point would be the following -- the math guys can say what par is for the payoff.  Almost never will it be par -- it will be high or low.  The largest grouping will be between 90% and 110% of par, right?  Then the next largest grouping will be between 80% and 90% and 110% and 120% of par, and so on.  However, would it be okay to pay only 10% of par?  There has to be some point where it becomes such an extreme outlier it doesn\'t make sense.  All I am saying is that in the last six months I have twice hit pick 4s that should have paid nicely and I got back less than 50% of the parlay (which I understand to be even less than par).  How many times in what period does that happen before you say that some new version of the fix six guys are at work because mathematically you cannot have hundred year storms happening every six months?  Also, if you are getting all these bad payoffs, there should be some outrageously good payoffs in the same sequence....however, should ALL the will pays for a pick 4 in the last leg be horribly below par?  Shouldn\'t there be some results that would be better than par?