THE IMMUTABLE LAWS OF HANDICAPPING-----PART 5
(So far in this series we’ve looked at weight,
layoff horses, first-time starters, asking a horse to do something new and
repeaters.)
6---ALWAYS BET OVERLAYS AND AVOID UNDERLAYS.
I can’t begin to tell you how
many articles and books I’ve read over the past 40 years urging us one way or
the other to always get a fair mutuel return for every one of our $2
investments. Some refer to this as “value”. Most
writers inevitably end up at one point in their discourse by asking their reader
a question. It usually goes something like this: “Is the horse that you
are about to bet mutuelly fair in return and worth a bet, is it overlayed and really, really worth a bet, or is it underlayed and to be avoided at all
costs”?
And how are you supposed to
answer a question such as this? These
same writers ask you yet another question. If goes like this: “If this same race were run 100 times, how many
times would your selection win”? They
continue with: “If your horse is going off at even money, he’d have to
win 51 of them out of 100 before you
could make any money”.
Some authors additionally offer
some kind of a table or graph with odds from 1-5 all the way up to 50-1, that
shows you how many wins out of 100 same races that you’d need to keep your bankroll in the black. In
plain English, if you think that your next bet would win at least 34 “like” races out of 100 “like” races, then you can accept 2-1 or better today, but nothing
less!
Should you think that he would only
win 26 “same or like” races out of a similar 100 race sample, then you
would have to get at least 3-1 or better, but nothing less----and so on
until the odds hit 50-1 on their chart.
There is one MAJOR flaw in their approach and one that they can’t
“dance around”! They lead their
readers to believe that the “same race” can actually be run 100 times sometime in the mythical future.
This “value-thinking” and
similar concepts are so far from the “reality” that you actually encounter on track
everyday, that it’s almost laughable to think of any races being the
“same”. Not only can’t 100 exact
same races be mythically run in the future, not
so much as one “same race” can be run in the future! That’s right, I said to
forget about a mythical 100 “same
race” sample, because it is just that--totally mythical in every sense of the word and never to happen!
No 2 races are ever exactly alike, nor will they be in the future!
Every race is not only different,
it is very unique in its composition. Various class levels increase and decrease, post positions
change, horses are added, horses are deleted, jockeys move from one horse to
another, the composition of the dirt or turf surface changes due to moisture
and/or normal maintenance, the horses themselves physically look different from race to race etc. I could go on and on, but what’s the point? The
above examples would convince any “doubting Thomas” that there are more
than enough changing scenarios to render each race clearly unto
itself.
What develops the first jump out
of the gate until the very last when crossing the wire in no way ever exactly duplicates another race. Even
if you actually had the same exact participants from another race and
all the post positions were the same with the same jockeys and weights the same
etc., would the race itself actually be run the 100 times the “same” way. No, in fact I doubt you could so much as duplicate 1 out of 100, let alone every one of those 100 “same” races that you needed for that money-management system.
That makes their “value-thinking” of getting this or that price for any wager based on 100 “same races”
totally irrelevant in today’s marketplace as well as 40 years ago. This “immutable law” was total
nonsense then and it is still total nonsense. Races simply aren’t run exactly the same way 100 times-----period!
Every race doesn’t have to have
“alleged value” or a “value” horse. With tenure in this great game, there are times when you positively know that the price they are offering on a specific
horse is not only generous or overlayed, you feel like you are stealing before
you buy your tickets, as well as in the post race when you enjoy your personal
“gloat time”.
Allow me to ask you a question.
If you literally
thought that the only
way a certain horse could lose this upcoming race was if his jockey fell off him, would walk
away from 4-5? And before you answer, hear the question once more stated a bit differently. Would you take 4-5 on a horse who literally could only lose the upcoming race by losing his jockey?
If you answered that you wouldn’t
take 4-5 in that exact scenario or never take 4-5 in any other
scenario, then you’ve probably never had a winning year in your entire
horse playing life. That 4-5
situation occurs more
than you might think with today’s anemic fields and if
you’re not betting these low-priced overlays, not only are you missing
the boat, you were never close to getting aboard to begin with.
Here’s a case in point---a bit
simplistic, but I know that everyone will understand plain English. We all know
the winning ways of the “Kid” Dollase trained El
Cielo, at least those who play Southern California circuit. Place this monster on the Santa Anita “downhill” 6 ½ furlong course
and he’s virtually
invincible, as evidenced by his life time record down that tricky course
where runners have to make 4
lead changes.
It’s 11/05/01 and we’re at
Santa Anita where he’s entered to run down the hillside 6 ½ furlong course in
the Grade 3 Morvich---a race that he had won last year. He looks “flawless” in the paddock. Here’s his
“hillside” record when running at 6 ½ turf panels:
Starts:11 Wins:8 Seconds:2 Thirds:0
I might mention that the only
time that he wasn’t 1st or 2nd in his prior 11 lifetime attempts down the hillside was
the time his jockey actually did fall off him!
How’s a high 6-5 ($4.60) look
for this unbelievable runner? That’s what he paid when
positing his 9th win in 12 attempts! Oh, incidentally, he set
the track record that afternoon, so he does in fact literally “own the course”! It’s a
shame I didn’t have my car title with me. I would have literally tried to put that thru the mutuel windows as well.
Based on one of those odds tables
we spoke about, 2-5 would have been acceptable to show a profit. But you don’t need some
“Mickey Mouse” odds/value-table. Taking
a high 6-5 on El Cielo wasn’t a hard decision on 11/05/01---it
was the only decision! Stay focused every day. You’ll know when 4-5, even money, or 6-5 is “right” and you won’t need an odds
table!
PART 6-----NEXT WEEK!
© Joe Takach 2002 |
