Right, they both went (finished 1st and 4th). I was just thinking about the future, short as it is! ;>)

--Dunbar

GG R1 - 4 Haraka Haraka

HOL R3 - 2 Foxy Danseur

short notice... R3 AQU #2 Malligitawny

WON - Paid $2.90 - Running Total $219

Sorry for the quick play... that's one I had to jump on for the price.

Also for today, with the SCR of Naughty New Yorker and Malibu Moonshine, I'll take Utopia in the Stuyvesant.

Haraka Haraka WON paid $2.10 - Running Total = $230

Utopia 2nd paid $3.00 - Running Total = $345

The first one put you at exactly even for flat betting all your show bets. The 2nd one put you at +0.4%, up $50 after 117 $100 bets.

Good work!

--Dunbar

HOL R3 - 2 Foxy Danseur WON paid $2.10 - Running Total = $362


Hoping for some better prices in these next few...

2 from HOL today... picks number 7 and 8 of this round...

R3 - 3 Butterfly Belle - going against the favorite Udriga for better price... seems to like this distance on the lawn and will gets tons of speed to close into. Isn't this the horse that Baze rode to pass Pincay in wins?
R4 - 5 Downthedustyroad - Baffert appears to have this one tightened up to give a winning effort.

jman, I think these are picks 8 and 9 of this round.

Also, it sounds like you're pressing to get a better payoff. IMO, better to just play your game than play catchup.

--Dunbar

dammit, you're right! Good thing you're keeping track! This is picks 8 and 9, I missed Utopia when I was counting earlier.

Butterfly Belle looks like a very likely winner to me given the pace setup. I was going to say Udriga at first, but she's not a lock with the other early speed in there. Rosario knows the way with this one... ;)

that never got going like it was supposed to... nobody fast enough to go with Udriga! She's a pretty good mare and it was dumb to bet against her looking back. For whatever reason, those pace meltdowns never seem to happen when I handicap the race. :)

Oh well... that's all she wrote for my little experiment.

Rd 20 ended after 7 successful picks and a topped out bankroll of $362.

Final stats for the 20 rounds:

Parlays
Just 1 parlay was completed, bringing home $1182. With 20 x $100 invested, the net loss on trying to parlay 10 winning show bets was $818, or -41%. Along the way, jman's virtual bankroll went down as low as -$1600.

Flat-betting
By the time the 20th Round ended, 119 horses were picked. A flat bet on those 119 horses would have yielded a loss of -0.4%. For $100 bets the loss would have been $45. A dart-thrower would have had a loss of more like $1900.

Along the way, $100 flat bets reached a high point of +$110 and a low point of -$385.

Additional Notes
Parlaying the show bets adds suspense but also adds a lot of risk. While the parlay result dipped down to -$1600 at one point, the flat bets were never more than $385 behind. In the end, parlaying resulted in 18 times as big a loss as flat-betting ($818 vs $45), even though the flat-bettor would have risked almost 6 times as much money ($2000 vs $11,900).

In the face of general negativity towards show bets, jman's results are remarkably good. I've got to catch a plane in a few hours, but at some point I'd like to write some more about the statistical significance of jman's results.

Nice job with the record-keeping, too, jman. It's tough to keep on top of the stats during a losing streak, but you never waivered from the original plan.

--Dunbar

With regard to record keeping, one thing I wish I would have done but didn't is track the conditions of the races I played. I suppose I could go reconstruct that, but my general feeling is that I lost more often when betting claiming races than I did allowance, AOC or stakes. Case in point, Butterfly Belle yesterday in a MC32000. :) Were I to do the show parlay in real life (which I successfully have a couple times recently to build up some P3 and P4 cash) I would likely only bet on Allowance conditions or better. maybe i'm superstitious, but I genuinely perceive that I have more success at those levels than I do in claimers... and then again, maybe it's my sour disposition about Butterfly Belle ending my latest string of picks... :p

Okay, with #1 in the bag, the tortoise is ready for bet #2:

12/16 Sunland 9th, Pepper's Pride to show

--Dunbar

Pepper's Pride won and paid $2.10 to show.

Running total after 2 bets is $110.25.

The average show pool today at Sunland had maybe $3500 in it. The 9th race (with Pepper's Pride) had a $150,000 show pool. 96.4% of the money in the pool (as shown by YouBet) was on Pepper's Pride. That's as high a percentage as I've seen.

--Dunbar

Way to go Dunbar.. you're rollin' now.

Just finished all my law school finals, so I've got time back on my hands... :)

dunbar, about a month ago you wrote... "I've got to catch a plane in a few hours, but at some point I'd like to write some more about the statistical significance of jman's results."

I'd be interested in hearing what it is you have to say.

I'm rippin'. At my current rate of one pick every 2.5 months, I'll finish my first round of 10 in about August 2009, unless I pick a clunker and have to reset. Stay tuned. ;>)

hmmm. Oddly, it's going to probably take until my next flight before I have time to look at it again. But I'm glad you reminded me.

What I want to be able to say is something like, "there's just an 10% chance that jman is betting with worse than a 5% disadvantage." To do that, I need to calculate the standard deviation of your set of bets. It's easy, but like many easy things, it'll probably take an hour or 3 before I set it up right.

btw, the hypothetical quote above may not sound very impressive, but there are very few cappers who would be able to claim that level of success from a set of well-monitored picks .

--Dunbar

let's see... only a 10% chance that I'm betting with a 5% disadvantage... eek, I'm already in over my head... but I think I'm sounding pretty smart... in that case, I will not argue with you.

jman, I finally got around to looking at this again. Let me see if I can produce some statistics without (1) making a mistake, or (2) putting you to sleep.

Here's what I did:

1. I calculated the average result of your 119 show bets. You lost an average of $0.008 per $2 show bet.

2. I calculated the standard deviation of your 119 show bets. The standard deviation is 0.94, based on $2 bets.*

3. I calculated the "standard error", which is the standard deviation divided by the square root of the number of bets. 0.94/sqrt(119) = 0.09.

Armed with this data, the challenge is to tell whether your good performance was just a matter of luck. (like a roulette player who just happens to hit a few numbers.)

Consider these two "tests":

Test 1: Can we distinguish jman's record from someone who loses at the track take, say 16%?

A -16% bettor would lose $0.32 per bet compared to jman's $0.008. A 32 cent loss is more than 3 standard errors worse than jman's loss. A 3-standard error result should occur by luck in about one in 700 cases. I think we can assume that jman's picks were clearly better than the track take.

Test 2: Can we distinguish jman from someone who picks well enough to lose at just 5%?

A -5% capper would lose $0.10 per $2 bet. That's about $0.09 worse than jman's result. The difference between a -5% capper and jman result for his 119 bets is about one standard error. That kind of difference occurs by luck about 1 time in 6. We can't really rule out the luck element at that level.

Bottom Line: Your picks clearly showed that the difference between your results and a dart-thrower is statistically significant. But we'd need more picks to say that you're doing better (in a statistically significant sense) than a capper who has a 5% average loss.

Bottom Line, version 2: There's less than 1 chance in 700 that a dart-throwing capper could have produced results as good as yours. There's about 1 chance in 6 that a capper who averages a 5% loss could have produced results as good as yours over the course of 119 bets.

--Dunbar

* one easy way to do this is use the Excel function, =STDEVA(C1:C119), where the payoffs are in cells C1 down to C119.
.

Well, there you have it folks... thanks Dunbar! We make a great team, I do all the fun part and you do all the grunt work because a) I'm too lazy and/or b) inept. Thanks for helping out with the experiment and good luck on your picks.

Bet #3, as I rocket toward untold wealth... I'm going to pocket the $0.25 and put the remaining $110 on:

2/24 Gulf#10 War Pass to show.

--Dunbar

Pace Dismantlage material.

There was no show betting. Gulfstream wimped out when the field was reduced to 5.

--Dunbar

I'll try again with War Pass:

Bet #3,
3/15 Tampa Bay Derby. $110 on War Pass to show.

--Dunbar

War Pass finishes last. Bet loses.

Back to square one.

--Dunbar

Okay, Round 2 begins.

$100 to show on Histericalady in the Fleur d' Lis, CD 6th, 6/14

--Dunbar

Excellent work as always Dunbar!

This is absolutely one of the most informative threads i have read on this or any other website.

Thank you Jman and Dunbar!!! Cheers to the both of you!

Dalakhani and Rupert, thanks for the nice comments!

--Dunbar

With the field reduced to 5, Churchill Downs cancelled show betting in obvious fear of my massive play.

So, no bet.

--Dunbar

Another try at getting Round 2 of my show parlays off the ground:

$100 to show on Indian Blessing in the Gallant Bloom Hdcp, race 9 at Belmont today.

Let's see if they allow show betting.

--Dunbar

Foiled again. With the scratch there was no show betting.

--Dunbar

can i play one with you guys?

This reply may be too late for the one you were thinking of, but I certainly don't mind if you keep track of your own plays in this thread.

--Dunbar

are you going to play another one Dunbar?

Yes, but I expect it to be at the same torrid pace of plays I've already been posting.

--Dunbar