[dalakhani]

Originally Posted by pgardn

We differ in this respect. I dont look at bridgejumping as an individual event. I look at it as an opportunity that occurs more than once and someone is going to bet it more than once. Taken as a whole, if you keep making the bets, I see getting stripped eventually.

You might see it as a bet made very, very infrequently. If we take the example that started the thread, you could definitley make some money with a big risk. So again it is how one evaluates risk. I think the risk of Zenyatta finishing out of the money is too large for the bet made for me. So the crux of the matter is how many times out of, lets say 100, does the horse finish out of the money? If your answer is 1, chances are you get stripped if you play it enough.

So in my view, I guess what you should be saying is I am going to play this way very infrequently. And your point is that each individual bridgejump is a diff. race and that is true. But even in the surest of these, I just think the risk of the horse finishing out of the money is too big even though the frequency of occurence is very low ( maybe 1 out of 100, and I think this is being very kind).

And tracks dont take the show bridgejumping bets because the pool just is not big enough to pay back 5% on a big bet. Now if the tracks actually gave you back what your bridgejump is really worth (instead of a mininum of 2.10 it would be the real pool money, say 2.0001) then you would not be making the bet. You are really using the fact the track will pay you that 5 cents on the dollar to your advantage. But in reality, if the track really crunched the pool numbers, they would be giving back some show bets of 1/100 of a penny because the bet was small and someone else came in and bridgejumped.
In other words, tracks could pay out show bets on four horse fields if they did not use 2.10 minimum. The payouts would most likely be pitifully low and no way to pay some patrons 1/100 of a penny they won instead of a dime.

Exactly Pgardn. Exactly! The bet should only be paying out 2.0001 and you are going to make 2.10. And thats a bad bet?

You are right though. Bridge Jumping a lot of times is a fools bet and the math that has been layed out in this thread no doubt supports that. No denying. But in the right situation, it seems like you are getting value because the payoff is much higher than it should be. At that point, it depends on how you, as you say, view the risk.

Thanks Pgardn.