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Old 01-13-2009, 11:15 AM
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Dunbar Dunbar is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by robfla
I used to have a sheet of like 100+ trifecta combos to play EACH game. ( the tellers hated me ) The numbers would hit like 75% of the time and pay 150-250. This was years ago when there was actually money in Jai Alai pools. The numbers NOT on there were like 8-7-6, 8-7-1, and other numbers that based on the rotation rarely came in, but when they did, usually due to a playoff or extremely long or short game, the tri's would pay 700+. There were quite a few people playing "the numbers".

Used to be a fun sport to watch and bet back in the early 80's
The book I mentioned has tri prob's, too. The most likely tri's (under the assumption of each player having an equal chance to win every point) are 142 and 241 at 0.94% probability. Next is 152 and 251 at 0.84%. And 413 and 423 at 0.81%.

The least likely tri's are 487, 567, 578, 678, and 687 which all have less than 0.005% chance of coming in. (they are listed as 0.00% in the book.)

As you realized back then, there's a humongous built-in difference in each tri's likelihood. The likely tri's were 100-200 times more likely to come in than the least likely tri's (under the same assumptions) A lot of players just played their favorite numbers, and in most cases I think it had little to do with the built in bias.

--Dunbar

caveat: Even though the approach is clearly correct, I've never checked the fig's in the book. It wouldn't be hard to check them, though.
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Curlin and Hard Spun finish 1,2 in the 2007 BC Classic, demonstrating how competing in all three Triple Crown races ruins a horse for the rest of the year...see avatar
photo from REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
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