Show Parlay

[jman5581]

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.

[Dunbar]

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

[jman5581]

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...