Bridge jumper on Zenyatta

[Dunbar]

Originally Posted by Rupert Pupkin

Dunbar, I always respect your opinion but I don't think I can agree with you here. I agree with you that in theory, a horse at any odds could be a good bet. If you are getting higher odds than what the true odds are, then your bet will have a positive ROI over time. I'm not big on betting favorites, but I realize that if you have a 3-5 shot that has a 75% chance of winning, that is a good bet.

That being said, I would have an extremely hard time finding a bridge-jumping bet that is a good bet. If it was at a track where the minimum pay-off was $2.20, then it might be possible to find some value. But if you are only getting $2.10, I don't see it. If you are getting $2.10 to show, you have to win that bet 95% of the time, just to break even. Even when I see some of these 1-5 shots and 1-9 that look unbeatable, I don't think that I would make their chances of hitting the board higher than 95%. I have seen these horses run out of the money too often. I think it is more often than 5% of the time that these horses run off the board.

If you could find a horse that you thought had a 96% chance of hitting the board, then you would have a 1% edge betting that horse to show if you were getting $2.10. I think you would be very hard pressed to find a horse that has a 96% chance of hitting the board.

In the previous example, my math was slightly off. The edge would be even less than 1%. It would actually be 0.8%. So even if you could find a horse that you thought would hit the board 96% of the time, which I don't think you could find, your edge would be less than 1%. It would be 0.8%.

Rupert, thanks for the serious and thoughtful reply. You are certainly correct that it makes no sense to think of the big show bets as +5% ev.

Still, I'm pretty sure I could convince you (or anyone else who is comfortable with algebra) that making very large show bets on certain odds-on favs is a good bet. I know that's hard to believe, but I really am quite sure of it. I'll take the time to spell out my reasoning sometime in the next 2 months. Right now I'm nearing the end of an extended vacation roadtrip.

--Dunbar