RDSS strategies

[mrhug]

I PMed this to Ted and he said it would be a good topic. I think this will help beginners like myself to start using RDSS more effectively while learning the methodology. I will try to put in a couple examples.
Thanks to everyone in advance.:)

Ted
Sorry to keep bothering you, but I am really trying to use RDSS correctly along with doing a lot of reading about the Methodology. There is a ton of information and it gets a little confusing some times. I have discovered that basically RDSS will give you the winner if you put in the correct pace lines, and I am getting pretty good at getting the winner in the top 3. However, I am having trouble getting the winner out of the 3. I would love to have some strategies to use with RDSS (might be a good topic for the forum). Also, I would love to know a strategy to find the place horse in RDSS.
Thanks
Melvin

[Ted Craven]

Melvin,

In our private correspondence I suggested we only use your readouts, your line selections, in this exercise, and concentrate on wagering strategies given the analysis you came up with.

In this example, the classic top ranked, low odds favourite. RDSS thinks the favourite #8 is worthy, so does everyone else: its merits are obvious and probably properly priced. It loses about 2/3rd of the time, perhaps a little less, approaching even odds.

2 strategies: EITHER you accord that horse the Win pool and seek value elsewhere, for example the exacta pool - OR you Hide (or ignore) that horse because it is unbettable to Win and, over many events, will not return sufficient to cover when it loses.

Your top 3 horses off BL/BL cost $12 in a 3 horse exacta box, which here returns $50.20, a rather surprising 3-1 odds equivalent.

In the Win pool, if you 'Hide' (or ignore, or designate Secondary, in RDSS2), you have a 2 horse Win wager on your next 2 (the survivors from the Top 3) a 9/2 and a 32-1 (perhaps splitting the unit on the 32-1 between Win and Place).

The favourite you hide for win, you include back in in an exacta.

The decision process about when to hide the favourite and when to respect it is one of the most difficult to make. Even when the favourite appears to win all day (i.e. yesterday at Finger Lakes), it will run out once in the day. Can betting against it until it comes in, that day, be financially sound? Are some tracks (at some times) carding less competitive races, where some horses are clear standouts? A regular study of recent results helps clarify this, and maybe will suggest caution.

A lot of the time, you just don't know when a favourite will run out. I like it when a low odds favourite (say <= 2-1) is NOT many steps above the next horse on BLBL, e.g. when they are within 1 point (given sound paceline selection). Even better when it is NOT top ranked at all. These constitute vulnerable favourites - who will still beat you, but make up at least their fair share of those who will lose 2/3 of the time, making your next ranked horses even better win bets, or members of an exacta box.

In this race, I note that the top 4 horses resulted in the Tri, and the top 5 the Super.

The races where the favourite is obviously vulnerable can be great races to bet against them. From you readouts, this was not one of those races, hence one where you need to establish, in your betting records, what your Win betting success rate (and comfort level) in such circumstances is, and thus consider Place or Exacta pools.

Another strategy is to hedge the #8 to get back all or a part of what you bet and bet the rest of your Win bet unit on your other horse, the winning #2. Of a $10 Win bet unit, $4 bet on the #8 gets you back most of your $10 and $5 breaks you a bit better than even. While the remaining $6 or $5 on your other horse makes you a nice Win pool profit.

Some ideas. I know others will have other ideas, and caveats.

Let's stick to using the Analysis supplied, rather than suggesting alternate pacelines or contenders.

Ted

[shoeless]

Ted,

How would you anaylize the above screens to see who you would play?

I had suggested to Ted that he should have a beginners section.

Jeff

[Ted Craven]

Er, I thought that was what my reply above was about.

Based on Melvin's readouts, personally, I would have bet the 2-5 to win (with Place money on the #5) and boxed the 8-2-5 in an exacta.

I haven't looked at the race in RDSS.

Ted

[shoeless]

I was thinking about more of a detailed analysis of the readouts of why you would go with those horses,my mistake sorry.

[Ted Craven]

No worries Jeff.

In this thread, I would let Melvin explain his paceline selection strategy, analysis methods if he felt like it. He said he was getting good enough at getting the winner in his top 3 and that what he was seeking was to try to gain insight into wagering strategies (I thought). So I don't want to divert his thread.

But, I'd be happy in another thread to do something like Bill V has been doing recently, describing his decision process at each step along the way. I'll try something this weekend.

Ted

[Bill V.]

Hi Ted

I just put something together

Just as you posted this

[Bill V.]

I posted it down in Old Sartin

Field to Bets

http://paceandcap.com/forums/showpost.php?p=75493&postcount=1

Bill

[rmath]

Melvin, Teds explanation is exactly how Doc would have bet this race.
Hide your low odds horse and bet the next two.
If you are getting 70 to 80% in you top three you are well on your way to making a good profit. Keep on reading and working as many races as you can.
Good Luck

[froggy]

Melvin,

The best thing I ever did was to take a picture of all of my BL/BL screens and Results Charts and put them in a three ring binder and after a period of time mine them for information.

For instance in the last 6 days at Aqu I did 47 races.
Just $2 bet on just the top horse resulted in 19 wins @ average mutuel of $9.48 for an ROI of $1.88 with a win rate of 40%
I didn't do that well because I tried to out guess RDSS.
Like in the last 3 days I bet 25 three horse exacta for a total of $300 with a return of $257.20.
The one that I didn't bet because have any confidence in or the balls to pull the trigger paid $631.

The secret that you are looking for is in your own records.
That is where you handicap yourself and RDSS.

Don't worry about the place horse just find the win horse and after that everything else will fall into place.

Without records you don't win.
With records you can find yourself.

Have at it and go pull the trigger.

Froggy

[mrhug]

Thanks for all the great input from everyone. Sorry for the late response, but I just got back from a few days at Charles Town and Penn National. What I discovered was that a lot of the low priced favorites won and that is one of the reasons I PMed Ted. I am getting the winner about 70% of the time in my top three BL or segments. The main thing I was wondering was do I just use the top 3 in BL and can I take these 3 horses and and compare their readouts (corollaries) in RDSS to decide which 2 horses to bet on. Ted gave me a lot to study on in his reply, because my other question was the best way to bet, pass or handle the situation when you have low priced favorites on most of the races at a track.

[mrhug]

For this race, I was not sure what to do so I bet $4 on #8 to win and $2 on #2 to win.

[alydar_ David]

You could always play another track, or several for that matter.

And sometimes it's just chalk everywhere.

Last night I was at Gulfstream playing MNR, CT, DED, HOL and RP. I found one race which offered value -- RP 9th -- bet it, and lost.

I'm going again tonight for the promotional drawings from 10:00 P.M. until midnight. $1000 cash to someone every half hour. I won that a month ago. The only requirement is being there; no skill whatsoever. As long as I'm there I may as well bet the races. That is, if I can find anything worth betting.

What I can't stand is when you see a chalk double with odds on horses like the late double at MNR last night. Whatever happened to MNR and bombs?

That's one nice thing about conditional wagering. You can do your work, then bet it and forget it.

[mrhug]

I posted it down in Old Sartin

Field to Bets

http://paceandcap.com/forums/showpost.php?p=75493&postcount=1

Bill

Bill
This is great. It gives me a strategy to start working with.
Thanks

[mrhug]

Bill and Ted
Could one of you show me how you would go through Penn National race 2 on 11-11. The race wound up with a lot of good odds, but I really struggled to pick pace lines for some of the horses. It may not be correct, but I like to pick pace lines as close to the same length, surface and the normal Adj SR for each horse. The Adj SR for some of these horses were all over the place.

[Ted Craven]

Melvin,

Just before spending more time on this, are you sure you meant this race? I didn't notice all that many good odds ... I would not have gotten this race, or bet it, most likely. 3-1 and 4-1 on my top 2 horses plus a 5/2 favourite so far out of my contender rankings seems like some kind of signal that there's too much odds competition for top position - or that I've missed something.

I can go through each horse and note paceline selection, though the above was simply best of last 3 Perceptor Total, similar distance structure, and most horses had lines at this track, this distance, or within a half-furlong. That's why I'm not sure I'm looking at the right race ...

24853

24854

[mrhug]

Thanks Ted. My pace lines were almost identical. I guess I just need to keep reading. Bill's strategy he uses will help me a lot to have something to start with. I am still struggling with which races to pass on as you see from this race.
Melvin

[Bill V.]

Hi Mrhug

I think you will find that some races just don't adjust well
I think this race is fine There is no big favorite or a horse that I would have to
hide ( at least looking at final odds) although im sure that near post time there could have been.

All I can tell you is I did the race just now.
I can't use Teds lines only because Ted and I pick lines differently
and I use Val 4 mode which means I can't use a line with over 7.5
Beaten lengths and Ted used a few

with my lines and beaten lengths I get the winner in my top 3
of my top 5 Total energy and Primary line score

But I probably would have bet the other two of these top 3
using my strategy

It would have been a loss

This is just one of those races were the adjustments RDSS makes
will miss I checked and ran the race in KGEN /Energy and entered the raw
pacelines
I get the same top 3 as RDSS but the winner is in the top 2

So if you missed this one I would not worry too much.As Ted says often the difference is just how a number is rounded up or down

Bill

[mrhug]

Thanks Bill
I did miss this race. The winner was not in my top 4. Thanks for working the first race with your strategies. I am going to start using them when running races through RDSS. I may have a question or 2 for you later as I work the races.
Thanks again
Melvin

[Dorianmode]

Mel,
Mr. Froggy's advice cannot be over-emphasized. I actually do as he says, but I keep my races in an Excel spreadsheet, as they can be sorted, and re-sorted any way I like, (by track, distance, ages, bla, bla, bla). But to be able to analyse what you are doing is very important, and will point you in the right direction.

The first thing I noticed is that you have WAY too many horses in your readout to make sense of it. The first thing you should do, in my humble opinion, if to figure out how to select your contenders, so that almost ALL the time, the winner is in your top 5 contenders. Then eliminate the rest, and go from there. There is a lot of good stuff about contender selection in the Follow Ups. I actually prefer to use 4, and then eliminate 1, so I am actually only looking at 3 horses for my final selection. This is exactly where Froggy's advice will point you in the right direction. And frankly there is a very simple way to do this right under your nose, but I will let your study reveal that to you. It's actually on that page you printed out above.

Next I think you should try what Ted was saying about hiding the favorite. They loose 2/3 of the time. If that is so, then THAT provides a lot of races to find value in other horses. In the race above, if you were to "dutch' the 2-1 combo, it would have provided about a 50% return on your wager, (which may or may not be acceptable to you, depending on your win percentage), it would be fine for me, AND there is NO particular reason to favor the favorite over the other two horses in this particular race, since it, (the favorite), did not "fit" my criteria for a winning horse, with a REAL advantage, in a route race. In fact, with the readout that you get with only three horses left, (8-2-1), I would have preferred the 2 and the 1, in this case, but record keeping will tell you what wins here, in these kinds of races, and it will simply "fall" out of your records. With the final three horses in the program, look at the races you used for entering the horses, and the pace lines for each. The first thing you see, is that the 1 stays in. So it comes down to, do you use the 2 or the 8 ? I picked the 2 because it fit my profile here. There are other things to consider in this situation, (ie does the favorite actually have an advantage, and will it likely win?). Here I think not. If I thought it WAS going to win, then there is another process I would use to "validate" the advantage it had, and either pass the race, (there are SO many other good races on any given day, there is no reason to mess with uncertainty, and more than winning, I HATE loosing), or if it's advantage WAS validated, I would do a one-horse bet. I know that's "heresy", but there are patterns of data, where you CAN validate the favorites "advantage" over the field, and make a positive ROI. Good luck. You CAN beat this game. Now if only the Vikings could figure out how to do their's. Oh well.

Oh, I forgot to say, I would get two other things if I were starting out here. 1. A book on statistics. I hated that subject until I saw it can make you lots of $$. 2. Go find one of the many good books on horse racing statistics, (such as CX Wong's "Precision, Statistical and Mathematical Methods in Horse Racing"). There are many other good web sites on racing stats, and books on Game Theory, with good stat info, also UNLV has great seminars on the math of gaming. I think you can do them on the web, but, it's fun to actually go too, if you have time.