Quote:
Originally Posted by classhandicapper
In general I try to keep my best size as flat as possible to avoid mistakes. Typically, I bet one horse to win. However, sometimes when I really dislike a favorite and don't feel that I have a firm grip on the chances of each of the real contenders, I'll bet 2 or even 3 horses to win.
In the latter instance, a thing that's been bothering me for years is not knowing whether I am better off betting my usual unit on each horse I like or dividing the unit into 2 or 3 and putting the usual unit into the race in total.
If I bet my usual unit on each horse I feel like I may be putting more money into a race than I am comfortable with. But if I divide by 2 or 3 I feel like I'm not staying true my my flat betting and not having enough money on some of my potentially most lucrative opinions.
Any thoughts?
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Hi CH,
Gambling math authority William Ziemba has stated that it's best to keep the sum of your bets within the limits of Kelly, which would translate for a flat-bet player to having all bets sum to your flat-bet amount or maybe a bit higher. If you flat-bet 2%, maybe you can go to 3% for three horses. However, I agree with much that Mike said about this. Very, very, few races have three overlaid horses. Possibly what Dick Mitchell described as a 'contentious' race, one with a high proportion of contenders, can be bet this way, but even then, you would really need for all your bets to be above 7-1 or so.
I don't want to stir the pot, given the current atmosphere on the site, but I think it bears saying - there is no mathematical reason for betting two horse per race. This was Doc Sartin's psychological ploy to enhance the self-esteem of players who wanted to feel like winners. In the 80s and 90s, this created few problems - if you read the Mark Cramer's piece you can see why this was so, good mutuels were much easier to come by - but those days are gone. As Andy Beyer has said, the game used to be like sharks playing against fish, now it's like sharks playing against sharks. This is why, as Mike says, you shouldn't blindly cover the favorite, if the numbers tell you it's legitimate.
Cheers,
B Jennet