[For The Lead]

As far as your “hossy” statement goes, for the very, very, very LARGE majority of people playing races are concerned, it’s GREAT ADVICE, since following it means you will always be “even” ( having never bet a race ), which is much better than losing.

Bill V makes a good point in his post. In the “old days” when one went to the track and the only money in the pool was that which was bet AT the track and there were no simulcasting outlets or online wagering, with 2 minutes before post time you had a good idea of what the final odds would be. Today, that is all changed.

Ok, favorites come in different varieties. We know that favorites, in general, win about 35% of all races, but is that all there is to know about favorites? No.

Mixed in with that 35% winning percentage are what is called “odds on” favorites. For those of you who may not know what that means, an “odds on” favorite is a favorite whose “off odds” are less than 1/1 (even money). These favorites win at a rate of about 52%, moreover, they represent about 50% of all favorites. THESE favorites can be identified, for the most part, with 2 minutes before post time regardless of the money that comes in from various outlets. Money coming in from those outlets will generally just worsen the situation!

Let’s take 100 favorites. We know we can expect 35 of them to win. However, since 50% of these favorites are odds on and 52% of them will win, that means 26 of those odds on favorites will win, so let’s just eliminate them for a moment and look at what is left.

So now that we have eliminated the odds on favorites, we now have the remaining 50 favorites to work with. We know from our original sample of 100 races, that we can expect 35 of those races to be won by the favorite. But now we have eliminated 26 of those winners because they came from the group of favorites that were odds on, that leaves us with just 9 winning favorites from the remaining 50 races. That means just 18% of these favorites win.

All of a sudden we have two groups of favorites.
GROUP A - wins 18% of races
GROUP B - wins 52% of races.
Which group of favorites do you want to bet against?

What about second choices?
60% of all second choices win where their odds are 5/2 or less.

So what does all this mean?
Your best wagering opportunities are in races where there is no “odds on” favorite and the second choice is greater than 5/2.