Q: Can you explain betting at the Kentucky Derby or simply horse racing? What does it mean to”go off” at 10-1 odds or become a 33-1 long shot?
Ed, of Shiloh
A: Allow me to break this response into two parts — the what and the how — so if I begin burying you with too much information (as I occasionally do) you hopefully will have a working understanding of these amounts.
What it means is easy. The chances — 10 to 1, for instance — are merely a ratio or comparison of two numbers. The first number is the total amount of money you will win if the horse does what you think it will. The next number is the sum you need to bet to win the very first number.So, let’s take your 10-1 instance. What it means is that you’ll get $10 in winnings for every dollar you bet on that horse when it wins. Consequently, if you put a standard $2 bet, you will walk off with $22 — $20 in winnings (two times 10) plus the yield of your original $2. Similarly, if you’re feeling as frisky as a colt and bet $100 on a horse with 33-1 odds, you’ll scoop up $3,400 (33 times 100 in winnings plus your first $100). If a horse gets 5-3 odds and you bet $30, then you will take home $80 (10 times 5 and the original $30). That’s all there’s to it.
Now comes the trickier part: How is this stuff figured? Why are a few horses given nearly even odds — state, 3-to-2 — while others may start a race (“go off”) in 50-to-1? It’s all of the result of pari-mutuel betting, which is the type of wagering utilized in many horse racing.
Pari-mutuel is just a high-falutin’ French expression that means”mutual stake.” In golf, as an instance, players battle each other for a pot of cash provided by a host. However, when you bet on the ponies, you’re fighting for part of a pool of money that has been wagered by each one of the other bettors like yourself. You have a mutual stake in it as it were.
A few things should become obvious immediately. The further that bettors prefer Horse A, the more money they’re likely to wager on it. As a result, they are saying the odds are great it will win. But it also means those gamblers will acquire less per dollar bet because you have to divide the total pool of money among a great deal of individuals. Conversely, if few men and women are gambling on Horse B, they will take home a much larger stack of cash in case their horse wins because far fewer people will have a claim to that same pool of money.
And to make things more interesting, these odds can keep changing in the days leading up to a race. As horse pros learn more about the many factors that go in their decision — the background of their horses and jockeys, injury rumors, weather prediction, etc. — they may start hedging their bets and start laying down money on other entrances, thus altering the amounts.
Now let me give you an oversimplified example of the way the chances are figured. Let us say that year’s Kentucky Derby was a three-horse race between Fleet o’ Foot, Not So Quick and Beetlebaum. Now, let’s say people bought a total of $1,000 on these three steeds — $500 on Fleet, $300 on Quick and $200 on Beetlebaum. Here’s what could happen:
To begin with, the people accepting the bets would take their talk off the top because their fee for providing the support — usually 10 percent to 20 percent. Let’s say it is 10 percent. That leaves $900 as the payout to be divided among the winning bettors depending on the race’s outcome.
Today we have to figure what they will win. This is the formula: The odds for each horse have been calculated by subtracting the total amount bet on that horse from the accessible payout and dividing the result by the amount bet on that horse. Therefore for Fleet o’ Foot, you would first subtract 500 from 900 to get 400 and then divide by 500. The resulting odds are 4-to-5, meaning for every dollar you wager, you would win 80 cents plus your initial dollar back should Fleet wins.
Similarly, Not So Quick’s chances will be 2-to-1 (900 minus 300 divided by 300) while Beetlebaum would go off at 7-to-2 (900 minus 200 divided by 200). So the less favored a horse is, the worse (or”more”) its chances and the greater its payout because theoretically you’re assuming more risk if you gamble on it.
Real life, of course, is not that easy. This year’s Kentucky Derby had 20 horses and the overall wagers of $139.2 million shattered the previous record of $137.9 million in 2015. Always Dreaming wound up paying $11.40 on a $1 bet to win.
Bettors also bet on a lot more than simply wins. In North Americathere are”place” bets that pay if a horse places second or first. (In the Derby, Lookin at Lee paid $26.60 completing second.) Additionally, there are”series” bets that pay if a horses finishes in the top three (Battle of Midway compensated $20.80). If you feel you have a lot of horse sense, you can gamble your cash on perfectas, trifectas and superfectas, where you try to forecast the exact order of finish to the first two, three or even four horses in a race. And so on.
As you may expect, as these stakes get ever more exotic, the calculations become more and more complex although the core principle is the same. Thank goodness modern computers can figure out it at a gallop.
TODAY’S TRIVIA
Which Kentucky Derby winner had the longest odds ever?
Response to Sunday’s trivia: As of January, 31 states still can inflict the death penalty. Four others now have governors that have set a moratorium on its use. Each of 31 use lethal injection as their major means of implementation but nine can utilize electrocution, six may utilize the gas chamber, three can use hanging and three can utilize the firing squad, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
More numbers to consider: Since 1976, there have been 1,453 executions, reaching a peak of 98 in 1999. This past year, the United States watched 30 sentenced to death and 20 — in five countries — were implemented. As of Oct. 1, there were 2,902 offenders on death row (54 women). Since 1973, there were 157 death-row exonerations. Former Gov. Pat Quinn abolished Illinois’ death penalty in March 2011.
Read more here: http://magesavvy.com/ocean-casinos-william-hill-sportsbook-has-the-big-time-sportsbook-feel-of-vegas/