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The winning horse: was it the one whose owner bought him for $20,000, trained him himself, etc.
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Can anyone show me the payouts? My google-fu is apparently quite weak today (all I’m getting are hits from gambling sites).
Thanks!
I think he was bought for under $10 K.
As an aside, look at Annual Kentucky Derby Predictions - Freakonomics for the worst prediction of the year (read to the last line).
# Horse Jockey Weight Win Place Show
8 Mine That Bird Borel C H 126 103.20 54.00 25.80
16 Pioneerof the Nile Gomez G K 126 8.40 6.40
2 Musket Man Coa E M 126 12.00
ETA: Well, that sucks; apparently the Tab key is the same as sending your post, whether you are done or not. 
Not quite. MTB was sold as a yearling for 9500 to Canadian trainer David Cotey. After MTB won four stakes races in a row, and won a major Canadian racing award (I think the equivalent of Horse of the Year) in 2008, Cotey sold him for around $400,000. The four stakes races (in a row) he won that year made him Derby-eligible, a fact the trainer noted in the winners circle.
I don’t know much about horseracing, but I wonder how it’s possible for a horse to make up so much ground so quickly on a bunch of horses that are considered elite athletes. Here’s an overhead view of the finish (warning for annoying NBC ad that precedes it). In this video, Mine That Bird starts second-to-last, but he was dead last in the moment before it starts. He goes from about 15 lengths behind the leaders to six lengths ahead in about 30 seconds elapsed time.
With the Derby, none of the horses have ever run at that distance. They’re tired and slowing down (horses run slower at the end of the race – if it looks like they’re running faster than the others, it’s just because they aren’t slowing down quite as much). There are plenty of cases where a horse comes out of nowhere on the turn to win the race.
The horse you are talking about here is #12, General Quarters. He is owned and trained by Thomas McCarthy. Mr. McCarthy attempted to purchase him at auction, but he was outbid by another owner. General Quarters was placed in a maiden claiming race his first time out and Mr. McCarthy claimed GQ for $20,000. GQ finished 10th, much to my disappointment.
$2 Exacta (8-16) Paid $2,074.80
$2 Trifecta (8-16-2) Paid $41,500.60
$2 Superfecta (8-16-2-7) Paid $557,006.40
Credit the jockey for a lot of it. He found some very tight inside openings to shoot the horse through, coming up on the rail. I don’t follow racing either, but apparently Borel is well known for his ability to use such tactics. He made up ground on the inside from the back of the pack to win the Derby with “Street Sense” two years ago.
# Horse Jockey Weight Win Place Show
8 Mine That Bird Borel C H 126 103.20 54.00 25.80
16 Pioneerof the Nile Gomez G K 126 8.40 6.40
2 Musket Man Coa E M 126 12.00
Fixed it for you.
A dramatic finish, for sure. But in the final 30 seconds of that race, Forego made up about 7 lengths, whereas Mine That Bird gained about three times as much.
But surely they have trained for it many times, including some much longer runs to build endurance?
Both horses were in similar positions at the turn for home. Mine that Bird passed more horses simply because there were more horses in the race, and Mind That Bird was in a much better position at the top of the stretch than Forego (he took the lead almost as soon as they turned for home.
And I just came up with the most convenient example. There are others, especially once you go distances over a mile.
It’s hard to train for. Training is fine, but it’s not the same as actually running a race. Remember, too, that these are young horses; you don’t want to have them hurt by training at longer distances.
The horses that Mind that Bird blew by on the turn were the ones who didn’t have the stamina.
There was another factor: the condition of the track. It was listed as “sloppy” (though it looked more like “muddy” to me*). Because of that, the route was important. Mind that Bird stayed on the rail, and I heard someone say that the best footing was there. It also meant he didn’t have to run as far.
When he came to the turn, he was fresher since he didn’t have to fight the mud and ran a shorter race.
*“Sloppy” has standing water on the track; “muddy” means the water sinks in. Muddy is much harder to run on than sloppy, since the mud sticks to the hoofs and holds them back.
Terrific link - thanks!
I have been going to the races for 50 years and don’t recall any horse ever making up so much ground so quickly. And, for that matter, I can’t remember any horse doing so much ‘weaving’ in such a short interval (although in the absence of an overhead camera, it’s not that easy to appreciate). But Mine That Bird was like a corkscrew!! Amazing.
(BTW, on a “sloppy” track, come-from-behinders tend not to do well. They are getting muck in their face and noses the whole time and seem not to like that one bit. OTOH, front runners get no mud/slop in their faces in such track conditions so tend to do better - all IMHO, of course)
Well, it really looks to me that if you compare distance behind the leader 30 seconds before finish to distance ahead at the finish, Mine That Bird did more than twice what Forego managed. And surely his relative speed as he passes the leaders is much higher.
If a human were training for a 2-minute race, he’d do a lot of “LSD” - long, (relatively) slow distance training to build stamina. Do horse trainers not use a similar approach?
Probably not. Horses aren’t human (and don’t have the stamina). Running a mile and an eighth is a lot of strain on them and it takes time for them to recover. Even assuming they don’t get hurt, they can’t do it every day and be in condition on race day. You don’t want to leave the horse’s best effort on the training track.
In addition, the horses are usually busy running races in the months preceding the Derby. The entry rules make it necessary: horses who don’t win enough money, don’t make it into the race.* So you need to fit in the stretching out between running races, and a horse really isn’t ready to do much for a day or so after a race.
It can be done, of course – the best example was Bold Forbes, a sprinter (best at short distances) who was trained to win the Belmont (outside of steeplechases, the longest race in the US). And I’m sure the trainers are trying. But they can’t be sure the horse will have the same stamina in race conditions, and trying to duplicate race conditions in training can cause the horse to be hurt and not able to run.
And, again, the track conditions and how the horse ran are factors. You can train all you want, but if you’re running in sticky mud and someone else is running on a solid pavement (and had to run a shorter distance, to boot), he’s going to blow by you.
But for whatever reason, those horses Mine the Bird passed were all tired out, whereas Mine that Bird still had something left.
*The Derby has a firm limit of 20 entries (a pretty high number as it is). If there are more entrants, the ones with the least amount of winnings don’t make the start.
Wait, I must be missing something. Wouldn’t it cost less than the payout on all 3 of those bets to buy a $2 ticket for all possible combinations? The Superfecta, with 20 entrants, has 20x19x18x17=116,280 possible permutations, yes? Times $2 = $232,560.00 Surely I must be failing at probability somehow…
No, you’re not missing anything.
Here’s a simpler example. Suppose there are five horses in a race with odds of 2-1, 5-2, 3-1, 7-2, and 20-1. It would cost only $10 to bet $2 on each of the five. You would have a net loss if any horse other than the one at 20-1 won. However, should the 20-1 shot win, you’d have a net profit (of $30; actually of $32 since the odds above don’t include the amount of your winning bet also being paid to you).
Likewise, in a daily double (as an another example), if there are, say, eight horses in each race, then there are 64 possible combinations of the two consecutive race winners. So, it would cost $128 to make a $2 bet on each. If the daily double pays more than $128, you’d be a net winner. Note, though, that not only is a lower payoff price for the DD probably more likely, but that many of the payoffs over $128, the ones making you a net winner, are going to be only minimally more than $128, perhaps $130. You’d have made $2 net on a bet of $128. Horrible odds.
Bottom line is that it can definitely be the case that the payout on a bet is more than you would have had to bet to cover all possible winners and/or winning combinations. It just doesn’t happen all that often (but it’s not rare by any means) and when it does, many of the payoffs that are above your break even point, are just barely above it (as in the example above).
Not really. If you make a habit of buying all possible superfecta tickets, you’ll receive a payout every race. When the favorites do well, that payout will be shared with other winners and you’ll be a net loser. When a serious longshot finishes well, the number of other bettors with a winning ticket will be small, and you may well come out ahead.
ETA: beaten by K. Gauss.
Betting on horses is different than betting on dice. It’s more like the lottery. All of the bets for a given type of wager are pooled together. Then the house takes its cut and redistributes the money to the winners. So in a race like this year’s Derby, where a long-shot wins, the payout is going to be huge.
On the other hand, if the race entrants were a trio of four legged healthy horses and 7 nags stolen from the glue factory, the trifecta payout would be something south* of 5-1 ($6 on a $1 bet) because everybody knows those three horses that can actually run are going to win, and the only question is what order they’ll place in.
Here’s a link that explains. How are Trifecta and Superfecta payouts calculated? Also, the Wizard of Odds.
- Something south of because there might be a good reason to think horse A will win, and more people bet that horse to win. Also, there’s the house’s cut to take into account. The takeaway ranges from 17 to 30%. (That is, the house skims 17-30% off the top before calculating payouts.)
I would take issue with the bolded statement, but I agree with your other points.
A horse race is not like a lottery, unless the player wishes it to be. In a lottery, you buy a random ticket, or you pick your numbers. Any ticket, or series of numbers, has as much chance of winning as any other before the draw. Similarly, someone who wants to play a horse race can make selections based on, say, the name of a horse, or the colours of the jockey’s silks, or a series of numbers: “I’ll take 2 and 4 and 6 and 8,” for example. There need be no particular reason to select one horse over another, much like there is no particular reason to select one number over another. (At some tracks I’ve been to, players can buy a “quick pick” tri or superfecta, just like buying a “quick pick” lottery ticket.) Played this way, every horse seems to as much chance as any other.
But in actuality, every horse doesn’t. Some horses are too good for this race, others aren’t good enough. The horse’s racing history, plus other factors such as a track bias, affect how more knowledgeable horseplayers make and play their selections. Such players aren’t always correct, and the pros’ success rate can be tracked through the Daily Racing Form; but the important thing is that for these folks, and many amateurs, playing horses is about as far from playing a lottery as one can get. These folks analyze past performances and results in order to make an educated guess as to the race winner(s), which cannot be done with random numbers, dice, or well-shuffled cards.
And no matter how much analyzing the handicapper does, upsets such as Mine The Bird accomplished can still happen. (It should be noted that, as far as I can tell from my experience, favorites win about one-third of the time, near-favorites win about a third of the time, and surprises win about one-third of the time.) When the educated handicappers’ money is on the favorite or near-favorite, and the “pick a number, color, or name” horseplayers have money on the longshot, it can indeed seem like a lottery. But I still wouldn’t say that it is a lottery.
It’s more like the lottery in that it’s a parimutuelgame. So the payout depends on how many other people bet and isn’t fixed ahead of time by either party. In the example of the superfecta above, there are indeed only 116,280 possible outcomes. However, each of those 116,280 outcomes has a different payout depending on how many other people made that exact wager.
The odds in horse racing are a pooling of all the hunches of people making the bets, and don’t reflect the actual probability of a horse winning. Of course, with all those handicappers poring over racing forms, the odds at the track aren’t random. They represent the aggregate of the “best guesses” of the people betting. There’s a statistic that the favorite wins around a third of the time, which is usually cited as being an example of the wisdom of crowds. Of course, it’s crowds of punters, so how wise can they be? 
Another example of this phenomenon is InTrade.