Watching Shark Tales, my sons asked about the odds comments and we reached a question I didn’t know the answer to: in real life, what horse won against the biggest odds?
Interesting question; here are some starting points
The 5 longest odds winners of the Grand National all paid 100 to 1.
Arcangues won the 1993 Breeders Cup Classic paying 134.6 to 1.
I’m not aware of any horses that paid out more than Arcangues (but I’m no expert).
Not the highest, but the highest at the Kentucky Derby. 1913. 91-1.
According to the American Racing Manual, the record is $2922 on a two-dollar bet (odds of 1450:1) by Power to Geaux at Aksarben on Dec. 8, 1989.
Prior to that, it was $1,885.50, on Wishing Ring at Latonia in Kentucky on June 17, 1912.
OK, I thought I understood parimutual betting, but I just looked up Power to Geaux’s win and found this text:
So: if someone else had bought, say, a $10 win for Power to Geaux, what would have happened?
Well, from the numbers, it looks like $2922 was the entire betting pool (after the track took its cut and ignoring breakage*). With an additional $10 bet, there would have been $2922 in the pool and $12 bet on the horse to win. You would subtract the $12 from the betting pool (it gets returned to the winning bettors). Thus the calculation would be $2910/12 = $242.5. The horse would then pay twice that for a $2 bet, plus the two dollars they get back – $487.00. The $2 bettor would get $487, and the $10 bettor would get 2445.00.
*Tracks round down calculations to the nearest ten cents.
Bit anecdotal this, as I cannae recall all the details and I just read a snippet about it in the paper, but I believe there was a recent winner in the UK at upwards of 1000-1 on the exchanges.
Betting has changed beyond recognition now with the advent of online betting exchanges, which allow you to act as your own bookmaker and also to offer bets during the course of events such as horse races. Anyhow, one race featured a fallen horse ridden by AP McCoy - someone then offers the horse at ridiculous odds like 2000-1, and a couple of mugs throw a few quid on it. McCoy then remounts to win the race! (I think there must have been other fallers). The guy didn’t get cleaned out too badly as it was only a small stake wagered.
That was Family Business, and it was laid at 999/1 (1000 in decimal odds) to £4, 1000 being the maximum odds on Betfair. See story number 1 here
I know (via the Betfair forum) a guy that won over £100,000 on a horse that was wrongly called as a faller by the TV commentator. Someone laid it at the maximum odds (999/1) thinking it was out of the race but it went on to win.
Gambling being what it is, said punter has since lost the lot, with interest. :dubious:
Another 999/1 winner was Pangbourne after the jockey of the leading horse fell off yards from the line.
They allow bets to be made after the horses go off?
If both the person making and the person taking the bet are happy, why not?
Maybe, but the person taking the bet is a fool.
Why, Reality Chuck? You can bet ‘in-play’ on pretty much all kinds of sporting event in the UK, it’s no big deal.
It’s unheard of in North America, for horse racing at least. I don’t know about other sports (baseball, basketball, football, hockey), but once the horses start, the windows close. Bettors still in line are shut out from betting on that race.
Mind, we don’t have as large as culture of private, set-their-own-odds (i.e. non-tote) bookmakers as the UK does, so maybe that has something to do with it. Still, I’d imagine that the few legal private books there are, as in Las Vegas, don’t allow wagers to be placed once the horses start.
This has got to be up there as your answer.
A quick digression on the mechanics of parimutuel betting. Because bettors want to know the odds in real time a system had to be developed to record and display the total pool of bets and each horse’s current odds. In the pre-electronic age an enterprising Australian invented and installed enormous mechanical devices to calculate the odds in real time from numerous betting windows. By 1930 the totalisator installed at Longchamp could handle 42 runners in an event and take bets from 300 ticket windows simultaneously. Here’s a fascinating little piece on Australian Totalisator Limited and a more detailed article on their first installation in 1913.
You can make halftime bets on football.
And last time I was in Vegas at the Mirage, they were taking bets between quarters of a playoff basketball game. Not completely “in-play”, but pretty close.