Clearly, no one lacking inside information can win money in the long run betting on horse racing. The “House” take is much too big.
But, do the experts, in newspapers and tout sheets, at least do better than random guessing? Or do they do no better than would if they were redicting rolls of a roulette wheel.
"Common sense" would suggest that the horse racing experts'' knowledge would at least permit them to do better than random guessing.
But the same would *seem* true of *stock experts* ability to select specific stocks.But all evidence indicates that “stock experts” do no better than random guessing in predicting which stocks will outperform the market.
My Daddy could ‘handicap’. And He was good. He won more often than not. He tried to teach me some, I admit I went for the pretty names and jockey colors. I never won anything unless I bet on his horse.
Supposedly the person setting the morning odds on a race is at least as skilled at handicapping than the average punter. From there the odds are determined by the relative spread of bets on the horses, which relies on the collective wisdom of the betting pool (influenced, for many, on the betting up to that point).
Perhaps your opportunity to come out ahead is dependent on the people who like the color of the jockey’s silks as much as anything, since their betting is more likely to be contrary to any analysis of handicapping.
Sports betting, of which horse racing is a subset, is slightly different from investing in that the bookies are a profit-seeking entity themselves, whereas the generic market is merely an abstraction. So in setting the odds for sports bets, bookies will tend to make them such that they will make the most money, which means not giving as good odds on popular teams/players/horses that people are going to bet on regardless of the odds. Thus, assuming the vig is the same regardless of how the odds are distributed, there will be less popular teams that will potentially have better odds if you know what to look for. The question then becomes whether the differences are large enough such that you can make money in the long-term despite the vig. If there are successful professional sports betters out there, they probably don’t make themselves known though, seeing as no one likes to take bets from those that will on average make money for the better. In contrast, casinos are totally cool with people making a living at poker, since they’re not playing against the house.
I know you’re talking about picking winners, but the emergence of lay betting with betfair and other exchanges means that people do in fact win long term betting on horse racing, without any inside information. They’re just not sitting down picking winners the old-fashioned way. It’s not even necessary to know a great deal about horses, AFAICT, for sports trading - it’s understanding how the market works and how to exploit price movements.
Even for more traditional betting on the nags the ability to lay a horse off, or bet in-play, gives you options that didn’t used to exist for individual punters.
slight highjack but I don’t think this is true, exactly. For one thing you don’t have to predict which stock will outperform the market in order to make money. Day traders or short term traders, who might be called “stock experts” of some kind, seek opportunities of the moment and can do quite well without having to know which stocks are the long-term best.
Yes there are plenty of professional horse racing punters that have made money at it for years. Most do so by finding a mathematical edge. The thing that prevents most gamblers winning is poor money management. Check out Tasmanians David Walsh and Zeljko Ranogajec who made hundreds of millions around the world.
Just like anything else with betting, there are strategies one can take to help you win, it’s just a matter of mastering those strategies.
I remember my dad telling me that with horses the best thing to do is see which horse has recently jumped classes. A horse moving from higher (read: faster/more experienced class) to a lower (read: not as) class may have an edge because he’s technically stronger than the rest, just not as strong anymore. Same deal with another moving up, he might be faster than the slows, but not fast enough. Or he’s super fast and upcoming.
Therefore, you know that you shouldn’t bet on him, but you should bet on him.
It’s easy to find pieces of evidence that can be read both ways. And if you turn around and say that a real expert can tell which way to read it, then that real expert must be basing that decision on some other piece of evidence he’s not telling you about.