Q: Can you describe betting in general at just horse racing or the Kentucky Derby? 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 answer into two parts — the what and the how — so if I begin burying you with too much info (as I sometimes do) you hopefully will have a working understanding of the amounts.
What it signifies is simple. 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 exactly what you think it will. The second number is the amount you want to wager to win the very first number.So, let’s choose your 10-1 example. What it means is you will get $10 in winnings for every dollar you wager on that horse when it wins. So, if you put a standard $2 bet, you will walk away with $22 — $20 in winnings (2 times 10) plus the return of your original $2. Similarly, if you’re feeling as frisky as a colt and bet $100 to a horse with 33-1 odds, you are going to scoop up $3,400 (33 times 100 in winnings plus your first $100). If a horse has 5-3 odds and you bet $30, then you will take home $80 (10 times 5 and the original $30). That’s all there is to it.
Now comes the trickier part: How is all this stuff figured? Why are some horses given almost even chances — state, 3-to-2 — while others may begin a race (“go off”) at 50-to-1? It’s all the result of pari-mutuel betting, which is the kind of wagering used in many horse racing.
Pari-mutuel is merely a high-falutin’ French expression that means”mutual stake.” In golf, as an example, players battle each other for a pot of cash offered by a sponsor. However, when you bet on the ponies, you are fighting part of a pool of money that’s been wagered by each one the other bettors like yourself. You have a mutual stake in it as it were.
A couple of things should become evident immediately. The more that bettors favor Horse A, the more money they are likely to bet on it. Because of this, they’re saying the chances are great it is going to win. But it also means that those gamblers will win less per dollar bet because you need to split the entire pool of cash among a whole lot of people. Conversely, if few people are gambling on Horse B, then they’ll take home a much larger pile of money in case their horse wins because far fewer people will have a claim to that exact same pool of cash.
And to make matters more interesting, these chances can keep changing in the days leading up to a race. As horse experts find out more about the many factors that go in their decision — the history of the horses and jockeys, injury rumors, weather prediction, etc. — they may start hedging their bets and begin laying down money on other entries, thereby altering the amounts.
Now allow me to give you an oversimplified example of how the odds are guessed. Let’s state that year’s Kentucky Derby was a three-horse race between Fleet o’ Foot, Not So Fast and Beetlebaum. Now, let us say people bought a total of $1,000 on those 3 steeds — $500 on Fleet, $300 on Quick and $200 on Beetlebaum. Here Is 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 since the payout to be split among the winning bettors based on the race’s outcome.
Today we have to figure out what they will win. This is the formula: The odds for each horse are calculated by subtracting the total amount bet on that horse by the available 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 receive 400 and then split by 500. The resulting odds are 4-to-5, meaning for every dollar you bet, you would win 80 cents plus your initial buck back if Fleet wins.
Similarly, Not So Fast’s chances would be 2-to-1 (900 minus 300 divided by 300) while Beetlebaum goes off at 7-to-2 (900 minus 200 divided by 200). So the less favored a horse is, the worse (or”longer”) its chances and the higher its payout because theoretically you are assuming more risk if you bet on it.
Real life, of course, isn’t that simple. This year’s Kentucky Derby had 20 horses and the total wagers of $139.2 million shattered the previous record of $137.9 million in 2015. Always Dreaming wound up spending $11.40 on a $1 wager to win.
Bettors also wager on a lot more than simply wins. In North Americathere are”place” bets that cover if a horse places second or first. (In the Derby, Lookin at Lee paid $26.60 finishing second.) There are also”show” bets that cover if a horses finishes in the top three (Battle of Midway compensated $20.80). If you think you have a lot of horse sense, you can risk your money on perfectas, trifectas and superfectas, where you try to forecast the exact order of finish to the first two, three or four horses at a race. And so on.
As you might expect, as these bets get ever more exotic, the calculations become increasingly complicated though the core principle is exactly the same. Thank goodness modern computers can figure it all out at a gallop.
TODAY’S TRIVIA
Which Kentucky Derby winner had the longest odds ever?
Answer to Sunday’s trivia: As of January, 31 states still can inflict the death penalty. Four others now have governors who have set a moratorium on its use. All 31 use lethal injection as their primary means of implementation but nine can use electrocution, six can utilize the gas chamber, three could use three and hanging could utilize the firing squad, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
More numbers to think about: Since 1976, there have been 1,453 executions, attaining a peak of 98 in 1999. Last year, the United States saw 30 sentenced to death and 20 — all in five countries — were executed. As of Oct. 1, there were 2,902 prisoners on death row (54 women). Since 1973, there have been 157 death-row exonerations. Former Gov. Pat Quinn abolished Illinois’ death penalty in March 2011.
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