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4+30 Play
By Ed Bain
From the Sept 1999 issue:
To wager on five or more tracks, you must be organized to quickly spot up contenders. The reason for this is to reduce
the amount of time handicapping. Identifying high percentage layoff and claiming trainers of four wins or more plus a 30% hit rate or higher allows a quick and easy method to find value.
If you are a speed handicapper, playing five or more tracks may be impossible for you, time wise. The horse-by-horse, race by race style needed for speed handicapping is time consuming. Many speed handicappers spend three or four hours reviewing one race card. Handicapping five race cards may not be an option for speed players. The saying is If 24 hours in a day is not enough time to complete your work, then you just have to work overtime. You make all that effort and at race time everyone in every grandstand across the country has found the same speed horse and the horse ends up an underlay and you have to pass the bet.
Wagering on layoffs and claims also produces some of the same problems with value.
The difference is you can identify the race quickly and pass based on the morning line odds. For the month of August, using the 4 Plus 30 Play, there were 307 contenders with 26 race days with an average of 12 plays per day. This is what the monthly statistics look like:
Race Days 26
Plays 307
Plays Per Day 12
Win 67 22%
Place 131 43%
Show 175 57%
Out 132
Win Mutuel $8.21
Place Mutuel $4.67
Show Mutuel $3.43
Win Gross $550.30
Place Gross $611.70
Show Gross $600.2
If you are going to invest in the 4 Plus 30 Play, you have to have a way of eliminating the automatic losers.
I went inside the numbers for August and tracked five factors:
Off tracks
Horses race record for the distance
Four wins
Repeaters
Odds
OFF TRACKS: When the track comes
up muddy or sloppy, the trainer has to make a decision. You could ask him Are you going to run your horse today?, he may say Well, should I leave his race on the track or should I leave his race in the
barn? He almost always leaves his race on the track. For August, twenty-nine horses raced on an off track.
Three won (10%), eleven placed (38%), and fourteen showed (48%). Win, place, show, and across the board bets produced a flat bet loss.
CONCLUSION: Consult L. Tomlinson’s Mudders and Turfers. I use
Lee’s pedigree statistics the same way I use my Layoff and Claim statistics. I place bets only on the very best. For August, I passed all 29 muddy or sloppy opportunities.
RACE RECORD: Common sense can
go a long way in racing.
A trainer qualifies as a contender based on four wins or more plus a 30% hit rate or higher. If the horse is one win for twelve at this distance, what do you do, bet the race or pass? The answer is, pass the win bet. If he is six for twelve for second, make a place bet only. I counted two statistics on the horse’s race record. If his race record for this distance was zero for five and above, and one for ten and above, I eliminate all of those horses that had poor race records. Of the 307 contenders, fourteen qualified as throw outs. They produced one win, two places, and three shows from the fourteen starters. CONCLUSION: If the trainer has a big layoff or claim statistic and the horse doesn’t like to win, don’t place the bet. For August, I passed all fourteen.
FOUR WINS: Small start trainers are one of the more interesting categories. The reason I start at four wins is what I call the squeeze play for Lay 2 and Lay 3 and Claim 2 and Claim 3.
I like to see more starts on either side and then squeeze a win out of the middle statistic. However, I keep the bet to four wins and ten starts or under. If they have four wins but with eleven, twelve, or thirteen starts, I pass. In this sample there are four wins and up to thirteen starts. From the 307 contenders, 45 qualify for a bet. Six won (13%), eleven placed (24%), and twenty-two showed (49%). All bets showed a flat bet loss. CONCLUSION: Be selective and be disciplined. Wait for the squeeze on Lay 2 and Lay 3 and Claim 2 and Claim 3.
REPEATERS: The question is, How often do horses repeat? and Is there value in playing repeaters? Of the 307 contenders, 52 were eligible for the repeat. These are the statistics:
Win 12 23%
Place 23 44%
Show 29 56%
Out 23
Win Mutuel $8.04
Place Mutuel $4.02
Show Mutuel $3.17
CONCLUSION: Win, place, show and across the board bets produced losses in every
category. However, if you passed all the even money horses and under, you would have passed nine bets, and two would have won. Then repeaters would have been profitable for August.
ODDS: Of the 307
contenders, 70 were the favorite or 22%. This was an above average percentage for August. These are the statistics for the 70 favorites:
Favorites 70
Win 24 34%
Place 43 61%
Show 50 71%
Out 20
Win Mutuel $4.45
Place Mutuel $2.96
Show Mutuel $2.46
As you can see, the problem with the favorites is the 34% win rate with a $4.45 payout.
The 34% win rate is a 9/5 shot when converted to odds and has a payout of $5.80. However the $4.45 payout is a 6/5 shot when converted to odds. The percentage on 6/5 is a 45% win rate. This is why favorites are bad bets. They are classic underlays. A 34% win rate, a 45% payout rate.
For the 4 Plus 30 Play you have to go to the trainers win percent and compare that with his odds at post time. If he is the favorite, then only make the bet when the percentage is on your side.
Conclusion of the 4 Plus 30 Play: Off tracks, the horses race record, and all even money and under horses in the four win category should be passed. This accounts for 52 passed races from the 307 contenders. This is what the adjusted totals look like:
Contenders 255
Win 61 24%
Place 125 49%
Show 169 66%
Out 80
Win Mutuel $8.38
Place Mutuel $4.33
Show Mutuel $3.17
Win betting showed a slight profit. Bet
$2.00 on all 255 contenders, you would have invested $510 and you would have received back $511.30. This would have showed a profit of $1.30.
On the place bet, invest $2.00 on all 255 place bets. You invest $510 and that would have returned $542.40, a profit of $32.40, $2.12 on each. For show, bet $2.00 on all 255 show bets, invest $510, and would have returned $536.30 and show a profit of $26.30 and $2.10 on the 255 show bets.
I once read this story:
One winter night during one of the many German air raids on Moscow in World War II, a distinguished soviet professor of statistics showed up in his local air-raid shelter. He had never appeared there before. There are seven million people in Moscow he used to say. Why should I expect them to hit me? His friends were astonished to see him and asked what had happened to change his mind. Look he explained There are seven million people in Moscow and one elephant. Last night they got the elephant. Horseplayers like myself assemble reams of statistics precisely because they need that information in order to reach judgments about the capabilities of the trainers. But real life betting situations determine the probability of an outcome before an event occurs. The quality of this information forms a basis of all my wagers. Just as the professor determined the quality of his information denoted that he should go to the air raid shelter.
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