Horse Racing Made Easy
This article discusses the strategy in actual horse racing. We know that it relatively simple to compute odds for a horse race between a couple of horses and a few bettors, but what happens when there are many more horses and many more bettors? What is a good strategy for the amateur gambler to win?
Heather Harmon of Gaming Post tells us that real life horse racing is not very different to the idealized model learned in an intro to Networks class. While there are more horses, 12 for example, you can still calculate the odds using the inverse equilibrium method. While there are more bettors, the betting strategy remains the same. You should “bet your belief,” meaning that you should bet according to the chances you assign a horse to win.
The difficulty in real life horse race betting is deciding how to assign chances to a given horse. Harmon offers a few tips to determine how to do this. She says that a small bet is likely to leave the odds unaffected, so if you truly don’t know anything about horse racing, you should bet with the existing odds. There will be a smaller payoff, but you are more likely to win. Additionally, Harmon tells us that top horses and top jockies win more than 90% of the time in more well-known races. One can also talk to other people and listen to experts who they think will win.
It can be inferred that there is really no way to accurately assign a true probability of winning to any given horse. However, the dominant strategy is betting for amateurs is to bet the existing odds. You are most likely to at least recover your money and you gain utility by participating in the festivities of horse race betting. While it’s tough to assign a tangible value to utility, most economists consider it to be important in rational decision making. Maximizing utility maximizes the wealth of the experience, and for amateur bettors, this is important.
http://www.gamingpost.ca/canadian-casino-news/how-to-get-the-most-out-of-your-race-track-visit/