Mutuel Feeling: Pop Quiz

Put your knowledge of courageous wagering to the test

This courageous-wagering series continues into 2018, but not with a clutter of figures and speculation. Next year the heart of the matter becomes a far simpler approach, as we reduce the surplus of data commonly relied upon by handicappers and bettors into a quick and easy process.

It isn’t a hack-handicapper’s gimmick or a random point system, mind you; it’s a method. If you have been following this series you know that courageous wagering firmly depends upon mathematics that encourage earning profits above all other reasons to participate. Anyone making that commitment alone and who can deal with playing pari-mutuels in an orderly, logical arrangement is eligible. However, the emotional investment is great and once the arrangement goes into gear, the bravery to follow through must include entrenched trust because that is what will define financial rewards.

Quiz Time

This year’s final installment in the series will act as a quick quiz on courageous wagering approaches to races, like those we used in the previous two issues. Here the emphasis is not on the amounts invested or the results of those actions; it’s about what decision you make to wager in the role of the bettor (remember, successful betting depends on decisions, not selections), if you decide to bet at all.

If you do well with this quiz, then you have absorbed much from the columns in the series so far and should be able to move on with little trouble and, hopefully, embrace the beauty of the method’s simplicity and follow the series in 2018 in order to graduate and become a smarter and more productive pari-mutuel player.

Each quiz question offers two to four contenders, that is, horses given personal odds up to 6-1 by the handicapper (Personal Odds). The remainder of the fields in the quiz races, however many are left, are not listed, of course, since the bettor is never going to address wagering upon any contender his or her odds line makes higher than 6-1.

The second column of odds represents those locked into place on the toteboard odds as the betting period ends. All you have to do is identify which horse becomes the courageous wager. If there is no wager (no edge in the comparison between the personal odds and the toteboard’s odds), the answer is “pass the race.” These examples are not specifically designed for the quiz; they are taken from actual races and lines my “bettor” faced in 2017.

This quiz is a sample of how your roles as the handicapper/accountant/bettor join forces to invest smartly in pari-mutuels.

10 points for each correct answer.

Happy New Year and please don’t miss an issue in 2018 as the courageous wagering series continues to shatter the traditional behavior of playing pari-mutuels in order to make it profitable, more fun and easier to share with a curious novice.

by Frank Cotolo

To See more from the December 2017 issue of Hoof Beats, click here.