The past few weeks I have been busy traveling and working on other projects. Two weeks ago I was in Houston for the Bayou Bucket which my alma mater Rice lost to the University of Houston, 31-30.

Last week I was in Morgantown, West Virginia as part of their Economics Department seminar series. My gracious hosts were Russell Sobel and Matt Ryan. For ninety minutes of work I got to see the #5 Mountaineers crush a hopelessly overmatched squad from Eastern Washington.

We followed up the football game with a 17 race card at Wheeling Downs. I have played the dogs a few times at Southland Greyhound in West Memphis, mostly to take advantage of their dime superfectas (Southland was the second track to allow the small unit wager). From my limited experience, I have found that any success with the dogs involves extensive trip handicapping and thus access to replays. Therefore at Wheeling Downs, I was going to making stabs in the dark based on the same free program that everyone else had printed out. To augment my play I pooled money with Russ and followed what we dubbed the Dr. S system. Russ has a market efficiency paper in Applied Economics in which he uses data from Wheeling Downs (hand collected and entered into Lotus by co-author Travis Raines). We sifted through the data while re-hydrating after the football game, looking for plays where there had been a positive return. Russ' data includes about 2000 races from Wheeling - certainly too few to draw any serious conclusions, but we were looking to have fun and run some money through the machines without busting out chasing trifectas (as I am apt to do).

The Dr. S system we devised mainly involved playing the favorite and the longest shot on the board in a combination of the win, place, or show pools based on the race grade and race number. A few of the rules I remember include: Longshots fare well in race 2 and 3 and the last few races on the card; the longest shot on the board earns a positive return in grade B and C races; favorites are overbet in AA race and underbet in Maiden races. The Dr. S system was tricky to implement in real-time because the odds changed dramatically in the last few minutes (similar to my simulations involving the Dr. Z system). The pools at the track are very thin (perhaps as little as $2000 total in the win, place and show pools) and much of the money comes in late. The odds are irrelevant until a minute to post at which time I was scrambling to get our bets using the tote machine. Fortunately, lines were never a problem. In our section, there were three tellers who routinely had lines five or six deep which dissipated at one minute to post. No one but me used the two machines. We entered bets while we watched late odds changes and were never shut out.

Our  Dr. S system turned a $40 profit from a bankroll of $100 and approximately $350 of churn. We had doubled our bankroll after ten races thanks to two longshot winners ($33.20 and $26.40). We would have done better had we cut out our moronic quinella boxes of the top three favorites. We cashed this bet in only 3 of 17 races and when we did, it hardly paid. As a serious student of handicapping, I know systems are garbage and most of what we did was based on a way too little data to conclude any systematic biases, but it was fun and paid for drinks. Furthermore it was thoughtless and allowed me to imbibe liberally and not worry about alcohol affecting my handicapping. My own gambling was atrocious, but luckily I was too busy implementing the Dr. S system and watching the odds board to bet much myself.

My overall impressions of Wheeling Downs were positive. There was a decent crowd at the track and they were relatively young and new to parimutuel betting. They often were handicapping at the window and had little clue how to verbalize their bets to tellers. Despite the lines that resulted from this, everyone bet early and it was empty well before the dogs were loaded (except for me trying to key in my Dr. S system wagers). The tellers were assholes, probably the most ornery I have ever encountered. Perhaps they put enough pressure on the novices to come to the window prepared and everyone was better for it. Or maybe they chased off would be fans back to the endless rows of slot machines next door. The window is intimidating to new players and to be greeted by a smiling face and a good attitude would go a long way. (Note: I have been to 17 tracks and my interactions at the windows have previously always been positive). Right next to the track are two floors filled with slot machines and video poker … and they were packed. Wheeling Island has over 2,400 VLTs and I would guess that 50% of them had a patron at play. While I did not see much flow of traffic in and out of the dog racing side of the racino (the crowd was reasonable and did not grow or fall through the racecard), the dog players did hit the slots when the races ended. Perhaps this fact will keep parimutuel betting alive where it doesn't really do much for the bottom line. There was a simulcast facility in the slots area but it was tiny - enough to fit six stools, four small TVs and three tote machines. There were a three old men watching races independently and occasionally punching out tickets.   

All in all, it was a great trip. West Virginia is building an outstanding graduate program in Economics and Russ Sobel is playing a big role in their ascendancy. There was a vibe there that is contagious and I returned to Memphis with a renewed enthusiasm. Add to this a sold-out football game featuring a national championship contender and trip to the races and you have a perfect weekend.