Saratoga and Northlands Parks are two tracks at the opposite ends of racing hierarchy. While Saratoga is for wealthy horsemen, elite trainers, and horseplayers around the world, most people have no idea where Northlands Park is (Edmonton). Northlands runs cheap claimers and Alberta-breds around a five furlong bullring. Saratoga had a $48,592 carryover entering Monday's card and Northlands had a $7,201 carryover for Sunday's card. Which was the better play?

Saratoga
Minimum: $2
Carryover: $48,592
Pool Size: $245,368
Takeout: 26%

$245,368 was bet in and $230,164 was returned to bettors.

Effective Takeout: 6.2% - still a negative expected return.

The Pick 6 was hit for $26,393 which was just slightly better than the parlay value of $25,822.

Northlands Park
Minimum: $1
Carryover: $7,201
Pool Size: $5,314
Takeout 24.8%

$5,314 was bet in and $11,197 was returned to bettors

Edge: 110.7% !!!

The Pick 6 was hit for $10,023, five times greater than the parlay value of $1,918.

The caveat is that your upside is limited at Northlands as a result of the small pool. At Saratoga you could have a six figure payday but at Northlands the most the winner could take home was the whole pool (which someone did). For me Northlands made more sense to play than Saratoga. Unfortunately all I had to show for it was three consolations.

... and I couldn't be happier. I upgraded my Dish Network service to get the Racetrack Television Network. RTN is 80 channels devoted to live feeds from thoroughbred, harness, quarterhorse, and greyhound tracks across North America. My 40" LCD TV was bought with Youbet.com advantage points so it only make sense to convert my den to a personal OTB.

I'm a degenerate. I'm putting the final touches on a Pick 6 play at Northlands Park, a 5/8 mile bullring in Edmonton. There is a $7k carryover that'll get light action and only 40 horses in the six horse sequence. I get a 10% rebate on Northlands so it will be a solid positive expectations play.

In past few months I've played Pick 6s at Beulah, Indiana, and now Northlands. It won't be long before I'm betting the trisuper at Southland Greyhound across the river.

The ten first day winners ran their last race at seven different tracks - Aqueduct, Belmont (2), Churchill (2), Delaware, Finger Lakes, Monmouth, and Suffolk. (Silvislip in the 7th was a firster).

A few weeks ago the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association (TOBA) released a study in advance of the much anticipated Equine Injury Database initial analysis conducted by Dr. Tim Parkin.

The TOBA study looks at the percentage of starters that never raced again after not finishing their last start (career ending did not finish or CEDNF). While not all horses that fall into this category may have actually suffered a career ending injury, there is no reason to think that the proportion of CEDNFs that resulted from injuries would be any different across surfaces so it is a reasonable measure on which to base a study.

Equibase President Hank Zeitlin stated “This data was organized by certain criteria without interpretation...This data set was provided to TOBA for its internal use and was not professionally evaluated for statistical significance.” 

Fortunately, it doesn't take a professional to test whether CEDNFs are statistically different between dirt and all-weather surfaces. Any basic statistics course should cover tests of two population proportions.

The 95% confidence interval for a population proportion is pbar ± 1.96*sqrt((pbar*(1-pbar))/n) where pbar is %CEDNF and n is the number of starts.

The results show that there is a statistically significant difference between CEDNF for dirt and all-weather surfaces (see table below). This is in contrast to the findings on breakdowns from the Equine Injury Database (no signficant difference between surfaces). 

Does this mean synthetic surfaces are safer? NO 

None of these studies controls for enough variables that impact injury. The most notable bias results from the age difference between dirt and synthetic surfaces. The oldest all-weather surface in the U.S. is Turfway Park at 5 years old. When was the last time Saratoga or Pimlico was resurfaced? You can't compare a dirt track with a 30 year old base to a new synthetic surface. It may just be that if Turfway had rolled out a new dirt surface that fatalities would've been reduced even more. Furthermore there are variations in weather conditions, racing population, medications, and prerace vet checks that should be accounted for. Truxton had a horse that could not get cleared by the vet at Presque Isle but would've likely been able to race at almost any other track in the country.

At some point the Equine Injury database is going show a significant difference in breakdowns between dirt and all-weather surfaced. Don't believe for a second that this means that synthetic surfaces are safer. The results of these studies are meaningless and a waste of industry resources.

Sunday, November 21 2:00 - 3:45 p.m. Southern Economic Association	Economic Issues in the Equine Industry
Organizers:	Jill Stowe, University of Kentucky
Session Chairs:	Jill Stowe, University of Kentucky
Papers:	"The Impact of Stochastic Reproduction Efficiency on Thoroughbred Broodmare Economic Returns" Karin A Bosh, Kentucky Department for Public Health J. Shannon Neibergs, Washington State University (Contact Author) "Going From a Dollar to a Dime: Denomination Change and the Superfecta" Marshall K. Gramm, Rhodes College (Contact Author) Carl Nicholas McKinney, Rhodes College Randall E. Parker, East Carolina University "The Informativeness of Prices as Quality Signals in the Thoroughbred Industry" Brian E. Chezum, St. Lawrence University Jill Stowe, University of Kentucky (Contact Author) "Ownership Structure and the Thrill of Victory in Harness Racing" Brian E. Chezum, St. Lawrence University (Contact Author) Bradley Wimmer, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Discussants:	Brian E. Chezum, St. Lawrence University Jill Stowe, University of Kentucky J. Shannon Neibergs, Washington State University Marshall K. Gramm, Rhodes College

The meetings will be November 20-22 in Atlanta at the Sheraton. Preliminary results for my paper can be found here.

This week's Economist has a 14 page special report on gambling  by Jon Fasman. Truxton trainer Randy Matthews and yours truly were two of the people interviewed for the piece. Their website has an excellent audio interview with the author.

J P's Gusto's win in the Hollywood Juvenile vaulted Successful Appeal into first place among sires of 2yos (list). Successful Appeal was champion freshman sire in 2004, ahead of Giant's Causeway, More Than Ready, and Yes It's True, and has throughout his career thrown precocious 2yos. He is also one of the few sires whose male line traces back to the great Man O'War. Truxton mare Aunt Dot Dot is pregnant to him from an April 17th cover.

Giacomo has plunged to 6th place on the first crop sires list and 31st among sires of 2yos. He has only had five runners to date as compared with 18 for leader Bluegrass Cat.

 Maximum-Likelihood Estimates of Racehorse Earnings and Profitability
J. Shannon Neibergs and Patrick L. Vinzant

Journal of Agribusiness, Spring 1999, pages 37-48

Abstract
Thoroughbred racehorses are commonly characterized as unprofitable investments. Previous studies, grouping all racehorses together, estimate that over 80% of all racehorses in training fail to earn enough to recover the variable costs of training. However, these studies are not truly representative, because they fail to account for a number of factors affecting profitability. This study estimates expected purse earnings and profitability of claiming horses in Kentucky. Maximum-likelihood estimates of probability distribution parameters show that expected purse earnings follow an exponential distribution with a mean of $25,267. Profitability is best described by a Gamma distribution with a mean of $4,824. Of the 305 claims analyzed for profitability,

 

61% were profitable. The results indicate substantial financial risk associated with claiming race horses, but conclude that there are positive economic returns on average.



Truxton has had 10 horses - 7 claims and 3 private purchases. Of the seven claims, one was profitable, four lost money, and two are in progress. 1 for 5 is a far cry from 61%. Perhaps Truxton needs to fire their racing manager.

 

... you have an edge in the Firecracker (10th at Churchill Downs), unless of course you are dumb enough to bet on Mine That Bird - he' got no shot. At 4 to1 Mine That Bird would take in more than 16% of the betting pool. Since he has no shot, all that money is essentially seeding the pool and effectively eliminating the takeout. The problem is figuring out which of the other 13 horses to bet. There is lots of speed in the race, but I don't have any bright ideas. Maybe I'll take a flier on the 1 Driving Snow off a long layoff.