It's winter, and I'm basically in racing hibernation. My friend (Fourstardave) however, despite no longer having the interest to pursue the horses, still looks at the results. It is apparently an involuntary reflex. He gets a paper that still prints the payoffs, New York's Newsday.
Out of sheer habit, he scans the prices. He told me yesterday there was a "real bomb on Saturday, a $160 horse." This is exceedingly rare, no matter what track you're at.
It was the 4th race, a 6½ furlong New York Bred Maiden $30,000 Claiming race, $30,000 purse. Pretty much the proverbial "bottom of the barrel." A field of 8 made it to the gate, with three unraced entrants. Odds on the board ranged from 3/5 to 80-1.
There are strange things done in the winter sun, but one of the strangest was the 80-1 shot winning the race by 4½ lengths, going away, ridden by a Finger Lakes jockey A. S. Worrie. My successful stint at Saratoga this past summer included a long shot winner piloted by A.S. I said to the other John, "look, this trainer is using a Finger Lakes jock, it's his only mount on the card. He'll take the lead and try and hang on." And that's just what happened. Being right is a lovely thing.
So, the unraced Warrens Vengeance (there are no apostrophes in names), trained by Ralph D'Alessandro wins and pays $162.50. Because that's what 80-1 shots pay when they win.
Second, goes to one of the other unraced entrants Tousled, trained by James W. Ferraro, another Finger Lakes trainer. Finger Lakes, an upstate track near Rochester, is closed for the winter. So, Finger Lakes comes down for some winter action. Certainly the purses are not stellar, but they are certainly more than the nothing that's being carded upstate.
Tousled is 2½ lengths ahead of the third place horse at odds of $68 to 1, the second longest price on the board. Thus, the finish for the first two spots is the reverse of the ascending order of the odds. The last shall be 1-2.
Now, you might think that a $1 exacta payoff on these two of $1,016.50 is a nice payout. I'm sure of one thing. It's an accurate payout, but someone loaded up on either wheeling the top horse up and down and got extremely lucky that a 68-1 shot finished second.
A general rule of thumb is that an exacta pays the win price times the place price of the second place horse. Since Tousled paid $44,20, this would put an expectancy out there of a $2 exacta payout of approximately $7,182 for a $2 bet. This is a far cry from the $1,016 for a $1 exacta that was the payout.
There is no mathematical formula that states that the exacta will always be a multiple of win and second place price. It will generally be so given unskewed betting patterns. The underlying distribution of money always determines any payout. If Warrens Vengeance is flooded on top with exactas, then the large number of tickets using their number on top will drive the exacta payout down. And boy, did it ever get driven down.
Exacta wagering has long ago emerged from the total darkness it once was. There are now screens at the track that approximate payouts based on "if" results: if the 3 wins, there is a matrix that will tell you the approximate payout of the 3 with any of the other entrants. The screens are refreshed, just like the win odds right up to post time.
Outside of being there, or mutuel room reports, there is no visual of what those exacta approximations were showing as the betting was being made on the 4th race. Was anything with the 3 always a bomb payoff given the 80-1 odds, or did the approximation suddenly dip after someone bet a bundle on a wheeled exacta? A speculation in itself.
If you're good with numbers, you can spot prospective payouts that are completely out of whack with what the win odds are showing. Anomalies in wagering. I try to spot them, but I don't admit to being great at it.
Certainly someone was convinced Warrens Vengeance was going to race well. So called "smart money" is not always smart, given Andy Serling's Tweet about the action on the board. Andy is a former commodities trader, and is someone for whom the price and value means everything. He works as a broadcaster/analyst for NYRA now.
Shortly before the 4th race Andy Tweeted:
Midnitesalright goes from 7:5 to 3:5 in a blink of an eye.
Immediately after the race, Andy Tweets:
Late money or not ( see, it doesn't always know ), Midnitealright was a no excuse 4th after making an easy lead. Warrens Vengeance blows the field away at 80:1 to take the #Aqueduct 4th.
The exacta payout anomaly goes unmentioned.
None of this is meant to imply the race was fixed. Winners are tested for drugs; beaten favorite are tested as well.
Given that racing is barely written about, there is no way we're ever going to know who did what, or if anything was looked at given the results.
What someone doesn't know is if their money might have been better appropriated with strict win and place bets on Warrens Vengeance. After all, the place payout was $62.50. A successful wheeled exacta with an 8 horse field guarantees you're going to buy 6 losing exactas for each multiple you're putting through the system. And if you "back wheel," with the 3 second, all your bets are losers.
Sometimes, even when you win, you can't be sure you should have won more. It is a tough game to beat.
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