Q: Would you describe betting in general at the Kentucky Derby or horse racing? What does it mean to”go off” in 10-1 odds or be a 33-1 long shot?
Ed, of Shiloh
A: Allow me to break this answer into two components — the what and how — so if I begin burying you with too much info (as I sometimes do) you will have a working understanding of these amounts.
What it means is simple. The chances — 10 to 1, for instance — are simply a ratio or comparison of two numbers. The first number is the amount of money you’ll win if the horse does exactly what you think it will. The second number is the sum you need to wager to win the very first number.So, let us take your 10-1 example. What it means is you will get $10 in winnings for each and every dollar you wager on that horse if it wins. Consequently, if you place a regular $2 bet, you will walk off with $22 — $20 in winnings (two times 10) plus the return of your original $2. In the same way, if you are feeling as frisky as a colt and bet $100 to a horse using 33-1 odds, you are going to scoop up $3,400 (33 days 100 in winnings and your original $100). If a horse has 5-3 odds and you bet $30, then you’ll take home $80 (10 times 5 plus the original $30). That is all there’s to it.
Now comes the more difficult part: What’s this stuff figured? Why are a few horses given almost even chances — state, 3-to-2 — although others might begin a race (“go off”) at 50-to-1? It’s all of the result of pari-mutuel gambling, that is the type of wagering utilized in most horse racing.
Pari-mutuel is just a high-falutin’ French term that means”mutual stake.” In golf, as an instance, players battle each other to get a pot of money offered by a host. But when you bet on the ponies, you’re fighting part of a pool of cash that has been wagered by each one the other bettors like yourself. You have a mutual stake in it as it were.
A couple of things should become obvious immediately. The more that bettors prefer Horse A, the more money they’re likely to bet on it. Because of this, they are saying the odds are great that it is going to win. But it also means that those gamblers will win less per dollar bet as you have to divide the entire pool of cash among a great deal of people. Conversely, if few people are betting on Horse B, they will take home a much larger stack of cash in case their horse wins as far fewer people will have a claim to that same pool of cash.
And to make things more interesting, these chances can keep changing from the days leading up to a race. As horse experts find out more about the numerous variables that go into their choice — the history of their horses and jockeys, trauma rumors, weather forecast, etc. — they may begin hedging their bets and begin laying down cash on other entrances, thereby altering the amounts.
Now let me give you an oversimplified example of the way the chances are guessed. Let’s say that year’s Kentucky Derby was a three-horse race between Fleet o’ Foot, Not So Fast and Beetlebaum. Now, let us say people bought a total of $1,000 on those three steeds — $500 on Fleet, $300 on Quick and $200 on Beetlebaum. Here Is What could happen:
To begin with, the people accepting the bets would take their talk off the top as their fee for supplying the support — generally 10 percent to 20 percent. Let’s say it is 10 percent. That leaves $900 as the payout to be divided among the winning bettors depending on the race outcome.
Today we must figure out what they could win. This is the formula: The odds for each horse are calculated by subtracting the amount bet on that horse from the available payout and dividing the result by the amount bet on that horse. So for Fleet o’ Foot, you would first subtract 500 from 900 to receive 400 and then divide by 500. The resulting chances are 4-to-5, meaning for every dollar you wager, you would win 80 cents plus your initial buck back if Fleet wins.
Similarly, Not So Fast’s odds would be 2-to-1 (900 minus 300 divided by 300) while Beetlebaum goes off at 7-to-2 (900 minus 200 divided by 200). So the less favored a horse is, the worse (or”more”) its chances and the higher its payout because theoretically you’re assuming more risk if you gamble on it.
Real life, of course, is not so simple. This year’s Kentucky Derby had 20 horses and the overall wagers of $139.2 million shattered the previous record of $137.9 million in 2015. Always Dreaming wound up paying $11.40 on a $1 bet to win.
Bettors also wager on far more than simply wins. In North Americathere are”place” bets that cover whether a horse places first or second. (In the Derby, Lookin in Lee compensated $26.60 finishing second.) There are also”series” bets that pay if a horses finishes in the top three (Battle of Midway paid $20.80). If you feel you have a great deal of horse sense, you can risk your cash on perfectas, trifectas and superfectas, in which you try to forecast the exact order of finish for the first two, three or even four horses at a race. And so Forth.
As you may expect, because these bets get increasingly more exotic, the calculations become increasingly complex although the core principle is exactly the same. Thank goodness modern computers can figure it all out at a gallop.
TODAY’S TRIVIA
Which Kentucky Derby winner had the maximum odds in history?
Response to Sunday’s trivia: As of January, 31 states nevertheless can impose the death penalty. Four others now have governors that have set a moratorium on its use. All 31 use lethal injection as their major means of implementation but nine can utilize electrocution, six may use the gas chamber, three could use hanging and three can utilize the firing squad, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
More numbers to consider: Since 1976, there have been 1,453 executions, reaching a peak of 98 in 1999. This past year, the USA saw 30 sentenced to death and 20 — in five states — were executed. As of Oct. 1, there were 2,902 offenders on death row (54 girls ). Since 1973, there were 157 death-row exonerations. Former Gov. Pat Quinn abolished Illinois’ death penalty in March 2011.

Read more here: https://virgilbrannon.com/index.php/2019/09/26/mma-odds-and-ends-for-friday-robert-whittaker-vs-luke-rockhold-targeted-for-ufc-221/