Minimize
Losses: De-Activate Action Bets
- By
Charles Carroll
One dangerous little piece of folklore that has crept into
the horseracing literature is that action bets are perfectly normal
parts of a players dayto keep Jack from becoming a dull boy. I
know Im guilty here myself I've contributed to it, both in writing and
with my own dollars until a few years ago. We're gamblers,
after all, and we need some ac-cion to keep our hearts pumping
and blood pressure balanced. Action bets are small, $2, $5, or
$10 betsequivalent to buying a lottery scratcherwhich you toss around
for fun while you work on the serious business of managing your serious
money for serious bets and serious profit.
Often action bets are complete flyersyou glance up from your
work and notice the post parade for a Maiden Special Weightthat you
didnt even handicap and would never throw serious money atbut you
like a certain prance in an unraced fillys step and the way shes
holding her earsa quick look at the breeding, pow! Two
bucks. Or you notice a spot play that you read about once in a
magazine and the author said it returned a flat-bet profit (for two
days once, at Finger Lakes). But one of the biggest reasons for
our acceptance of action bets is that handicapping is work, a fun
kind of work, but work nonetheless, and often far more often
than we admit the results of all that hard work tells us to sit firmly
on our wallets. Thats not the answer we want to hear, even when
its our own brain telling us its the rational thing to do. If I
take a race apart, I want a stinking bet.
But the psychology of action bets is not even that
simple. Wouldn't it be great to handicap, doing whatever you do,
whether its pace, speed, comprehensive dosage factorializing, whatever, and
come to a clear, firm decision? Stay out. Or, bet with
both hands. But this is a game of probabilities, so that
rarely is the outcome. Personally, I end up with an odds line
that is my representation of what the probabilities of finish and
payout should be. I work until the last moments of public
odds-flux to determine how to shape the bet. The process can be
rather exciting make that freaking stressful, if it is a
major bet. Youre sparring with the public. Wondering, down
to the last minute if youve second-guessed their odds correctly.
At that moment, with the clock to post time ticking, its sort of like
hitting the end of the bungie line to simply throw it all in the air
and Pass. At that point, I want to bet. At
that stage of a race, Im totally immersed in the odds and the
reason for passing is that the odds are not correct for my best
handicapping results. This situation screams for a pass,
while your brain is screaming Bet! And, this can lead to
rationalizing a value bet on a theoretical overlay that wasnt part
of your primary scheme, which translates into one of the most dumb-ass
bets you can make, even if it is at low, action levels of 2 or 5
bucks. You just saw your correct odds scenarios go up in
flames. How do you figure taking a shot outside them constitutes
value?
Back when action bets became acceptable practice among
serious players (as opposed to those fellows for whom all bets
are action bets), they really werent that bad. At the risk of
dating myself: Yes, Dorothy, there was a time before
simulcasting. During that dark dim past, you actually went
to a racetrack. You spent at least two or three hours the
night before, handicapping with the paper Form (remember
paper?). A few really obsessive fools made 200-mile round-trips
to get the Form the night before, then the same trip
the next day to the track. (Al Gore did not invent the Internet ,GOD
DID, in direct response to my prayers for a locally available past
performance data equivalent to the Racing Form.
Hallelujah!)
Horseracing used to be a participatory sport. You drove
to a track, where there were horses, hay, dirt, and grassmaybe a
flamingo or two. You walked over to the paddock to see if any of
your picks were walking on three legs, and maybe followed the post
parade out along the rail, until they trotted off to warm up, then
maybe even glassed them for a while, before finalizing your selections
and laying down your money. If you were serious, you selected
your shots carefully, and might have only one or two (or none)
on an entire days cardand that days card, maybe ten
races was IT. If you had picks in the third and eighth
races, you were at the track not only to pound those two bets, but to
also hone your knowledge and skills, watching all the other races,
watching the interplay of the public odds with minor events, maybe
developing your own spot plays, watching the rubes and the wise
guysso, if you were there to place two $50 or $100 or larger bets,
what was the problem with a little ac-cion? Two bucks here,
five bucks there, not too often no big deal.
It was not a big deal thenand it is probably still not a big
deal nowunder certain circumstances. The primary one
is if you are placing action bets to test ideas.
I love simulcasting because I love the availability of
numerous races from around the country that fit my style and betting
criteria. I get lots of action. If this is the
environment you work in, there is too much action to continue
with the folklore of action bets. You no longer have the excuse
of being faced with 40 or 80 minutes of down-time because there is an
unraced field of Maiden Special Weights and a Turf marathon race before
the next opportunity to bet. There are now plenty of
opportunities and the job is to decide which is best.
There is really only one justifiable reason for action
bets: to learn somethingfor the purpose of improving
prime bets later. It takes at least a buck or two to test
ideas. Statistics and paper bets are important parts of the
learning process, but for me, I have to wince a little to drive points
home. Ive done a lot of research on horse racing and I know
pretty much what the results are, butmaybe its because Im such a
skinflintnot many ideas stand out to me like the many where
Ive had a crummy $2, $5, or $10 riding on them and then whacked my
forehead with the heel of my hand when the test results were
negative. Wait a minute. Maybe were on to something
here. Quick, whack your forehead!
There are two great lessons about simple money management to
be learned from BlackJack, and neither one requires any kind of
Kelley-criterion-like formula. First, unlike BlackJack, you
do not have to ante up for each race. No one is going to ask
you to leave the table if you do not lay money down at every
option. The second is, although you dont have to play every hand
in horse racing, you do have to stay on top of your game. Convert
your small, action bets to testing bets, and record them,
just like your prime bets. Thats one of the really insidious
things about the old action bet mind-setbettors frequently did not
record them, even if they did keep decent records on prime
bets. Recording them does two things. First, since you
should only be making them to learn something, recording the bet and
outcome makes a note for the future. Secondly, and more
importantly if, over the years you have developed a cavalier attitude
about action bets, youre probably going to have an eye-popper of an
awakening when you tally up the cost-over-time.
If you find that your action bets are taking a greater chunk
out of your pocket than the track takeout, then youve got a
problem. Not that this has ever happened to me, you understand,
but I once had a friend.
In the next few weeks well take a look at the economics of
$100-a-day bettorswho, by all accounts, are the most common type among
usand see why the action bet is just one reason why the
$100-a-day bettor will, almost always, go home lighter. But
first, next week, well see why that ominous-sounding fact does not
mean that $100-a-day bettor cannot produce a long-term profit.
