Dignified Rube wrote:
When I calculated the implied odds from the horses winning percentage in the Arlington mil., I was one step short. I have made that final calculation, and it's kind of what I thought what the odds would show. They are very close to the house odds. Of course, the favorites are getting far below fair value. For example, with a historic winning percentage of around 20%, which should give him 5-1 odds, Beholder is getting only 3-1. In other words, you are giving up 14% in odds. With C.C., it's far worse, almost 47%.
Anyway, there are only two horses that are giving value and that's just around 5%. Dalmore and War Story. Taking the rest is a suckers game.
That said, if you're going by straight winning percentage, the model recommends Beholder, Dortmund and C.C. There's a big drop-off then to Hoppertunity as a 4th.
Those low-life cheating you-know-whats at Arlington no doubt scratched Decorated Soldier and Dubai Sky from the Million, because they were giving good value.
You can't really make a good odds line that way. For example, Beholder's historic winning percentage wasn't established vs. this group. In fact, she will almost certainly be a bigger underlay than you have her figured as being. I consider Chrome and Dortmund the only legitimate contenders in the race. They way they are coming to the race, I think if they ran it 100 times Dortmund would win about 40 of them. That makes 3/2 a fair price for him. You should get well more than that. Actually, I may be overestimating Dortmund here and have to adjust that down, but I certainly can't see him being any higher than 9/5 on my final personal line and he should be better than that on race day.