It is possible to beat a rake as high as 20% in my view.
Most of my betting is on first fours which have a rake as high as 25% (NSW TAB) and i have managed to show a healthy POT on these bet types over the past few years. I do have an advantage however of having software to generate the hundreds of combinations per race and a robust mathematical model to predict the first four placings. My biggest problem is finding large enough pools. Small pools are bad for my method of betting because dividends are "unders" when the outsiders come in. The beauty now is that exotic bets can be placed with corporate bookmakers to avoid smothering the dividend. The problem however is that they are quick to ban you when you start collecting big payouts. I have been a fulltime pro for about 4 years now and have consistently beaten a 20% rake. You just have to be a little smarter than the average person, have a decent bankroll and a good computer program. And a PhD in mathematics helps too!

Cheers
ATC

I would have to disagree on that one Assume...

The numbers are there and anyone can come up with the right formula/method or whatever to pick a win.

Biggest advantage is software to do it.

Here are some relevant calculations to illustrate important but poorly understood concepts of Exotics.

I'm using these formulae:

a*b*c/(1-a)/(1-a-b) = Trifecta Prob

a*b*c*d/(1-a)/(1-a-b)/(1-a-b-c) = F4 Prob

First assume a ZERO-rake situation:

And that a, b, c and d are all paying as 10% chances.

But you know that they are 10% better than that - i.e. 11% chances

You can (as KV did) approximate your expected return by multiplication.

133.1% Trifecta
146.4% F4

But if you use the formulae above you get:

138.1% Trifecta
158.7% F4


Now apply the offical rakes of 21% and 25% to get a post rake:

109.0% Trifecta
119.0% F4


Leading to the intriguing situation where the F4 profit is over double that for the Trifecta even though the F4 rake is higher.

If you change the parameters you can get even more startling results.

For KV's case where he claims to be 18% better:

138.7% Trifecta
168.4% F4

Suggesting even better returns for the F4.

The figures get even weirder when you consider say 20% chances, but anyone interested can readily calculate such things on a spreadsheet.

ATC,

While I appreciate your quality post there are some observations I need to make.

I deliberately stipulated 21% Trifectas on Australian gallops for good reason.

Your situation with F4s is straying into different areas.

As I have just tried to demonstrate there are many situations where Trifectas are inferior propositions to F4s so success in F4s does not imply success in Trifectas.

The F4 rake hike to 25% is only recent so your 4 year record may not be able to be sustained.

Flexi-betting was only introduced in 2001. That offered a massive advantage to F4 players capable of rapidly automating that. That edge has now been eroded.

F4s are both more blind and less blind than Trifectas allowing appropriate exploitation.

And of course the big difference is that F4s have a pleasant habit of jackpotting - meaning big pools and effective rakes approaching ZERO. The sub-zero ones seems to have stopped now for some curious reason.

So all in all your F4 testimony does not change my scepticism about Trifectas.

I also note you frequent the Betfair Forum. That suggests you are not averse to minimum rake gambits.

Writing an effective F4 program is not difficult and certainly not only the province of PhDs.

Betfair Programming is however a different matter.

Essentially there is a massive first-mover advantage in such capers. It wouldn't surprise me if those pioneers who led the way in Overs, then Trifectas, Supers, F4s and noticed the diminishing returns as laggers finally arrived, are now making waves in the still brave new stochastic world of Betfair.

These figures are available at a cost from certain data sources.
KV

Thanks for your reply jfc.

You seem to be on the same wavelength as me to a certain extent.
I consider my first four model to be a very good one. The fact that i turnover millions of dollars a year on this bet type and have continually beaten the 20-25% rake over time shows how good my model is. And no i dont use Bayes Theorem of using win probabilities to predict the placings. I have sufficient evidence to disprove this. The superfecta before the abolished it was my biggest winner. The takeout there was 25% and my POT was huge thanks to a couple of sweeps of the pool. A few times a multiple jackpot would occur and in a big field it was quite easy to hold the only live ticket.

At the end of the day a 20% rake is definitely easy to overcome if you are taking all of the "overs" combinations. I have recently started betting in Hong Kong on the six up and Triple Trios and the overlays in some of the combinations there are huge. An example is no 4 being an unlucky Chinese number. If a no 4 wins in any of these bet types the dividends are significantly inflated. Massive pools and huge carry over jackpots mean the dividends pay "overs" quite frequently.

Just because the TAB have such a huge rake doesnt mean that these overlays dont exist. For example the World Cup has plenty of them. I dont know who sets the odds but they stuffed up big time with the quarter final odds. The original market for teams in groups G and H to reach the quarters was 160% when 2 teams MUST qualify from the 8 teams within. A huge arbitrage situation that didnt last long once i took to it. My biggest problem is not finding overlays but getting barred by fixed odds betting agencies. I have hundreds of accounts in different names and still manage to get several a week closed down.

Cheers
ATC

ATC,

Rest assured I have studied both your posts with extreme empathy, however if we continue much more of this in public some feathers might get ruffled. Recently KV was in high dudgeon when I made an aside to the "nth root" - something everyone should know, so you can imagine what might happen if the discussion strays into Sierpinski carpets or Mexican Hat transforms. Of course you are welcome to contact me off-line at any time assuming you can figure out how.

Anyway I was simply trying to alert people to opportunities in a Trifecta fire sale rather than secrets to mastering all Exotics, and I wasn't trying to pry into anyone's elite methods.

However if you're so inclined can you elaborate in public on what fascinates me on a strictly academic level?

Are you saying that there are corporate bookies with rocks in their head prepared to offer inducements on F4s?

What do they offer considering that NSW is usually the only state fielding F4s?

How do you know they'll pay out when you snare a blinder like the $1/4 million Gold Coast Magic Millions?

Do you yourself have rocks in your head in not knowing the counter measures they can take?

As described elsewhere, rather than ban you they can instead lay off a fraction of your big bet guaranteeing you get an undersized return should you win.

Anyway I'm impressed that you can find 100s of associates you're willing to trust with your money.

KV. And before you ask:

Definition of the Sierpinski Carpet
Start with a solid (filled) square. Divide this into 9 smaller congruent squares. Remove the interior of the center square (that is, do not remove the boundary). Now subdivide each of the eight remaining solid squares into 9 congruent squares and remove the center square from each. Continue to repeat the construction to obtain a decreasing sequence of sets

The Sierpinski carpet is the intersection of all the sets in this sequence, that is, the set of points that remain after this construction is repeated infintely often.

And if you don't understand what the above is all about, don't worry, not knowing will not have any affect on your punting.

For Trifecta and Quinella approximates try the ACT tab i am sure they have them there.....they are linked with Supa Tab pools

http://classes.yale.edu/fractals/Fr...SimDimAnsB.html

Probably a picture is more descriptive.

I might redecorate my abode with it next time I scoop a Triple Trio.