Page 36 - The Game March 2006
P. 36

36 The Game, March 2006 Your Thoroughbred Racing Community Newspaper
Lotto 649Verses the Daily Double
The Game
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Patti Hanco
By Peter Gross
Do you have an annoying friend or associate who continually brings up some insignificant fact unaware that's he's gone way past your boredom threshold? You know, like Cheers' Cliff Clavin blowing wind on the mating habits of the tsetse fly or why water in your toilet bowl drains counter clockwise?
I'm one of those insufferable know-it-alls.
For some reason over the last couple of years, every time I'm at the track I hear myself telling some unfortunate companion that the Daily Double is the most favourable wager you can make in Canada. What's more, I insist, if you put the same amount of money into the Daily Double as you do into 649, you will win much more money with the Daily Double.
Well, I've decided to do the research, compile the facts and see if, in fact, I'm even right about this. What follows is surely, a landmark study, to be compared with the Masters-Johnson Sex Findings, the Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and The Return of the Valley Of the Dolls.
The first thing I did was pay a visit to the Ontario Lottery's excellent web site (www.olgc.ca). Here it is possible to submit your favourite numbers and see how they did throughout the entire history of the 649 draw. I created 100 selections of 649 and pretended that I had played them for all of 2005.
I used all low numbers (1,2,3,4,5,6) all high numbers (44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49) all prime numbers (3, 5, 7, 19, 23, 37) and important birthdays (4,7, 8,12, 20,21). I played Valentine's Day, Canada Day and Christmas (1,2,7,12,14,25) and even the ages I was when I had girlfriends (18,22,24,34,37,40).
Quite frankly, nothing worked. Had I actually bet every 649 draw in 2005 with each of my 100 rows of numbers, I would have spent $20,800. My return from that was $2740, which represents 12.1% of my investment. I would have lost almost 90% of what I spent. Of the tickets that did come in, three out of six numbers showed up 161 times and two out of six with the bonus occurred 133 times. According to the OLGC, the odds of hitting two out of three with the bonus in 649 is 81-1. The payoff is $5.
Imagine watching your horse win at 81-1 and then getting paid off at three to two!
Of the 10,400 selections I made, just seven times did four of my six numbers come up. The payoffs for those were $64.60, 66.20, 89.60, 92.90,67.80, 78.70 and 52.20.
To create a meaningful comparison, I made theoretical bets on every Daily Double at Woodbine for 2005. (yes, this took an unreasonable amount of time, but ask me if I have a personal life). For each double, I took the numbers 1,2, and 3 in the first with 1,2, and 3 in the second, nine combinations, $2each bet. There were two reasons for this; first, unlike the lottery, we can reasonably assume that low numbers will have a certain success rate and, secondly, some races have as few as five horses, so we wanted to able to play every double.
Here's my results: I bet $18 in each of 352 Doubles for a total of $6336. I won back $3477.60 or about 54% of the total cash bet. I hit the double 55 times. Of those 55 successes, 51 returned over $10. Twelve of the winning doubles paid more than $100.00. The following is a comparison chart of the five best payoffs in 649 against the five best in the Daily Double:
Five Best 649 Outcomes: 92.90
89.60
78.70
67.80
66.20
Pretty brilliant so far, eh? But what, if anything, have I proven? Well, if my
figures can be trusted, a bet on the Daily Double gives you about 4 and half times the value of the same money spent on 649. You actually might cash a ticket a little more often on 649, but just about every time you hit the double, you will get back more than a 649 payoff.
Our experiment in 649 did not render any payoff over $100. To do that you would have to have at least 5 out of 6 numbers correct, which would defy odds of 55,491-1 (so if I'd run my 100 sets of numbers for five more years, I might still not have hit anything over $100). In our Daily Double
experiment, we cashed over $100 twelve times out of 3168 plays, or about once every 264 tries.
Which means we have reached our landmark point and it's this: You are 208 times more likely to win over $100 in the Daily Double than you would for the same amount of money bet on 649.
That's what I've been telling anyone who would listen to me at the track. The Daily Double is the most advantageous wager, legal or otherwise that anyone in Canada can make. Now that I have proven this, I shall await the awards and the accolades.
Surely the Nobel Prize people will get wind of this.
Five Best Daily Double Outcomes; 369.20
319.10 328.20 262.90 249.70
To Advertise in TheGamecall Stacie Roberts 905-338-0544 • toll free 1-866-886-5827 email: info@thehorsegame.com www.thehorsegame.com
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