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Huge Mechanical Computers Used To Calculate Horse Racing Odds (hackaday.com)
szczys writes: The Pari-Mutuel system revolutionized how wagers were made on horse races starting in the late 1800s. It moved away from gambling against the house, and adjusted the odds based on how many people were placing wagers on a particular horse. Calculating and publicly displaying the changing odds was slow and labor intensive until engineers took a crack at the problem. They created Tote Boards; large mechanical computers which connected to each betting window with levers and cables. Each pull of a lever recalculated the odds which were displayed on large mechanical displays for all to see. Tote Boards were built all over the world and used until digital computing displaced them.
Mechanical doesn't mean they're not digital, it just means they're not electronic. Without doing a lot of research into these specific machines, it would be a whole lot easier to build them using a digital calculations rather than analog.
Well, that means you are playing 3rd derivative performance estimation.
The track is playing 2nd derivative performance estimation by being a dynamic neutral party in the mass betting of people both less and significantly more informed than anyone running the track.
The guys who read all the stats and make the big bets are playing 1st derivative performance estimation, taking observed numbers and comparing estimates based on repetition of historical behavior.
The jockeys and horses are the raw data, and sometimes smelly.
You won't win big by betting on the likely outcome, but if betting is just part of the fun of watching the races, it'll work out in your favor much more than purely random or directly contrarian betting.
My grandpa taught me how to bet the harness races at Sportsman's Park. He had this arcane formula that involved eliminating the horses in the outside three stalls, the horses' last results and the names of the drivers. I'm not going to share the details here, because this is paramutual betting and I need you all to lose.
But let me tell you, grandpa always had dough. He used to say betting the harness races was for supplementing his Social Security and railroad pension. When he died, my mom gave me all his clothes, because grandpa was a flash dresser and we were about the same size. Of course, the styles were about 30 years out of date, but that worked for me thanks to nostalgia.
Anyway, the upshot is that one day, a few months after he died, I decided to try on one of his suits. I found a big roll of bills in the inside jacket pocket. Maybe 8-900 bucks. Then I looked in one of his cashmere overcoats: another grand or so. By the time all was said and done, I must have found $30,000 salted away in grandpa's clothes. Now this is a guy who was a Sicilian immigrant who went through the third grade and came to this country at age 12 to be a shepherd in Colorado. He worked for the Rock Island Railroad for like 45 years, but all that went into the house and the family. Everybody thought gramps was placing $2 bets at the track, but it turns out old boy was rolling deep.
I miss my grandpa and how he'd take me out to the racetrack when I was a kid and explain everything to me as if I understood it..
You are welcome on my lawn.