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[Mark Peel via Derby]

On Wednesday last week, Brisnetran “DeRosa’s 2020 Wagering Stats” (http://www.brisnet.com/content/2021/07/derosas-2020-wagering-stats/).  If you had any lingeringdoubts  about the futility oftrying to make a living wagering on the horses, this story (and the accompanyingpodcast interview with Jason Beem) will end those doubts.
In 2020, Ed DeRosa reports that he had a Return OnInvestment (ROI) of minus 4.38%.  Anyonewho regularly bets on racing knows that this is a very respectable result,because the total amount returned on each invested dollar in the pari-mutuel poolsis about $.80, or an ROI of -20%.  Bythat standard, DeRosa is a well above average horseplayer.   

Still, DeRosa lost money in 2020.  And, he goes on to admit, he’s lost moneyevery year he’s kept records.  Over thedecade from 2011-2020, DeRosa reports a ten-year cumulative ROI of -10.12%.  DeRosa is the marketing director forChurchill Downs and knows a lot about handicapping and wagering.  You could say he’s up to his eyeballs in it.  (For example, he admits, in his interviewwith Beem, sneaking into the lavatory while dining out to place bets by phone.)  In spite of that, he’s a consistent (thoughnot “big”) loser.  Imagine what the restof us are doing.
DeRosa’s greatest successes in 2020 came at Foner Park and WillRogers Downs.  This is actually afascinating admission—and one that neither DeRosa nor Beem seemed even tonotice—because both tracks tend to have small fields relative to the Tier 1 racetracks.  DeRosa also admits to losing big at Oaklawnand Gulfstream Park—again, two tracks known to have large field sizes.  One of the basic tenets of horse playing isthat handicappers love big field sizes—something I’ve always understood thelogic of,  but never actually felt orbelieved viscerally.  To me, finding thewinner in a 6 horse race is a whole lot easier than finding the winner in a12-horse race.  Whether DeRose realizesit or not, his results last year show that he did better with smaller fieldsizes, probably because he picked more winners.  

There are other interesting observations in DeRosa’s articleand interview, some of which I found reassuring because they are principles I’velived by in my own approach to the game. For example, DeRosa’s most profitable wagers are Win bets.  Of course! The takeout is always lower on the straight WPS pools than on verticalor horizontal pools (except for the occasional “low takeout” exotic promotionstracks offer from time to time), so a win bet is more profitable—sometimes muchmore profitable—right out of the gate. Win bets are more profitable than place and show bets, too—which shouldbe obvious (and over the years I’ve collected a lot of data that proves it) butpeople still keep making place and show wagers. (The one exception to this rule—and there’s always one exception, isn’tthere—is a $2-all show bet when a heavy favorite creates a giant minus pool inthe show wagering in a race with 5 horses. But you knew that.)
DeRosa doesn’t address his results on dirt v. grass, but it’spretty clear, judging from the tracks where he makes money and the tracks wherehe doesn’t, that he’s a better dirt race handicapper.  Again, field size probably has something todo with that.  

A final thought, and I hope I’m not getting too personalhere (DeRosa used to contribute interesting posts to the Derby List) but I could not help but extrapolate from some of the figures heprovided in his article.  First, hewrites that his handle at Foner and Will Rogers were about $10,000 each, andthat the two tracks combined represented about 20% of his wagering lastyear.  That means DeRosa wagered $100,000in 2020.  In the interview he also saidhe’d scaled back last year after losing 25% in 2019.  If 2020 was an average year for DeRosa, thenduring the last decade he’s pushed at least $1 million dollars through thebetting windows.  And with a ten-year cumulativeROI of -10.12%, he’s lost at least $100,000 gambling on horses in the last tenyears.  This is some serious moola. Ihope that Ed is setting aside the cash for his kids’ college funds firstbefore heading out to play the Pick-6, becauseyou could easily put a kid through four years at the University of Kentucky for$100,000.
It’s worthwhile to take a moment to read and listen to thearticle and interview.  Whether he intendedto or not, Ed DeRosa has some incredibly candid and illuminating observations.  He knows more about handicapping and wageringthan I ever will, and his unusual candor—I don’t know of any public handicapperwho regularly divulges his or her results as Ed does every year in the pages ofBrisnet News—is refreshing.  Horse racingis a world where much of what is written, whether about profitable handicappingstrategies or “the health and safety of our equine athletes” is really justfantasy or wishful thinking.  Here, atleast, is a rare bit of honesty. 

Civres
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