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Originally Posted by chillrob
I think the problem with beating horse racing is that it's really not fair as far as the odds pay are set. When you place your bet you don't know what they odds you are getting will be. In any other sports betting the line may change at any time for future bets, but the odds when you placed your bet are locked in.
It's parimutuel betting, which means that the money goes into a pot and the winners get their share and the losers lose. It seems like a fair system, albeit different.
The primary difference is that horse racing is more like poker. You're playing against the players while the house is taking its cut. You have to be better than the average bettor plus rake to be a winner in the game. In other forms of sports betting, you're gambling against the house.
When you sit down at a poker table, you have no guarantee that you'll get a "fair share" of good cards. You can get crap all night. But that's not the casino's fault and the game isn't fundamentally unfair as a result of that.
It actually makes sense to argue that horse racing is *more fair* than poker because you at least have a sense of the odds you should expect in any given race, as opposed to poker where you can get crap or coolered and that's just the game.
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For horse betting the odds you get may change even after you make your bet, so the current odds given are really almost meaningless.
This claim is an exaggeration by quite a bit. Unless some guy comes in at the last minute and dumps a huge amount of money into a particular position, the odds are going to be approximately correct 5-10 minutes to post.