Hope that title got your attention. Among the many (perhaps too many) things I do these days, I publish a horse racing paper – Down The Stretch ( www.downthestretchnewspaper.com) so it falls on my shoulders to direct those inclined to wager some of their disposable income towards the very best bet offered legally in the free world.

I’m talking about the daily double.  For those of you who do not regularly attend horse racing ( and what is your problem?), the daily double is a bet in which you attempt to select the winners of two consecutive races. In recent years, I have become practically evangelical about this wager.

Why?

Because it offers the greatest possible payoff for a relatively small investment.  Not to brag, but I’ve lost count of the daily doubles I have cashed this year that paid over $100. My guess is I’ve done it more than 20 times. I had a Sunday last month in which I hit 7 doubles, most returning $50 or more on a $1 bet.

Of course, I’m a genius horseplayer, imbued with superior racing knowledge, incredible math skills and remarkable money management strategies. And Scarlett Johanssen returns my calls.

But back to my premise…the Daily Double is the best bet you can make.

Here’s the reason why. With every bet you make, in the lottery, in a casino or at the track, a certain percentage is withheld; the house cut so to speak. At the track, about 20% is used to cover track expenses and fund purses.  When you make a bet on a horse to win, the track withholds 20 cents on the dollar. The daily double, essentially, is just two win best in succession, but the track only applies one withholding fee.

In a recent study, a crazed horseplayer with clearly nothing better to do with his spare time, compared every outcome for a year in 649 with every daily double at the Woodbine thoroughbreds for the same time period. Before he was removed from his premises by paramedics concerned for his mental health, the analyst discovered that the same amount bet in the Daily Double would payoff at more than $20 ( on a $2 wager) 200 times as often as that same amount invested in 649.

You could compare to pro-line as well. Proline takes about 40% off the top and makes you bet three games. The payoffs rarely justify the risk.

In a casino, at black jack – sometimes a winable game for the player – the house’s edge is less than 2%; but to win requires perfect basic strategy play, and the discipline to walk when a profit has been made. Very few can pull this off.

One aspect of the daily double that is most appealing – particularly to me, since I almost always bet against the favourite - is that when the horse with the lowest odds is beaten, the double payoffs seem to expand exponentially. By this, I mean that if you hit a double that does not have a favourite in it, the payoff is much greater than the math of multiplying the odds of the two winners together.

 I’ll give you an example (there’s a good one practically every day). On Saturday, August 23 at Woodbine, the winner of the 9th race was 3.90-1. The winner of the 10th race was 5.90-1. A 4-1 shot and a 6-1 shot would seem to indicate odds of 24-1 in the double, which would pay about $50 ( and that’s nice for a deuce, isn’t it?). That daily double came in at $82.90, or about 60% higher than a mathematical parlay of the two winners.

Another way to look at this: It costs $2 to buy one line of 649. When was the last time you won $82.90 in 649?

Here’s an offer you can’t refuse. I will give daily double picks on the weekend to anyone responding to this blog. I’ll need your e-mail. 

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 28th, 2008 at 5:41 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.