The Secrets of Winning Gamblers in Horse Racing

The following is my second speech delivered to the Toastmasters meeting. Good things to share.

[Disclaimer: Most points are emphasized to make dramatic effects. It’s fictional]

Tonight I’m going to reveal to you the untold secrets of horse racing. All gamblers want to win, those say the gamble for fun are lying to themselves. But I’m sorry to tell winning in horse racing is very rare. Let me tell you some mathematical background about betting on horse racing in HK. In average, every time you bet $100, the club gives back $80 as dividends. So if you are an average gambler, you lose $20 the moment you put down your $100 note, versus about losing $5 when you bet in a casino in Macau. Since the Club always charge the commission, if you win money, that means another gambler lose money. Therefore, you need to be a damn good gambler to get more than the original $100 you put down.

After burning the mid night oil for countless evenings, I found three types of people who consistently beat the odds and actually are making money in horse racing.

The first type is the professional gamblers. They have super computers running complex statistical models. These people hire a team to do the last minute number crunching. The models will process large amount of data, and buy a humongous number of tickets over a high bandwidth network just seconds before the race starts. They will buy many combinations of different horses, different bet types and allocate different amount so as to minimize risks and maximize return, like an investment portfolio. Their operations are highly secretive so if I tell you more they will probably kill me. So the first secret is, you can beat the odds if you are really good on maths.

The second type of people who always win are those who are the experienced. They are in their 80s, and literally grew up with horses. When I talked to this old women who said she had been living in Happy Valley since five year old. For two times a week, she would kneel at the street and watch the horses strolling from Shan Kwong Road stable to the racecourse. After 50 years of watching horses she would know whether the horses are having a flu, whether they had diarrhea, or even whether they had a good night sleep. It is also very common for horses not having perfect conditions. Think about it. If there are 10 horses in a race and by observations these people know 5 of the horses have no chance to win, this has immediately become an unfair game and these people have much higher chances than we do. So the second secret is that you have to accumulate at least 50 years of horse watching experience.

The third kind of people who made money in horse racing are those big families of horse owners. I have known people whose parents, grandparents and great grand parents are all horse owners. They would pay the costly membership fee for their kids to groom their racing interests. When their horses have a race, they personally know the owners and trainers of other horses in the same race. This has become their own game! They are in the inner circle to share insider news. Not only do they win from betting on the horses of their close friends and uncles, but they also win the prize money if their horses win the race. So these people living around this horse racing sport are also frequent winners. Therefore, the third secret is to start grooming your kids in horse racing, but build your network around this sport. After three generations you will become a winner.

If the above three are the winners, who are the losers then?
Those people kneeling outside the jockey club branches, wishing to get some quick money.
Those people who buy solely because they read some tips from newspapers or heard tip from the radio.
Those working class who decided to go to the happy valley for a beer after a busy day on Wednesday nights.
These people pay the price for those winners.

To summarize, next time, before you place a bet and if you want to make some quick profit, here are the secrets:
Are you super good in maths and have a team of analysts working full time making bets for you?
Do you grow up living next to horses and have a wealth of experience so you can feel the horses conditions?
Does your family have generations of horse owner so you can own the game?

If not, let me tell you, you don’t have a chance making money in horse racing.

So, these are the secrets of winning in horse racing. I wish you good luck in horse racing.