Dr. Z's racetrack module for 41C

[KeithB]

"Anyone remember Rawhide?"
Remember it? I am still watching it on MeTV. Not as good as Wagon Train, though.

[SlideRule]

Book Review by R. J. Henery, University of Strathelyde

Beat the Racetrack. By William T. Ziemba and Donald B. Hausch. San Diego, Calif., Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984. xx, 392p., $22.95.

The book is primarily aimed at the serious gambler and the reason is simple: it describes a betting system that really works -the authors say it works, E. 0. Thorp believes it works, even I believe it works. Mind you, I have my doubts. . .
The system is based on the fact that the odds quoted in horse races reflect very closely the horses' true chances of winning. In Tote pools for example the money laid on each horse to win enables us to estimate the chance of that horse winning. However the public at large, both in England (sic) and the United States, is not so good at judging the proper odds for horses being placed (being 1st or 2nd) or showing (being 1st, 2nd or 3rd). By exploiting this "market inefficiency" the authors can select out a few really promising bets and they have shown their faith in the system by wagering quite large sums of money, for example at one point gambling $294 from a total wealth of $479. Presumably, according to the proportional betting criterion they advocate, the authors would always be willing to risk as much as 60 per cent of their wealth on the appropriate system bet. That shows faith! At any rate they did come out winning.
The early chapters deal with: the origins of the system from a suggestion of Harville; the different types of bet; how to predict the place and show probabilities; analyses of past races; how much you should bet. Although the primary (indeed the necessary) requirement of any system should be to ensure that the chosen bets are likely to be profitable, the authors devote an inordinate amount of space to the question of how much to bet. Later chapters describe, rather repetitously, the operation of the system at the racetrack. Even inveterate gamblers will find the pace of the book very slow here, and there are pages and pages of race-cards which could well have been omitted altogether.
The final chapter is a mathematical appendix which summarises the basis of the system. Here an attempt is made to show that in a particular sequence of 22 bets there is only a very small chance (quoted as 3E-5) that their average profit of 22.9 per cent of stakes could have been surpassed by "random betting", which is later assumed to (i) lose 17 per cent of stakes on average, (ii) always bet the same amount, and (iii) always bet on horses with win probability 0.771. This is surely not random betting!
The point is this: does the system do more than just select a bet at very short odds, i.e. does it give a greater expected return? Since short odds horses are underbet to win, it is not unreasonable to expect that the same holds for short odds bets to show. The serious gambler wants to know the advantage in show bets rather than win bets at odds of 2 to 1 on, these being typical odds for a large system bet. If win bets were made consistently at such odds the average loss would be much less than 17 per cent, indeed Table 3.5 in the book indicates a possible profit of 3.4 per cent, and this makes it very much easier to achieve gains of 22.9 per cent in short sequences of bets. It should be noted also that wide variations in the size of bets make for wide variations in gambling fortune and this also makes a short term gain more likely.
The book, and the theory on which it is based, will be a useful guide to gamblers, but until the method has been more fully tested, preferably in England, the reviewer intends to keep his bawbees in his sporran.

BEST!
SlideRule

[Sylvain Cote]

Hello David,
I have the original module and overlay but unfortunately I do not have the manual.
FYI, you can buy on AbeBook a used copy of the 1984 version of the Beat the Racetrack book referenced in the manual. (AbeBook keywords: Beat the Racetrack 1984)
Sylvain

[minch]

Thanks at David!

(06-10-2019 03:36 PM)David Hayden Wrote:  Minch sent me a PM but I thought I'd respond here in case anyone's interested.

The manual and overlay are available on TOS. Look for Dr. Z in the modules section. Unfortunately 2 pages are missing from the manual.

The ROM image is available in the 41 CL ROM image library. The names are racetr-1 and racetr-2 I think: http://www.systemyde.com/hp41/files.html


The book was recently re-released. Search for "Beat The Racetrack" by William Ziemba and Donald Hausch.

(06-09-2019 11:43 AM)minch Wrote:  Hi everyone,
new to the forum here. I'm having the same question: does anyone know where to find the racetrack module?

I'm trying to figure out how to rewrite the old module into a more portable app format (as a personal project, for fun -- to begin with). Any leads on where to find the documentation and/or source code are highly appreciated.

Many thanks
Alex