Winning Strategy from the 2016 BCBC

Another Breeders' Cup Betting Challenge (BCBC) is in the books and congrats to Joseph Applebaum who took home prize money of $300,000 in addition to his bankroll of $64,000.  He finished 1st of 395 participants who played on-track, at satellite tracks or, new this year, online.  Finishing 2nd was Charlie Davis, who sat next to me during the tournament, overlooking the 1/16th pole at beautiful Santa Anita. Other notable names included our very own Dave Gutfreund who is no stranger to tournament success.  I managed to finish just outside the top 10, earning an 11th place finish. 

I will walk through my thought process during the two days along with a quick look at the analytics behind the final leaderboard.  Tomorrow, in part II I will have more details behind the experience of both Charlie and Dave.  

I was fortunate enough to have two entries this year earned from finishes in the Kentucky Derby Betting Challenge (KDBC) and Belmont Betting Challenge.  My initial plan was to hit one entry hard with my best ideas on Friday and the second with my best Saturday ideas.  Minimums for day one were five bets of $600, so even my “safe” ticket had to be bet.  On day two the minimums jump to five bets of $900. 

In the Friday Breeders' Cup undercard, I was looking for ways to get a couple of my mandatory bets out of the way on either a logical show horse or perhaps a value play.  Race 1 on Friday was one such spot where I went with a bet on both tickets, one being a win and exacta on entry #1 and a large “safe” show bet on the entry #2.  Unfortunately, the horse ran out, but the lesson here is that I made the rookie mistake of betting only $500. Yes, even in my 4th BCBC I mistakenly thought the minimum was $500 instead of $600.  So now I was down $500 on each ticket and no minimums out of the way!

After missing again with both tickets in the 5th race, I tossed the “safe entry” strategy going into the 8th race, the Juvenile Filly Turf.  I was high on the filly Coasted who was, in my mind a crazy overlay at 20-1 based on some video work I had done earlier in the week.  I also liked the Chad Brown horse, New Money Honey, the eventual winner of the race, playing both in several multi-race wagers.  Since there are no multi-race bets I ended up playing a range of exotics involving the horses on Entry #1 and then a $600 bet on Coasted to win on Entry #2.  When my top choices finished first and second my exotic tickets paid $8,400.  A great day one for entry #1 ending in 15th place with $15,775. On the other hand entry #2 was struggling at $4,000.

 

Going into day two, my approach was to save #1 for my best ideas in the BC races.  Entry #2 was going to be $1,000 stabs and horses at 10-1 or greater to get that entry back in the game. Unfortunately for me, one of those horses didn’t include Champaign Room and by race 6, Entry #2 had busted. 

I didn’t make a play on Entry #1 until the 7th race.  Now, with the focus of one entry I needed a path to make up ground as I had lost ground sitting out the 1st through 6th races. After playing $2,870 of losing bets in the 7th race, I picked up $7,200 as I cashed a $500 straight exacta as Highland Reel stole the race over Flintshire.  The score moved me back up to $18,564 good for 26th place.  

After $3,800 of losing bets in the 10th race, one in which I had only luke-warm ideas, it was time to make a move with two races to go coming into the Mile, one where I thought a price could be had. I was a little surprised to see so much action on Ironicus and Limato who both seemed underpriced.  My thought was that Tourist and Tepin offered substantial value at the 12-1 and 7/2 respectively.  Here I made my stand, betting $2,500 win/place on Tourist, $5,000 win on Tepin and a $500 exacta Tepin over Tourist.  I figured Tepin/Tourist was an outcome I wanted to cash big for and thus devoted more capital in that direction given the lower price potential.  In hindsight, I should have played more win money on Tourist or did a $250 exacta box instead of the $500 straight exacta, but at the time, I figured the $40, 000 I would get from a Tourist win would be tough to complain about.  The $45,250 of winnings from that race moved my balance up to $48,514 and 5th place.

The final race, the Classic was a tough betting race.  Arrogate and Chrome were standouts and I thought a chance existed they could just crush each other in a speed duel. This is one spot where sitting on my hands would have been he play as I would have ended up in 5th and ended up with $50,000 in prize money instead of the $20,000 I did win. Unfortunately, my ego got in the way and the desire to grab another big check overtook me.  I ended up betting $8,440 in exotics assuming one of the two favorites would finish 3rd.  Why $8,440?  I had set a goal of roughly 5x my bankroll to finish in the top 10 based on historical results. Even if all those bets lost, I would be above my goal with a potential to finish in the top 10.

After finishing 11th I was a little disappointed I didn’t get into the top 10, but so it goes when you take a shot at the end and miss. Ending up with $40,047 plus $20,000 in prize money was fantastic.  It was a great final event of 2016 after finishing 1st in the Belmont Betting Challenge and 2nd in the Kentucky Derby Betting Challenge.  

Looking at the scores for 2016, you see a lot tighter dispersion of the top 10, with only $24k separating 1st through 10th.  Additionally, there was a much higher average bankroll of the top 10 finishers. Alternatively, there was no runaway winner as in years past with a six-figure bankroll.  Going into the tournament, many competitors thought it would take a six-figure bankroll to win.    My theory is based on the lack of betting opportunities offered by the Breeder’s Cup Classic, the final race of the tournament.  as much betting action in the final race due to the dominance, on paper, of both Arrogate and Chrome.  Of course, Pharoah was a standout in 2015, but there were a lot more options in the exotics without a clear 2nd choice.  That said, it’s just a theory. 

-- By Garett Skiba, 2015 BCBC $100K Winner