Ancient Epic’s hair’s breadth win over Sabbatini on Sunday at Hollywoodbets Greyville took Charl Pretorius to the top of the leaderboard and he held on to win the day’s challenge. (Picture: Candiese Lenferna).
Hollywoodbets have generously put on a competition hosted within the Hollywoodbets Punters’ Challenge platform for South Africa’s racing presenters, personalities, commentators and journalists.
Founding Turf Talk editor Charl Pretorius was the winner of the second day of the month long competition which saw him scoop R500.
Some say this competition relies on luck because the punter who finds the biggest outsider often ends up winning.
However, a winning strategy in this game is in fact not far divorced from the methods successful professional punters use.
The professional punter’s aim is to beat the odds.
He or she therefore, rather than trying to back the winner of every race, will back horses whose odds are higher than they should be.
The reason the casino beats the gambler is because the odds are stacked in their favour.
For example, a roulette number pays out odds of 35/1 whereas there are 37 numbers so the actual odds are 36/1.
If a horse punter consistently backs 9/1 shots he or she should, by the law of averages, win once every 10 races.
However, if those horses should actually be 7/1 shots the punter should by the law of averages win once every 8 races.
Therefore, as he is winning once every 8 races with 9/1 shots, he has carved out an advantage for himself over the bookmaker.
Of course betting tax makes the margins thinner.
Charl has approached the competition using this method and was near the bottom on day one and at rock bottom midway through day two – until he found the 33/1 long shot Ancient Epic.
The 44,33 points he scored for that find saw him overtake the entire field and assume the lead.
It was an incredible turn of foot and he managed to stay out in front until the end.
Charl said, “That is what makes it a fair contest. Some of us are wired to look for value in every race, trying to beat the favourites. Others looks at it in more unbiased ways.”
In fact, the competition is providing a valuable lesson in trying to find value, because that is one method to get to the top of the leaderboard.
Finding a lot of winners also works though as Gary Lemke proved yesterday when the five winners he found were enough to win the day’s Challenge.
The daily winners to date are shown below and the log at the bottom shows the overall standings for the week:
Day 1:
Day 2:
Day 3:
Overall table after 3 days:
The competition pits the faces and voices of racing against each other, competing in every South African race meeting, covering KZN, Western Cape, Gauteng, and Eastern Cape.
For regular players the Racing Stars are also in position on the daily leaderboard – so it’s a chance for every punter countrywide to pit their individual skills against the professionals!
For the 30 days of April, there is R27 000 up for grabs, with a R500 daily Racing Stars winner takes-it-all prize for each race meeting.
To play the daily competition for free all one has to do is register with Hollywoodbets.
It is worthwhile because not only is there daily fun on every local meeting, but also a few overseas meetings, and big money can be won by selecting every winner for any particular meeting.
To date there have been 5 winners of the massive Jackpot prize:
