The Biggest Mug Bet in Racing?

As an OLBG member I have been lucky enough to get the chance to join fellow members at the races a couple of times now. 

Of course the atmosphere at the racecourse and the racing itself is fantastic, but my favourite aspect of it is probably the conversations I have had with fellow members about racing, betting and the best types of bets to place.

The most recent outing was to Doncaster and it did not disappoint in terms of the racing or the conversation, in fact, I left not only having been lucky enough to win some money but also with a couple of ideas for things to write about in this blog. 

One conversation that I wasn't actually involved in, but which I overheard on the way down to watch the sponsored OLBG Mares Hurdle race was about lucky 15 bets.

The gist of this conversation was that the Lucky 15 is the bookie's favourite bet, and from the punters point of view one that is sensibly avoided. 

The words used were that it is the biggest mug bet in racing. 

A lucky 15 consists of 15 bets on four different horses (or other sporting outcomes).

A bettor stakes 15 equal stakes on the four outcomes on their own, the six different combinations of two outcomes, the four different combinations of three outcomes and one bet on all four of the outcomes occurring.

The punter will therefore win something, even if one of the outcomes happens, although if the odds of that outcome happening are not better than 14/1, then this will not be enough to cover the initial outlay. 

If two of the outcomes happen, then assuming they are both at the same odds then they would both have to be better than 2/1 in order to make a profit. 

If three or four of the outcomes happen then a bettor is likely to make a profit on the bet even if the odds of the outcomes are not that big. 

Three outcomes at 2/1, for example, would provide a return 48 times the individual stake. 

The odds required to make a profit when three outcomes happen and each outcome is at the same odds is about 1/2, so unless we are betting on extremely short priced outcomes, we are guaranteed return if three or more outcomes happen. 

The lucky fifteen is a combination of single and multiple bets, it can, therefore, be attacked from both sides of the single v multiples debate. 

Advocates of singles will say that it is hard enough to get one outcome right without risking losing you money even if you do. 

There is an old joke about two men of low IQ who go to the Vatican just before Easter to see the Pope. They contrive to get lost and somehow manage to come by the information that the Pope is on his deathbed but the cardinals are going to wait to announce the death of the pontif until after Easter. 

With this knowledge the men agree that while it is very sad that the Pope is dying, they could do a lot of good with the money they would make if they had a bet on this happening. 

They agree to meet up after the announcement of the death to compare winnings. The punchline is that when they meet up, one of them has lost his bet because he had bet on a double of the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury both dying. 

Whilst this is of course far from the reality of most bets, in that the men knew for certain they could win a bet, the same argument against the Archbishop of Canterbury double could also be used in real life. 

If you have two horses you think have a good chance, but one has a better chance than the other, then place a single bet on the one with the best chance, don't increase your chances of losing by doubling up with the less likely horse.

The other side of the debate says that multiples are the answer, you can after all win bigger with a smaller stake. This is not really the side of the debate I am on but I have to agree with the facts.

if I pick four outcomes and place them in a lucky 15, then if they all win I will be worse of than if I had put them in a straight accumulator with the same total stake. 

Take the example above of four outcomes all prices at 2/1. The lucky 15 bet if the total stake is £15 (or £1 a line), will return £240 if all four outcomes happen, the return on a £15 straight accumulator would be £1215 so more than five times as big. 

Of course if any result other than all four outcomes occurring was to happen, then the straight accumulator will not outperform the lucky 15. 

Assuming the odds of the outcomes happening is 1/3 in each case then there is a slightly bigger than 1% chance of all four winning, so there is the same chance of the accumulator outperforming the lucky 15.

There is also nearly a 20% chance of none of the outcomes occurring, in which case of course it would be irrelevant which of the above options had been taken. This leaves, however, over 78% of the time when neither four nor zero outcomes happen. In any of these scenarios, the lucky 15 would be the better bet too have made.

Whichever side of the singles v multiples debate you sit on, I think it is hard to call the lucky 15 the biggest mug bet in racing. There is a time and a place for it, but it is certainly much more sensible bet that the ten leg accumulator that is being pushed on adverts for one bookmaker at the moment. 

Even if all the legs in such an accumulator are at odds of 1/2 and have a 70% chance of winning (so represent value bets), then the chances of a punter winning are less than 3%. If you were able to find ten bets at 1⁄2 every week, that all had a 70% chance of winning, you could expect to win about once every 35 weeks. 

In reality most people who put these bets on are probably not analysing the form for all the bets involved in enough depth to calculate the winning percentages and therefore whether they are getting value in the odds.

My suspicion is that in the vast majority of cases they are not, and this is why accumulators are so heavily marketed by the bookies. 

For me the biggest mug walking out of the betting shop on a Saturday morning is the one with the longest betting slip in his hand. 

Please visit the OLBG betting school to discover every type of bet available... including Lucky 15's !!