“The final hour of wagering in a pari-mutuel can often be the most critical time period to save (additional) wagers because Homestretch Golf’s platform is providing you live, real-time win odds data that can make you that much more informed than other participants solely based on when you monitor those odds.”

Pre-round predictions that assume pari-mutuel payout calculations rely on pooled wagers in which the volume of losing wagers for each wager type (ex./Win, Place, Show) fund the payouts for all of the successful winning wagers. This means that while predictions/wagers are being accepted prior to Round 1 play, at any given snapshot in time the estimated payout odds give a participant information about how the current wagering action is being dispersed across the field. The goal of placing predictions/wagers is to put some wagering action on a team that ultimately performs well and places in the top teams, but in pari-mutuels the action dispersion completely dictates the ROI multipliers that are used to calculate payouts. This means that even if you successfully predict a winning team, your profit may still be relatively low IF that team is the betting favorite in which a large percentage of the wagering action for that wager type were indeed on that ‘favorite’ team. On the flip side, if you are one of the lucky participants that ‘cover’ a ‘dark horse’ team that has a low percentage of the wagering action for that wager type, you will be a happy camper with a large ROI multiplier and hence a large payout! So is there a method to the prediction madness?

The beauty of the Homestretch Golf paperless platform is that odds to win are updated in real-time and available right in the palm of your hands on any internet-connected device while the betting window is open. And in pari-mutuels, that ever changing odds information is useful so you can see how the wagering action is being dispersed across the teams. Homestretch Golf allows participants to at least have information in the snapshot of time they are saving wagers to know which teams are more of the ‘favorites’ (which while possibly less risky from a popular opinion standpoint will produce a smaller ROI multiplier) and which teams are more of the ‘dark horse’ teams (which may possibly be riskier from a popular opinion standpoint but will produce a larger ROI multiplier).

Fictional Example:
Homestretch Golf Displays Teams w/ Fluctuating Win Odds Per $1

Using this information, combined with your personal knowledge of the participants, you can find a happy medium of investing your predictions in teams you believe have a real chance of performing well but not necessarily teams that sit as the most popular choice across all the other wagering participants. In the above fictional example you can deduce at this point in time that Team 4 has received the most win wagering action and would have the lowest ROI multiplier, and that Team 7 has received the least win wagering action and would have the highest ROI multiplier.  As pari-mutuel pots build in size, more data and updated odds start to provide a clearer picture of which teams are ‘favorites’ and which teams are ‘dark horse’ teams. The final hour of wagering in a pari-mutuel can often be the most critical time period to save (additional) wagers because Homestretch Golf’s platform is providing you live, real-time win odds data that can make you that much more informed than other participants solely based on when you monitor those odds. Payouts are based on the closing odds, not any starting odds or odds you see while saving a wager during an open betting window, but rather the closing odds once new wagers/predictions are no longer accepted and all prior wagers have been confirmed and finalized. Use this strategy to your advantage if you are participating in a pari-mutuel at your club or with your group, and use the data already available at your fingertips on the Homestretch Golf platform to find those teams that strike a healthy balance for you of performance risk with anticipated ROI multipliers!

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