Need help with horse race probability model?

[Arob]

At work my friends sometimes gamble on this harness race web game.

 

The game is simple - the odds are posted and the horses run (but the favourites seldom win).

 

The game is single player so we use the odds to determine the payouts and play 'to win' bets - each of us picks a horse. Some must bet more than others depending on how their horse is listed. A long shot is a low bet that could win everything... get it?

 

One of my buddies is now winning all the time. Esp after we play a few times - he has a system and at first it was a joke but now we are all curious as to how he has managed to figure out this simple racing game.

 

Some kind of a probability equation?

[Bignose]

If it is true probability, then no "system" would work "all the time".

 

If the probabilities are uneven, there may be certain betting systems that come out ahead in the long run -- i.e. over many, many races. But, nothing that is truly random works "all the time". If he truly is winning many times consecutively, then I would suspect that he's figured out how the computer picks the winners each time and knows which one the computer is going to next.

 

p.s. he's also kind of a fool if you guys are really putting for money. "You can shear a sheep many times, but you can skin it only once." -- Amarillo Slim. The point being that even if he has figured out which horse the computer will pick each time, he should have still thrown a significant number of races toy keep up appearances. He should have only won slightly more often than pure luck would have dictated. Enough to consistently win money, but not enough that you guys would start to suspect something and so keep playing.