Most discussions of how we can improve horseracing start with lowering take and having full fields.

Lowering take is a no brainer. Actually, that may be a poor turn of phrase since tracks that lower take seem to be few and far between. Apparently you do need more brains than we are witnessing. While the majority of horseplayers recognize that lowering take will increase handle, and ultimately profits, most tracks resist the idea. The well known formula for gaming revenue is

Gaming Revenue = Volume  X  House Advantage

Thus, if you want to make more money you have two choices. Increase the house advantage while keeping volume the same, or increase the volume. Unfortunately, increasing the house advantage (or raising the take) usually has the effect of decreasing the volume. The arithmetic is the same whether we are talking about horseracing or table games or fantasy sports, and in the case of horseracing has been well documented. The more you take, the less you make. Unfortunately the only people who don’t know this are the legislature and the racing commission.

No sense in going through this again. I believe the horseplaying community is of one mind on lowering the take.

The full field discussion is a little more complicated. I totally agree that there are too many 4-6 horse fields, but would 12-14 horse fields in every race really be  an advantage for most horseplayers? What exactly do people mean when they say they want more full fields, and why do they believe it would be an advantage for THEM? I suspect it would make the more exotic horizontals (Pick 4/5/6) completely out of reach for the average player (there would be over 7.5 million combinations in a Pick-6 with all 14-horse fields and a hardly more manageable 3 million combinations with six 12-horse fields) and make trifectas and superfectas substantially more difficult to hit. Why? As I noted in my article, Risk Intelligence, most players are poor at handicapping for positions other than win and as you move down from win, the chances of even the longest shot in the race increase. In other words, a horse with a 5% chance of winning may have closer to a 15% chance of finishing in one of the first four slots. In a 14-horse field, there are over 24,000 combinations in the superfecta, half that many in a 12-horse field. In a 10 horse field there are only a little over 5,000 superfecta combinations. Most people can only cover a small subset of the possible combinations, and given a series of 12 or14 horse fields, it’s more likely people will be discouraged and opt out of those pools. You can’t make it too easy, but you can’t make it too hard either.

Yes, it’s likely the average payoffs will jump up with the larger fields, but it’s small consolation if you are one of the majority of players without a ticket. Anyone who has tried to hit superfectas in the Breeders Cup races knows exactly what I mean. Inevitably there is some 50-1 shot that finishes third and forces the overpay.

Frankly, I think the sweet spot for most races would be eight to ten starters, with most races closer to ten than eight. There is no reason to expect that a guy who goes to the track with $100 will suddenly start going to the track with $200 to cover more combinations. Eight to ten starters still gives the average player a fighting chance to hit horizontals and verticals.

Beyond that, I think the number of starters should be limited to ten per race (except stakes) because I believe that will increase churn. Slightly smaller payoffs, but more wins for the average player. The key question is, will larger payoffs attract more players when they are less likely to hit them, or will more frequent, but smaller collections have a greater impact on attracting players and increasing handle? Racing has been trying to compete with the lottery for decades, not understanding that their solid customer would be more likely to be loyal if he was winning more than occasionally. The game is better if it appears beatable with the right amount of skill. Ten starters is the best compromise between looking for big payoffs and making the game hittable enough to keep people churning.

I believe the problem is too many short fields, not too few full fields, if that makes sense. If you want to get into most of the horizontal and vertical fields you should be arguing to get rid of races (except stakes I suppose) with less than eight starters. And at 10 starters tracks may be able to more often split entries into two races instead of having 14 starters and six also eleigibles.

I’d be interested in counter arguments regarding why 12-14 horse fields would be better for racing.