A lot of people consider horseracing and casinos all pretty much the same – they are after all, all gambling and the casino environment often seems more exciting and more glamorous.  I have never enjoyed gambling at casinos – I very seldom gamble at a casino and I don’t think I’ve ever bet more than R200 in a casino whereas I have bet quite a bit more than that on horseracing!  In fact, my biggest win ever of my life was when Master Sabina won the Summer Cup in 2015 and my gambling profit alone was R300,000 but that is also because he was at exceptional odds of 15/1 which essentially means I have about R20,000 worth of bets on him and from other horses who had won, going on to him.  

Normally if I bet, I will bet much smaller, probably R2,000 or R3,000, but there is a world of difference between betting on horseracing and betting in a casino.  I worry when I say that, because some people start trying to think whether that is not an easy way to make money, whether they should not try to bet for a profit, etc, and ultimately that type of approach, as opposed to hard work and actually earning money in your job, is going to lead to the same kind of losses that you will suffer at a casino. 

Where horseracing though is different is that in a casino the odds are completely stacked against you because not only does every number, whatever day you are playing, just about have an equal chance of coming up (there are no patterns, despite the fact that some people delude themselves that there are) they pay you less than the odds of that number coming up.  In other words, it is mathematically designed from day one that the casino is going to win in the first place and it is just a matter of how long it takes them to win your money.  In horseracing some people will lose every day and some people will win, but basically, and especially with the tote, all the money that is put into a race less the tote’s fees is distributed amongst the winners, so the tote does not make extra money if a surprise horse wins the race, although in the case of bookmakers they would.

Mathematically and logically horseracing makes more sense for those who like to gamble, but if we just take the recent J&B Met as an example the winner was the 3rd favourite, the horse who came second was the favourite, the horse who came third was the 9th favourite and the horse that came fourth was the 4th favourite.  In other words, of the first four favourites in the race three of them filled the first four positions.  Yes, there are surprises in racing, and usually there are in races that you know there is going to be a surprise because that is exactly how the field looks, it is a race consisting of a whole lot of inconsistent horses who have run badly in the past and it is precisely the kind of race you would not bet on.  By comparison to a roulette table, you would not be able to say, as you could in the J&B Met, that of the 15 horses 5 or 6 of them really had no chance of winning.  In a roulette table every single number has an equal chance of coming up and so it is just pure gambling, pure luck and there is no thought or analysis involved at all.  About 35% of all horse races are won by the favourites and although those usually pay less money you cannot say that there is any particular number or anything at the casino which is similar other than if you are betting on red or black on an even money basis which is probably the most fair odds that one can find in a casino.  Over time, both of those colours should come up an equal amount of times.

In short, although you can still lose just as easily in horseracing, it is not mathematically programmed against you in the first place and where it is completely different to games like roulette, is that you are in a position, if you truly follow horseracing, where in most races you can narrow the race down and say it is between these three or four horses, maybe the following three or four horses also have an outside chance but the rest have no chance at all.  People who choose the best bet based on a name, on a lucky number, or simply because they say that they like outsiders, will every now and then get it right, but on the whole they will lose money and lose it quickly.  In a casino you will lose anyway.  In horseracing you actually have a chance if you bet carefully and without being impulsive (which is not very easy to do) to win.