Winning on the Horses: How Much Strategy and Knowledge Are Needed?

Abstract

Gamblers on horse races believe that they can develop skills to select winners by studying the program, checking the condition of the track, evaluating the performances of the jockey, and so forth. Three experiments were conducted to compare the results of choices of experts with those of random picks. It was hypothesized that experts have more wins and better monetary outcomes than a bettor using a random selection of horses does. The overall results showed that the experts picked more winning horses than random selection did; no differences were observed on the monetary outcomes between experts and random selections.