However, for the ill informed, the probability of picking a winner is most likely less. Pretending that you are one of the enlightened ones, you might think that at this point, this is a good game for you to be playing. A field of 13 horses and you can almost certainly eliminate 9. With these numbers, you should easily win more than 1 out of 13 times and when you win you will get 13 times what you bet. Wow, you must be thinking that this is a sure way to make money.
Variable prices are the downfall of every well informed better at the horse track.
The way that this works is that the odds that are associated with each horse vary according to speculation about its likelihood of winning the race. Tomorrow, thirteen horses will be racing. Knowing that equal information does not exist among the betters, the track adjusts the odds of each horse accordingly. Essentially, they speculate as to how many betters will pick each horse as the winner by making a speculation as to the amount of money that will be placed on each horse to win. From this they adjust the odds so as to make the expected amount bet multiplied by the payout equal across the board for all horses.