horse.pair

01, the board

Six rows of seven. That is the whole protocol, on one screen.

Forty-two horses, numbered 01 to 42. Every ticket goes into one pot, and the odds of each horse are not set by anyone: they are pot divided by what is staked on it. They move with every ticket, for all forty-two, live. The race is measured in swaps on the pool, not in minutes.

Pot

1,204,700

$HORSE, locked until the post

Staked

1,060,000

the sum of the 42 stakes

Levy

15%

carved, shown at the top, always

Distance

3,180 / 5,082

level 3, 1,902 swaps to go

62.6%

the last turn in 1,647 swaps

Favourite 07 at 9.40Outsider 31 at 286.97, leading the averageestimated payout about 243 for 1

Every swap on the pool moves the race one step and drops 70% of its fee into the pot.

02, the odds

Betting on a horse lowers its odds. So it dilutes your own win.

The more of you are right, the less it pays. That is not a rule we added, it is the arithmetic of the pari-mutuel: the pot of the losers is the payout of the winners, and the winners share it.

Before your ticket

286.97

pot 1,204,700, horse 31 has 4,198 staked on it. The outsider of the board.

After you stake 10,000 on it

85.55

pot 1,214,700, horse 31 now has 14,198 staked. Your own ticket divided its odds by more than three, for you and for everyone already on it.

And it is not the odds at the post that decide. The winner is the horse whose share of the pot was, on average over the whole distance, the lowest. A late rush changes almost nothing. To win, a horse has to have been the outsider for a long time, and you want nobody to follow you.