- The 2022 Belmont Stakes will be held on June 11, 2022 at New York’s Belmont Park.
- There is a field of 8 for this year’s Belmont. A maximum of 16 horses can be entered.
- Preakness Stakes winner Early Voting will not enter the Belmont as his connections are targeting the Travers Stakes on August 27 at Saratoga.
In our previous article, we looked at the Belmont Stakes morning line prices and tried to find some value. There was not much to be had. Only two horses qualified as ‘Overlays’, two were at fair odds and four were ‘Underlays’. Here’s how I explained the process of coming up with ‘my’ numbers:
Here’s how this will work–on Monday, we posted projections of the Belmont Stakes morning line. To get these numbers, I worked out (in this case in conjunction with a couple of associates that are experienced at the horse racing game) the percentage chance of each horse emerging victorious. I then converted these percentages into moneyline odds and then converted them to fractional odds. I did this simply because I’m better at working with the moneyline odds we use in sports betting. There’s plenty of countries around the world where fractional odds or decimal odds are the standard and there’s no reason you couldn’t just convert the percentages directly to fractions or moneylines.
So we compared the moneylines to ‘my lines’ and came up with a differential. Here are the results:
OVERLAYS: Skippylongstocking (+1.5%), Nest (+0.7%),
UNDERLAYS: We The People (-11.1%), Rich Strike (-7.7%), Mo Donegal (-3.6%), Barber Road (-2.8%)
My numbers had Creative Minister at 6-1 as did the morning line so he represents fair value. Ditto Golden Glider at 20-1.
Now we’re going to do the same thing but different. Instead of working from the morning line odds we’re going to head over to BetOnline.ag and look at their fixed odds market for the Belmont Stakes. While the parimutuel betting–including betting at the track itself–won’t start until Friday it’s difficult to get a feel for where prices will go. The fixed odds market at BOL is already open for betting.
First of all, my projected win percentages and opening odds:
BELMONT STAKES PERCENTAGE CHANCE OF WINNING AND CORRESPONDING ODDS
| HORSE | WIN PERCENTAGE | ODDS |
| Mo Donegal | 25% | 3/1 |
| We The People | 22.2% | 7/2 |
| Rich Strike | 14.3% | 6/1 |
| Nest | 11.8% | 15/2 |
| Creative Minister | 10% | 9/1 |
| Barber Road | 6.3% | 15/1 |
| Skippylongstocking | 6.3% | 15/1 |
| Golden Glider | 4.8% | 20/1 |
Now we’ll compare these against the ‘real odds’ from BOL. I’ll use the same matrix as above and plug in the fixed odds prices. I’ll convert the moneylines to fractions just to make comparison easier.
BELMONT STAKES FIXED ODDS PRICES FROM BETONLINE.AG AS OF 8:30 PM EDT ON WEDNESDAY, JUNE 8
| HORSE | WIN PERCENTAGE | ODDS |
| Mo Donegal | 28.6% | 5/2 |
| We The People | 28.6% | 5/2 |
| Rich Strike | 15.4% | 11/2 |
| Nest | 11.8% | 15/2 |
| Creative Minister | 13.3% | 13/2 |
| Barber Road | 7.7% | 12/1 |
| Skippylongstocking | 3.8% | 25/1 |
| Golden Glider | 3.4% | 28/1 |
Now we do the math and come up with a differential between ‘my’ prices and the BetOnline prices.
OVERLAYS: Skippylongstocking (+2.5%)
UNDERLAYS: We The People (-6.4%), Rich Strike (-1.1%), Mo Donegal (-3.6%), Barber Road (-1.4%), Creative Minister (-3.3%)
My numbers had Nest at 15-2 as did BetOnline so no differential either way.
Keep in mind that my prices didn’t include a ‘house edge’, while the BetOnline prices have a 12.6% ‘house edge’ built in. This is very reasonable by futures market standards. I tried intentionally to get my prices to produce as close to 100% (meaning no ‘house edge’) as possible. I ended up with 100.7%.
Since the Belmont Stakes attracts a significant sized ‘recreational bettor’ turnout it’s difficult to make the case that BetOnline reflects the line moves that we’ll see when the parimutuel betting opens.
