But, when you're placing tote bets, you're often competing against a variety of different actors in a prediction market - and not all of them are pursuing a rational equilibrium strategy. These suboptimal or noisy agents can turn a zero-sum game into a positive-sum game, which is called subsidization. When participating in such a market, your primary goal is to extract value from these agents (very similar to arbitrage). It's important to note that the amount of subsidization needs to exceed the totalizator fees, otherwise you can't extract enough value.
It's similar in poker, you're making +EV plays to extract value out of actors that are playing a suboptimal strategy. This is how some people can consistently make money. However, most people aren't rational robots, and are psychologically impacted by variance. All in all, I would recommend a different career path :)
Specifically you pay Steve Wynn or the Bellagio for the fact that they are hosting the game and providing fair and impartial personnel. So you avoid getting scammed at a table where people collaborate to screw you over.
Professional poker players are great at smelling newbies and inject themselves in games where their skill level is way above others at the table.
They manage to do so because if you think about it poker is the best environment to do this. You would not start a fight against a 6ft5 bodybuilder but Phil Helmuth you would never pick him from the crowd.
Most importantly the rich guy from Russia or the Gulf will never be able to pick him and avoid the table he is sitting at. Once they sit they already lost
If you believe the odds to win are right at the track you will see sometimes that the payouts to place and show are really high in comparison, sometimes almost as high to win but you get 2x or 3x the chance to get a payout.
You are not looking for a good horse, you are looking for a good bet and you will sit out many races until a good opportunity comes up. Maybe 2 or 3 races a day have a bet with odds so favorable to overcome the track’s rake.