Duck racing - betting strategy to win the most

S

Sanzarc

Joined
Aug 24, 2018
Hi all,

I was getting ready for Shenmue 3 by replaying both Shenmue 1 and 2 this week and I decided to spend a bit more time doing duck racing. What I wanted to find out was the way to win as much money as possible over time.
It turns out that even though there is some randomness involved in the races, there are certain types of ducks that perform much better compared their odds given by the bookie.

Here are the results of 40 duck races grouped by the duck types (there are 11 types altogether).
The letters correspond to the "speed, stamina, guts" ratings given for each duck.

Duck typesRacedAverage positionAverage payoutTotal payoutWinnings (+/-)% of wins when running1st places2nd places6th places
CCC
23​
2.347826​
8.078261​
49.2​
26.2​
0.26087​
6​
7​
0​
DAC
16​
2.1875​
6.81875​
40.9​
24.9​
0.375​
6​
5​
0​
BDD
38​
4.105263​
7.563158​
55.7​
17.7​
0.184211​
7​
1​
9​
ADA
24​
2.166667​
4.183333​
33.7​
9.7​
0.333333​
8​
7​
0​
BCC
20​
2.75​
5.27​
20.8​
0.8​
0.2​
4​
5​
0​
BCD
24​
4​
6.854167​
20.8​
-3.2​
0.125​
3​
3​
7​
BBD
18​
4.333333​
5.194444​
11​
-7​
0.111111​
2​
2​
6​
ADD
19​
4.842105​
5.915789​
10.7​
-8.3​
0.105263​
2​
0​
10​
BBB
16​
3.5625​
4.325​
4.2​
-11.8​
0.0625​
1​
3​
1​
BDB
16​
3.375​
5.15625​
0​
-16​
0​
0​
4​
0​
CBD
26​
4.269231​
8.115385​
8.2​
-17.8​
0.038462​
1​
3​
7​

As you can see from the table, ducks that are rated CCC and DAC have the biggest payouts followed by BDD and ADA ducks. BDD ducks a bit tricky, because there have been several races where two of them ran (effectively doubling their likelihood of winning). ADA ducks are the best though, but their relatively low payout (4.18) makes then inferior to CCC and DAC ducks (so you cannot make that much money on them).

Overall, my experiment showed that if you want to win big in duck racing, bet on CCC and DAC ducks whenever they are available (and if they are not available, then bet on BDD or ADA ducks).
Also, never bet on ADD ducks, they are the worst with an average position of 4.84 (and their payout is very low compared to that result).
 
Nice! I was planning on doing Duck Racing stats after finishing Lucky Hit, so it's nice to have something to compare to. You're also mostly going about it in the right way, keeping track of a lot of important information. There are two things I've noticed, though:

1. As you've said yourself, there have been several races where two BDD ducks ran, which affected the likelihood of a BDD duck winning. It goes beyond that: in a race with 5 ADA ducks and 1 BDB duck, the probability of the BDB duck winning is much lower than if it was racing 5 BDD ducks. I feel like any information on how to bet would need to take into account what ducks are being raced against too.
2. You've only done 40 races. While it's great to have some figures, ideally you'd want a lot more, at least a thousand or so, to have any real confidence in the data.

Having said that, it's great to see someone else getting stats on these things and doing experiments. And duck racing is not the fastest thing to get stats on either, so I appreciate that 40 races would've taken a fair amount of time.
 
Thanks for the comment, I was actually planning to clean up the stats a little bit more (for example, marking BDD1 and BDD2 ducks to make their real strengths more accurate).
Also, the which duck beats which duck comparison would also be useful, so I will do that.
I think that if there is such disparity between the ducks as shown after 40 races (e.g. the difference between the average position of ADA vs ADD ducks), it is probably enough to have 100-200 races to have a reliable dataset.
 
So I did a bunch of Duck Racing stuff today, including getting a bunch of stats and overall information on the way it works, with help from ycarcomed on Twitch. 75 races so far and our results line up pretty well with what's been posted so far in the thread. I'll post a full rundown of data in the future, but for now I want to give more insight into how the game actually treats the ducks.

Each duck has four public characteristics: speed, stamina, guts, and personality. Speed, stamina, and guts are measured from A-D (S-C in Japanese), whereas personality is one of four descriptions:

"Good at getting a head start." (S)
"Good at holding opponents down." (D)
"Has sharp and quick legs." (L)
"Strong in the home stretch." (H)

This would leave a possibility of up to 256 distinct ducks; however, there are only 12 in the game. It seems that each duck is equally likely to appear in each race.

Listing their characteristics in the order speed, stamina, guts, and personality, followed by their value in the odds system; we also came up with nicknames for the twelve ducks, based on their stats:

ADAL - 10 - "Ada"
BBBL - 10 - "Bobby"
BBDH - 8 - "Bombadil"
BCCH - 8 - "Becky"
BDBH - 8 - "Bedbug"
ADDD - 7 - "Hyper"
BCDS - 6 - "Bacardi"
BDDL - 6 - "Legs"
DACS - 6 - "Dack"
BDDD - 5 - "Downy"
CBDS - 5 - "Cobbed"
CCCD - 5 - "Sissy"

The odds for each duck are calculated by taking the sum of the values of all ducks in the race, and dividing by the value of the duck in question, rounding to the nearest 0.1

For example, in a race among Ada, Bombadil, Bedbug, Bacardi, Dack, and Cobbed, the odds would be:

Sum - 10+8+8+6+6+5 = 43
Ada - 43/10 = 4.3
Bombadil - 43/8 = 5.4
Bedbug - 43/8 = 5.4
Bacardi - 43/6 = 7.2
Dack - 43/6 = 7.2
Cobbed - 43/5 = 8.6

Hopefully this gives a greater insight into the way betting on duck racing works. It also means that there's no need to record odds - we can calculate them just by knowing what ducks are in the race.

As for the results of the races themselves, Dack won roughly 1/2 of the races he was in, and Sissy about 1/3. As these are two of the highest returns on a bet, these are almost definitely the best choices to go for, which matches previous findings, but I'll do a more in-depth study on that when I have more data.


TL;DR the slowest duck is the fastest.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top