Melbourne Cup 2017: Here Are The Winning Horses [Updated]

Earlier today, we brought you the Macquarie Quant Team’s picks for Melbourne Cup 2017. Now that the race has been run, we have the actual winners. Here they are!

Update: So how did the Macquarie Quant Team’s predictions pan out? Here are the winning horses from Melbourne Cup 2017.

Melbourne Cup 2017 winners:

1. Rekindling
2. Johannes Vermeer (my pick)
3. Max Dynamite
4. Big Duke

And here are Macquarie’s top horses based on the unbiased odds using the Halpha model.

Macquarie Quant Team’s picks:

1. Almandin
2. Marmelo
3. Red Cardinal
4. Humidor
5. Johannes Vermeer

One out of four ain’t bad. Or is it terrible? We don’t bet much, so really have no idea.

The original post follows below!

The Macquarie Quant Team put together their picks for the Melbourne Cup every year based on some pretty complex statistical modelling. I’m not much of a betting man, but if I was, I would say that using maths and statistics to pick the winner is a pretty good way to go about it. Here are their predictions for Melbourne Cup 2017!

To determine the winner of the 2017 Melbourne Cup, Macquarie’s Quant Team did a fair bit of statistical modelling using the Halpha model, which is a formula the company uses to predict the big wins in the sharemarket. By plugging in the results of over 7000 races, the team was able to come up with two sets of results. One based on picking a horse with the highest likelihood of winning according to the Halpha model and one based on value.

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So let’s not mess around, Macquarie’s top horses based on the unbiased odds using the Halpha model are:

• Almandin
• Marmelo
• Red Cardinal
• Humidor
• Johannes Vermeer

The value model is a little more interesting though. In this model, the likelihood of winning is greater than the market value, so the more undervalued the horse, the better it is. The infographic below shows the horses that are the best (and worst) value:

In this case, the top five are:

• Max Dynamite
• Almandin
• Red Cardinal
• Wall of Fire
• Johannes Vermeer

My pick? Johannes Vermeer. He was a quality Dutch painter from the sleepy town of Delft in the Netherlands, a place that I personally visited in 2015. Johannes Vermeer (the horse, not the painter) is running out of barrier seven. I did my own maths based on these numbers and arrived at: ( 2 + 0 ) + ( 1 x 5 ) = 7. 2015 = 7. Vermeer (the painter, not the horse) also painted the incredibly famous ‘Women Reading A Letter’. Apparently that letter she is reading is the odds to the 2017 Melbourne Cup. All signs point to a solid win for the Irish-born, Dutch-named equine-dynamo.

The horse also comes from Ireland which features the colour orange in its flag – the national colour of the Netherlands.

That’s as good a pick as any.