A few weeks before the Kentucky Derby, TechRepublic reporter Hope Reese issued a challenge to UNU: can you predict the first four horses to cross the line, in order? Known as the “Superfecta,” it’s notoriously difficult, especially for the Kentucky Derby with its huge field of 20 horses.
The rest is Artificial Intelligence history – UNU nailed it, beating the odds-makers and the experts alike. And, because Hope Reese published UNU’s picks in advance, bettors across the internet were able to benefit from the perfect prediction. The team here at UNU turned $20 into $11,000, Hope herself turned $1 into $542, and a novice bettor named Jeff Peltier who last year picked his horses based on the “exotic jockey names” turned to UNU this year. The result? After risking $50, Jeff is now $27,000 richer.
With this big success, the folks at TechRepublic issued another challenge to UNU – The Preakness! But, this time around, instead of Hope Reese asking UNU if we could form a Swarm to predict the Preakness for her, we challenged her, “can you?” After all, UNU is an open platform where anyone can login from around the world, form a Swarm Intelligence, and ask it questions about anything.
So, Hope assembled a group of friends and colleagues with “some knowledge” of horse racing. They got together inside of UNU and made predictions by working together as a swarm. You can read the FULL STORY here: TechRepublic’s ‘swarm AI’ predicts the Preakness.
So, what did UNU predict for the Preakness?
As any good forecaster will tell you, the key to making good predictions is knowing whether a solid prediction is even possible. And after running multiple swarms, considering the even field of horses and the forecast for heavy rain, UNU reported to TechRepublic there was too much variability to make a confident Superfecta pick this time. Even on the question of who would win, UNU reported a 32% chance that Exaggerator would upset. And beyond those two horses, UNU reported that Cherry Wine, Uncle Lino, and Collected were strong contenders to fill out the Trifecta.
So, using UNU’s advice, TechRepublic published a recommendation for betting on the Preakness. Rather than recommending a single set of winners, the high variability from UNU resulted in a recommendation for four Trifecta bets. These bets (published here) focused on the four most likely combinations of Win, Place, Show horses: Either Nyquest or Exaggerator, plus one of either Cherry Wine, Stadivari, Uncle Lino and Collected.
Box Combination 1: Nyquist / Exaggerator / Cherry Wine
Box Combination 2: Nyquist / Exaggerator / Uncle Lino
Box Combination 3: Nyquist / Exaggerator / Collected
Box Combination 4: Nyquist / Exaggerator / Stradivari
And guess what – it paid off – they won the Trifecta! Anyone who bet the same ticket as the one recommended by TechRepublic would have more than doubled their money. We think a 200% return on investment is pretty damn good, especially considering that this was a “self-serve” Swarm Intelligence where a group of people came together on their own, formed a swarm in UNU, and produced picks that outperformed the odds.
If you’d like to for your own swarm in UNU, simply visit UNU.ai at any time. We’d love to see what you can predict!
