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3 Days, 2 Winners, 1 AI: How Machine Learning Cracked the Sport of Kings
3 Days, 2 Winners, 1 AI: How Machine Learning Cracked the Sport of Kings
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- [00:01]
Dr. Tamara Nall
What if AI could pick the winning horse before the race even starts? In this episode of Lead With AI I sit down with Mike Skurrer, founder of Race Oracle AI the groundbreaking platform using artificial intelligence to revolutionize horse racing predictions. Forget guessing. This is where data meets the Derby. If you've ever dreamt of betting smarter, faster, and more accurately, this episode is your inside track. Let's get into it.
- [00:36]
Mike Skurrer
Welcome to lead with AI I'm Dr. Tamara Nall. In each episode, we will take you behind the scenes with visionary leaders shaping the future of AI across public and private sectors. Join us as we explore groundbreaking projects and innovations that are transforming industries and making a real impact on people's lives. Let's dive in.
- [01:06]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Hi, everyone. How are you? It is Dr. T. And today we have an exciting guest, Mike Scura, who is going to talk about Race Oracle AI and let me tell you, I have been to different horse competitions. Racing. I don't even know what to call it. What is it called?
- [01:27]
Mike Scura
It's called the sport of Kings.
- [01:28]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Okay. The sport of kings. Okay. And I wanted to bet, but I wasn't quite sure. So today we have a guest that is going to help you with your odds of winning. So, Mike, welcome to the show. Welcome to lead with A.I. how are you?
- [01:43]
Mike Scura
Oh, thank you very much for having me, Tamara. I'm thrilled to be here today.
- [01:48]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Awesome. So let's get into it. So tell us a little bit about yourself at your core. Who are you? How did you even think about this and think about creating an AI platform that can actually help people better predict the outcomes of horse racing?
- [02:07]
Mike Scura
Yeah, absolutely. So, so the, the origin of, of Mike Scura starts way before the origin of Race Oracle. I actually came to this country, immigrated to the United States back in the 90s, came in, moved from Poland and settled in New England. So was in Rhode island for the first part of my life and really was just absolutely excited about what the future has to hold. I was thrilled to have an opportunity to be in the United States, like an ecosystem that is just thrives on entrepreneurship. And right after university, there was really only a couple of paths for me to go because you just don't know what you don't know. And so when I went to school, English was my second language, so math is universal. And since I excelled in that, I majored in finance, minored in applied statistics because I hated writing papers. And of course, as a senior thesis for my statistics class, I had to write a 40 page paper which was the opposite of what I was trying to do. But shortly after graduating, I went into finance and started working for one of the largest asset managers in the world. And I spent the first 12 years of my career really understanding what a big company looks like and had a lot of great success in the first 12 years. But, you know, there comes a time in I think, everybody's life, especially when you experience a lot of success very early on in your career, where you kind of say to yourself, you know, is this all there is? Or am I capable of more? And so 10 years ago, I decided to, you know, ask myself that question, and I wanted to see how good I really was in terms of entrepreneurship, building businesses. And I went off on my own and never looked back. It's been an amazing journey. Entrepreneurship is something that you can't learn anywhere else besides in the trenches, actually doing it right. That's what I believe at its core is. You know, you can talk about things till you're blue in the face, but until you're finally there, raising capital, managing people, solving problems, trying to understand how things work, building product, all those things are incredibly challenging and incredibly exciting at the same time. And so I started, really, in a very small way by going and getting into mergers and acquisitions, buying a very small company that was doing less than a million dollars in revenue and growing that, having some early success in a very small way, a measurable way, a way that I could really kind of get my hands around. And then from there, it just kind of snowballed into trying to find the most scalable business opportunities that the world has to offer.
- [05:32]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Right.
- [05:33]
Mike Scura
And along the way, I partnered up with a co founder of mine. He's a level 3 CFA, one of the smartest, most astute capital markets individuals I know. And the two of us were on this. Has been. Have been on this journey together, trying to find these scalable ideas that, you know, could potentially change the way that people look at entertainment and sports in general. So having lived in a number of different places in my career, the Northeast, in Boston and in Rhode island and in Dallas, Texas, being exposed to a lot of different cultures in the Pacific Northwest, and then finally in 2012, moving to, out of all places, Louisville, Kentucky.
- [06:24]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Okay.
- [06:26]
Mike Scura
Yeah. And when I. That's right. That's right. And. And when I, you know, when I told my wife first we were going to Kentucky, she. She asked me where it was first. And then, you know, I. Since I, when we, when we got here, it was an incredible experience. Just, we moved here 12 years ago to. To be here for a couple of years, and and do something else. And. And here we are 12 years later. Just completely fell in love with the culture. And one of the biggest things about the culture here in Kentucky is horse racing.
- [06:56]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Yes. So my best friend lives in Louisville. Louisville. So very familiar with it and very familiar with Kentucky Derby and.
- [07:03]
Mike Scura
Yeah, excellent. That's great to hear. So as we, as we got ingrained in the culture here, our first Kentucky Derby was in 2012 and we haven't missed one since. With the exception of. With the exception of the COVID Derby, of course, nobody was allowed to go to the track. But we were surrounded by people in the equine industry, folks that were trainers, that were jockeys that took care of the horses that were in the racing industry. And one of the main themes that was really resonating across the business is that the sport is dying and there's not as many people attending. May be a little bit of out of reach for. For a lot of people. A lot of people find it. A lot of people find it very intimidating because, yeah, it's, it seems like, you know, how could you ever, you know, try to pick a winning horse, right? What I mean, there's so many variables that, that go between the, the lineage and how old the horse is and where they raced and, and who's riding the horse, right. Which jockey it is. So it's an intimidating sport. It. And we were really trying to find a solution to bring the next generation of the horse racing fan back to the racetrack.
- [08:44]
Mike Skurrer
And.
- [08:45]
Dr. Tamara Nall
And what was that moment? What was that one moment where you said what race oracle were starting it? Like, were you at a Kentucky Derby? Were you drinking bourbon afterwards? Talk to us about that.
- [08:56]
Mike Scura
Yeah. So actually the moment was when we were at one of the Kentucky Derbys, this was about five years ago now. And a gentleman next to me, a couple tables away from me was handed a check for $400,000.
- [09:18]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Oh, wow.
- [09:18]
Mike Scura
Or picking five of the last races in the Kentucky Derby correctly, the winning horse. And I, I was shocked. And awe and awe. And I walked over to him and we actually, I found we had some mutual friends and we struck up a conversation and I find out that he. This, not only was this not pure luck, but he does this on a regular basis. And he told me that he personally, on average can pick about 58 to 65% of races correctly.
- [10:01]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Oh, wow. Wow.
- [10:04]
Mike Scura
Now, an individual like that with decades of experience going to the racetrack, understanding the horses, the jockeys, the trainers, the conditions, he has so much knowledge over decades of experience. And we thought about, you Know this, something like this could never be replicated until we started seeing large language models come around and machine learning become available to the general public and, and, and tools in AI that, that became available to us over the last couple of years that didn't exist five years ago when I was having this conversation.
- [10:56]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Right, right. And talk to me about what is a moment, what's a holy smokes moment. Talk to me about a jaw dropping moment where one of your customers, I want to the users of your platform was like, oh my God, is this really happening? Like, did I really get this right? Did I really make this much money? Talk to us about a short scenario like that.
- [11:19]
Mike Scura
Yeah, we were actually three weeks ago at Churchill Downs watching some races and we were doing very traditional ground and pound marketing. We were talking to people about what we're doing and how we're doing it and just walking around a racetrack and we spotted a couple of folks who were at the ticket window and they were complete novices, first time at the racetrack. So kind of, I would say ideal customer, somebody new to the space. And we showed them how easy it is to pull up our platform, pick the latest race that you're looking at and then take a, make a determination of what the top picks look like based on the statistical probability and the AI odds. And lo and behold, the person ended up winning $1,700 that day.
- [12:23]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. So is it kind of like a quick pick? You know, I, I sometimes go in, I used to live in New New York going to bodegas and people say I want a quick pick. And it tells me what I. Is that kind of what your platform does? I can choose or you tell me.
- [12:38]
Mike Scura
So it's, it really is a, it's a tool. Right. All what we want to do is we want to really simplify the decision making for the fan because there's. If you've ever opened up a racing sheet or a race book when you're at the track or if you're watching at home, I mean it looks like an Excel spreadsheet and it's just full of numbers and most people have no clue what any of those numbers mean.
- [13:07]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Yeah.
- [13:08]
Mike Scura
So we really needed to find a way to take all those numbers and simplify it into a very easy graphic that shows you based on the 600,000 horse races that the model has learned from in the past, but based on all of the current conditions. And we run the model every 10 minutes so we get the most up to date. So if there's A scratch. If a horse falls out of a race, for example, if a trainer decides to pull them out, that gets updated in the model. If it starts raining in the middle of the day, that gets updated in the model because now they're running on a muddy track versus a dry track. So all of those things are live updates within the platform, and they all impact what is going to happen in that race. And what we do is we take all of that information, all of that data, and we simplify it into a very simple bar chart that has the horse's name and what our probability of that horse winning the race is. And it's as simple as that.
- [14:17]
Dr. Tamara Nall
This runs 10 minutes. Every 10 minutes, 24, 7 on every.
- [14:23]
Mike Scura
Race in the United States.
- [14:24]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Okay, so every race on the United States. So is racing all year round?
- [14:28]
Mike Scura
There is. Yep, there is racing. Most people know horse racing for what we can call the Triple Crown, which is the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes. Those are the three biggest races in, in our industry and that's where we see the most activity. So just to give you kind of frame of reference, 150,000 people attended Churchill Downs for the Kentucky Derby, and there was over $2 billion that was bet on the Kentucky Derby race.
- [15:05]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Wow.
- [15:05]
Mike Scura
Alone. So, so, so there is, there's some, some, you know, significant money flowing around there.
- [15:14]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Yes, no, absolutely. And you talked about how just the other day you, you met a new, you know, a novice and you introduced them to the platform. You know, they won seventeen hundred dollars. Talk to me since you started this Race Oracle AI Journey, talk to me about a time where you were like, yes, and you jumped up and did your victory dance. If you want to show us what that is, that's fine too. But just a moment where it's like we did it. Where even you yourself was, was in shock. Like I cannot believe that I might from Poland am standing here and Race Oracle is doing this. That you yourself, your LLM was so powerful that it shocked even you.
- [15:56]
Mike Scura
So, so I'll, I'll preface this with the fact that we, we launched this product and so the, the Race Oracle was born on May 1 the of this year and, and the Kentucky Derby was on May 3rd of this year. So, so the model was, was running and learning for three days and on the third day, and we have the, we have the, the, the data to prove this and we're going to be posting all of this on all of our social media channels. So the proof is in the pudding. We are posting all of our yes all of our picks and everything. But on the third day, it actually picked the top two horses that finished first and second in the Kentucky Derby. It picked them. It didn't pick the order in which they finished, but it picked the top two horses. So if you had an exact. Which is first and second horse, but if you had them coming in in any order, you were very well off that particular day. And we ended up placing the winning bet on the Kentucky Derby that day, which was very exciting. But the fact that the model was only alive for three days and learning only on three days worth of races and we were able to get that particular race right was very exciting because it's one of the hardest races to actually predict because there's so many good horses running.
- [17:37]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Yeah. And you know, horses running in so many different variables. Okay, Mike, now I have an issue. And my issue is we were introduced before May 1, and I could have played in one. I'm here. And this is. I mean, I'm gonna just tell you. This is an example of why I just love this podcast. Because AI is so powerful and there are all of these different products that are being made and developed, and our listeners can find out about this. So this is exciting. But that is absolutely amazing. That is absolutely amazing that you could do that. Raise Oracle AI within three days of data iterating can do that. That is amazing. Now let's get to something that my listeners do like to talk about, and that's the ethics. You know, ethics you're dealing with, obviously some very powerful tool. And how do you keep the human in the loop? How do you maintain the ethics around what you're building? So do you have enemies? That's another thing. Like, do you have enemies? And who are they?
- [18:48]
Mike Scura
They haven't. You know, maybe we'll. We'll get some nasty grams after this podcast from folks from some potential folks, but I doubt it. This seems to be kind of a net positive across the board if you think about the companies that are actually accepting the bets. So, like the Churchill Downs or the Twin Spires of the world, the TVGs, you know, they're in the business of the way that horse betting works. It's paramutual, so there's nobody really on the other side that is losing. It's just a pool of money that gets divvied up. Right. And so the organizations that are actually taking these bets on these horses, they would love for more people to be placing more bets.
- [19:49]
Dr. Tamara Nall
So. So there's not like a house.
- [19:51]
Mike Scura
There's. There's not Like a house. No, it's not like, it's not like a sports bet. It, it's, it's a different form of betting. That's why it's regulated in a different way than than traditional sports betting is, is regulated or that you would see gambling be regulated. So it's not, it's. Horse racing is not considered gambling. I just want to be very clear with the audience. It's not regulated as gambling in the United States. It's not regulated as sports betting in the United States. It's regulated as its own entity, standalone entity.
- [20:26]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Okay, that's helpful. So yeah, no enemies and even if you have them, none of our guests are going to send you any nasty.
- [20:32]
Mike Scura
That's right. Yeah. So, so you know, net net, we believe it's, it's a great positive because one, it, it helps people have more confidence in, in the wagers that they make on on particular horses. So it, it also allows them to, to possibly wager more once the model is, is, you know, once they believe in the model is more tested. You, you still have to make the right kind of wager. So just because you know which horse is going to win, that doesn't mean those are, that is the best bet to make in terms of payout. Right. So you still have to know how to make the, the correct bet, which we also help you do by providing additional tools that, that guide you in saying this is the highest probability bet, this is the highest payout bet. And, and the fan can really make a determination of if they would, would they rather make a safe bet or would they rather make a more risky bet? That's the, that's kind of the difference that were able to show fans but it just gives everybody a little bit more confidence in what they're seeing. And the biggest thing that I, I really wanted to do is I wanted to bring the sport of horse racing to the next generation of fans and it, and, and eliminate that intimidating factor of, of this being a complicated and really just like a knowledge intensive endeavor. I think this, this is from personal experience. I'll tell you it's a lot of fun. It's a great social event. You know, there's few places that are better to go for, for a day and spend with your friends or co workers or entertaining potential business clients. And then if you can pull out a tool out of your pocket. Yes, that eliminates a lot of the guesswork. It creates a lot of great entertainment.
- [22:36]
Dr. Tamara Nall
And it would make you very cool too. You pull it out and then you're Talking about different stuff and place embeds and then you win. And everyone's like, oh my God. You definitely give you kudo points for being like the cool person in the crowd.
- [22:48]
Mike Scura
No doubt.
- [22:49]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Ethics. Talk to me a little bit about ethics. So how are y' all looking at ethics around building and further developing Race Oracle?
- [22:57]
Mike Scura
Yeah, so first and foremost we need to make sure that our, our data is accurate and it's coming from reputable sources. So I think like in most AI based businesses, what you put into the models is critical in terms of what you get out of them. Right. So we have partnerships with a couple of the largest data providers in this space that are providing us with accurate, timely data that then we can use within the models. And that's really the most important thing is that we give data with integrity to our customers.
- [23:46]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Yeah, no, that's important. Now let's talk about the future. I used to ask this question and say, okay, let's think about 20, 30 or five years from now. But AI is evolving so much. I mean it could be a month from now. So let's talk about what is the future of Race Oracle AI. Where do you see it? And in the near future we, we.
- [24:08]
Mike Scura
Hope and plan that one day we will have so many people using Race Oracle AI that it will actually move the odds on the horses themselves. So if we, if our model predicts that a certain horse is going to do better than others, we believe that so many people could potentially bet on that horse that it would move the odds in the favor of that horse. So, so our short term goal is that enough people will trust the platform and use the platform that we will create so much volume in the industry that actually we will have an impact on horse favorability within races. Longer term, we would love to bring Race Oracle into other race arenas. So motorsports is really the next thing on our radar. We're looking at F1 and NASCAR and other supercar race leagues and, and that's the next place where we wanna try to create an edge for the racing fans.
- [25:23]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Got it, Got it. So if I'm a listener and it's like, gosh, I've always wanted to place a bet, I've always wanted to be affiliated with a Kentucky Derby, for instance. What is something that they can do this week to try build, explore the power of Race Oracle AI?
- [25:43]
Mike Scura
Well, it's as simple as jump into RaceOracle AI. You can enter, we have a free trial, you can take it to the track, or if you are in a state where you have mobile Race betting available, you can use it as a companion to your betting tool. So whether that's TwinSpires or TBG or another provider like FanDuel or DraftKings. And actually next Saturday on June 4th, the last leg of the Triple Crown will be running in New York at the Belmont Stakes. We will be there. So if we can bump into each other, I'd love to say hi to anybody. Race Oracle will be there. We will be providing odds, and we'd love to, you know, take questions or help people, you know, just have a more engaging time at the track and go home with pockets stuffed full of cash.
- [26:45]
Dr. Tamara Nall
I love that. That's amazing. Now that is definitely a cta. That's definitely a call to action. I love that. So we always have a segment called From One Genius to Another. And I'm going to read your question, Mike. So your question is based on your predictions and based on what we've talked about, you're pretty good at it. When and why will an AI scientist win Nobel Prizes in the remaining categories of physiology or medicine, peace, economic sciences and literature?
- [27:21]
Mike Scura
I'll say health care is going to be the one that is going to happen, I think. First. I recently attended a Smart Cities conference in San Francisco and was privileged to sit in and listen to a couple of panels of some of the smartest people I've ever met in my entire life. And the innovation that is happening in healthcare and the way that individuals and companies are leveraging AI and machine learning to advance medicine and solve current, current ailments, current diseases, and more importantly, what is happening around the realm of preventative medicine is, Is absolutely breathtaking. And I think we're. We're months, you know, not even years, but months away from, from incredible breakthroughs that are probably already out there. They just haven't been approved by the FDA yet, because that's probably the biggest linchpin in this whole thing. I will say that healthcare is really the. The probably the most immediate frontier where you'll see the most amount of innovation occur.
- [28:41]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Got it. Okay. Want to take any predictions on any of the other ones? Are we gonna stick with. With medicine and healthcare?
- [28:48]
Mike Scura
I think medicine, I would say probably, you know, in the space of energy would. Would be my. Would be my close second. If not, you know, maybe tight for first, but it has to be somewhere. There's, there's a lot of really smart people working on those two fields because those two are probably the most important. See, as us, we kind of took the easy way out and we went down towards things that are more fun and we like to solve problems in the space of entertainment. Maybe one day we'll try to tackle something more challenging but for the time being we're going to stick to entertainment.
- [29:27]
Dr. Tamara Nall
I love that. I love that. Okay, let's have our bonus rapid fire now. So what's the. I'm going to quickly give the. Ask the question. You're going to quickly give the response. Most overrated tech trend AI for everything.
- [29:40]
Mike Scura
Is, would be, you know, you, it's coming in a lot of different ways but I, there's still a lot of things that, that it can't do. So, so there's a lot of noise and I think a lot of like fake models that are coming out and you know, as much good as there is in AI, I think there's a lot of bad actors out there too trying to create, you know, short term profits through things that may be not as lawful or legal as, as they should be. So you definitely have to validate everything you look at. Yeah, but that would be probably the most overrated trend is kind of the AI for everything.
- [30:24]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Okay, what about underhyped AI Breakthrough?
- [30:28]
Mike Scura
The most under hyped I think probably in problem solving. I would say like especially when we talk about decision making for large organizations, things that we don't hear about on a daily basis. The things that are going on behind the scenes that are helping make better decisions five years from now or 10 years from now, things that are just really, you know, we can't see on the surface that that's probably the one that's most undervalued.
- [31:00]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Okay. One book everyone should read.
- [31:05]
Mike Scura
This is, this is always my go to and, and I think it will continue to be. But how to Win Friends and Influence People is, is the book that you know, I would say probably anybody that's over the age of 40, 40, I'm 40 years old. So I'll say that anybody over the age of 40 probably is like, oh man, you know, kind of same old, same old. But I would say I don't know if there's too many people under the age of 30 that have listened to or read this book. And as technology continues to take over and really dominate, interpersonal skills are going to become more and more valuable for younger people. And this book just will continue to stand the test of time of how to get things done in a nice way.
- [31:57]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Right. Love it. And the boldest AI prediction that you believe will happen.
- [32:03]
Mike Scura
So I predict that AGI already exists and I've talked to some folks that convinced Me of, of that.
- [32:16]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Okay.
- [32:17]
Mike Scura
That might have access to, to, you know, things that other people, very few people in the world have access to. And those folks believe, and some of them have even seen that AGI already exists.
- [32:36]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Those of our listeners that don't know.
- [32:37]
Mike Scura
What AGI is, tell us it's artificial general intelligence. So. So the ability of the AI model to make their own decisions, think independently. And, and, and that's, that's.
- [32:57]
Dr. Tamara Nall
And not need us.
- [32:58]
Mike Scura
Not need us. And not need us. And not need us. Yes.
- [33:01]
Dr. Tamara Nall
AI doesn't need the humans.
- [33:03]
Mike Scura
That's right. So, so I think that that chasm has been crossed. I just, you know, it's. Only a few people are aware of this, which is probably for the best. It's kind of like, you know, you don't. Even if aliens exist, you probably don't want to let everybody know they did.
- [33:23]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Right. Okay. I love that. So, Mike, I have loved this conversation. I'm excited about winning. Our listeners are excited about winning. Tell us again, how do we get in? How do we start with the product? Where do we go? How do we get in contact with you and your team? We'd love to follow you and continue success.
- [33:42]
Mike Scura
Yeah, absolutely. So please visit us@raceoracle AI. It is really a very simple and intuitive tool that can help you just have a lot more fun and take advantage of something that you maybe not have been able to take advantage of before. And feel free to get in touch with us@timaceoracle AI is our go to. That's my co founder's email. He's managing all the inboxes right now as I'm out there on the front lines, so hopefully he'll get an influx of questions coming to him.
- [34:21]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Amazing, Mike. Thank you so much. This was such an amazing conversation and can't wait to hear about the future of Race Oracle AI.
- [34:30]
Mike Scura
Thank you, Tamra. Enjoyed it.
- [34:31]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Thanks.
- [34:33]
Mike Skurrer
Thanks for tuning in to lead with AI. I'll see you next time as we continue exploring the cutting edge innovations shaping AI across the public and private sectors. Until then, keep leading with AI.