Solving Boat Race Betting Problem: What's the Logic?

[Cody007]

Im not really sure what type of problem this is so I put it here, I am new to these forums and want to see if anyone can help me.

I am playing this game where you bet fake money on these ships that will race after you bet, there are 8 ships you can support and you can support all if you want. They give a bunch of numbers which are the statistics of the ship, like oar power sail power etc. I tried every sequence to try and figure out a logical way of betting on the right ship but none seem right; I want to see if anyone else can figure it out.

Boat-----------------Sail Power--------------------------Oar Power-----------------Return Power
1. Boat 1---------------4.3---------------------------------3.7-------------------------5.6
2. Boat 2---------------3.7---------------------------------3.3-------------------------6.7
3. Boat 3---------------4.9---------------------------------4.3-------------------------4.2
4. Boat 4---------------4.4---------------------------------3.6-------------------------5.6
5. Boat 5---------------4.4---------------------------------3.8-------------------------5.4
6. Boat 6---------------3.7---------------------------------3.4-------------------------6.6
7. Boat 7---------------3.8---------------------------------3.7-------------------------6.2
8. Boat 8---------------3.5---------------------------------4.0-------------------------6.2
Boat 7 is the Winner
I can't think of any ways of doing this logically, is it random? What are your guys thoughts?

 

[fresh_42]

There are too many possible explanations which make seven the winner to point out one.

 

[DavidSnider]

It could be a mixture of random and non-random and what they aren't providing you with are the environmental variables for the race. Like "sail power" might be more beneficial on a race that has more wind but useless on one with no wind.

You could just assume you know nothing about what those variables do in the program and run some sort of machine learning / gradient descent to find better and better betting strategies over time.