During all my searching and reading on various websites and forums I have come across many warnings about how the process of chasing winners, probability based systems and bet doubling etc is dangerous and wont work.
The trouble has been that in all the various warnings I have come across very few have been explained clearly enough and with respect to my systems they have ignored in the explanations my stop point for the bet doubling.
I will use my situation to hopefully make clear the dangers with what Im doing.
Firstly I had looked at something semi similar to what im doing many years ago, before the internet and before computers became household items. The internet and computers gave me a hint of a way to do what I had looked at years ago of possibly being viable.
Here in NZ we have one betting agency the TAB and it handles all the betting on the harness racing, gallops and dog racing. On any typical day I can be betting on 4 to 5 race meetings being held around NZ. Australia is right next door, only a few hours flight and they have roughly 5 times our population and as far as I can see about 5 times as many race meetings on any typical day. So the opportunity to bet on multiple meetings is great as the TAB here also enables betting in Australia.
The local TV racing channel is excellent and its integration with the Australian race meetings is first class, races in both countries can be held back a few minutes if there are delays for any reason and the timing of races looks to be well set up so that the vast majority of races are able to be televised live. The importance of this is that within what i am doing I am able to place bets literally seconds before the race starts and this in turn means I have a very good chance of betting on the money favourite and avoid most price plunges etc. Not always but for the most part.
So for consistency of my system it is important that i am betting as much as possible on the actual favourite, its not the end of the world if I dont but it does have an impact on its integrity in terms of the theory.
So a very quick recap, Im betting on favourite wins till I get a result at a meeting. Once I get a win I move on to the next meeting, even if its the first race in a meeting. I stop because there is a statistical chance that it may have been the only race the favourite comes through and wins.
If the favourite doesnt win I follow a staking plan which after the first 2 races basically doubles my bets. I do this until the 8th race and if I have had no results I reset, accepet the loss and start again. To simplify the explanation my staking plan would be on a $1 bas bet $1, $1, $2, $4, $8, $16, $32 and finally $64. Im doing this from the position of a bank base of $1000 ideally. This means that if I do get a loss meeting the $128 I have lost is just on 1/8th of my base bank. If I had a base bank of $2000 I would start with a base bet of $2 and so on.
The reason for the stop point in the doubling process is that its quite probable for there to be no fav winners at a meeting and some meetings can have 10 races or even more. A sequence of 10 losses would mean I had a loss of $512 which would be half my base bank wiped out.
The backbone of all of this is the statistic which is pretty well accepted that about 34% of all favourites will win.
The internet has been a huge help here in terms of research, both NZ and Australia have excellent historical records of race meetings which indicate favourites and dividends. This has meant I have been able to paper test the system using real historical records which has in term given me hope as the results have come out in the positive.
But here are where the dangers and flaws kick in.
Firstly paper testing the historical results doesnt factor in real world situations and problems. Those range from being interrupted by outside influences (phone calls, visitors, dropped internet connections) which can destroy a meetings flow. For example, and this has happened to me, say I am up to the 6th race in a meeting with no fav winning and I am getting ready to place a bet but am interrupted and miss the placing the bet i am looking at a loss so far of $24. Now say its a phone call and I miss the bet and then the fav actually wins the integrity of how I am doing this has been killed and what say that is the only fav to win in that meeting. ( its happened to me).
So the first flaw here is that I need to be able to follow an entire meeting without interruption or distraction.
BTW in my paper testing with the historical results i found between NZ and Australia going through every single meeting no fav win meetings were happening about 4 times a month which considering the high number of meetings is reasonably rare. Off the top of my head and I shall check this it works out being about 1 in 40 meetings.
The next flaw in the system is related to the above, the probability aspect. if I were able to bet every single meeting in both Australia and NZ and get the actual favourite every time even with the no fav win meetings the profits are pretty healthy. The trouble is that I cant and I doubt that there is yet the software available to do exactly that via automation.
So its quite probable that i might be able to go 6 months without hitting a single no fav win meeting just by the fact Im only actually betting on about 1/10th of all meetings and I simply miss the meetings it happens in.
However its also entirely probable that I may hit every meeting in a month in Aussie and NZ where the no fav win situation happens. there is of course that for example one weekend I might hit 4 no fav win meetings in the space of 2 days if I were unlucky enough to hit them as they appear. Its unlikely but its quite possible.
So the internet betting allows me to apply this system to multiple meetings each day in NZ and Australia which theoretically greatly increase the opportunity to make some decent profits.
It also unfortunately increases the chances that i hit the non fav win meetings because in real world terms Im unable to bet on every meeting taking place.
Its sort of like Russian Roulette.
I do have my stop betting trigger point of the 8th race and my staking plan is proportional to my bank and so far in my real world experience which is only 3 months old its worked quite well but the truth is this system is far from fool proof and is basically a gamble.
My fav place system is safer in terms of a far higher probabilty of getting the results I want but far far more dangerous in terms of wiping out any profits I have made and far harder to recover from. Its taken me about 3 weeks to make what would take me less than a week to make with the fav win version. But a loss day with the place version would take me about 2 months to recover from. The historical stats make it highly unlikely for a loss day but then there is some poor sod in the US who has been hit by lightning 7 times in his life......
So if anyone decides to copy what im doing or any variation please be completely aware that its far from perfect and I would bet people are better off trying to make systems work which are based on a sound knowledge of horse racing and understanding how to pick winners.
Finally, why am I doing it if its got this risky element to it?
Im having fun with it, Im doing pretty well so far, I have a couple of friends who are keeping track so that they can kick my arse if I end up developing a problem gambling habit and its quite simply a fun challenge to try and beat the book.....
I dont believe what Im doing and my system could provide a full time income.
At one point I had hopes it might be something I could make meaningful amounts of money out of but the reality factor has kicked in and the truth is it will only really be a little hobby on the side for me.
Hope that lot made sense.
