I will have to look at it some more. The concern is that the staking plane which will give me more consistency with harness winnings also carries the bigger loss when I finally have a true losing day with the place system.
The current total loss on the place/fav system for 1 meeting would be $346 which would take me about a month to recover from. The revised staking plan would give me a loss for a meeting of $456. Historical records show a meeting where the fav didnt finish in a place for 5 races in a row to be very very rare but at some point it will happen so do i risk the extra $100 and would it be worth it for more consistent returns from the harness side?.
Below is a snapshot of my place system staking plan. The top one is the slightly revised version, the bottom one my current plan. The green is profit, yellow break even and pink is loss. The stop point is the 5th race and from historical records in NZ and Aussie I have only come across 1 time when the fav didnt come in a place by the 5th race.
So having given it some thought for the harness races I might go with a 4th race stop point, increase the staking to as listed and see how this works. Since I have started with this place system I have only had a few times when I have gone to the 5th race, it could be worth the risk in the long run. I will check the historical records on this.
I will stick with the bottom plan for the gallops as it is working well for that.
Hi Mike,
ReplyDeleteAre you basically betting on fav every time to be placed ? If for example you lose at $5 are you basically doubling up each time ?
You seem to be doing well anyway.
Cheers
Alex
Hi Alex, yes 2 systems, the place/fav system primarily. The staking plan at present is $1, $5, $20, $70, $250.
ReplyDeleteSo Im not doubling my bet on the place version, that staking plan is based on trying to cover the place dividends that happen on place results. Hopefully my spreadsheet snapshot will show what im doing there.
The bet doubling happens when I am betting on a win. I only do this for the gallops as the harness races often have dividends below $2 which kills you. Also once a fav does win at a meeting even if its the very first race I dont win bet that meeting again. This is because probability wise there is a chance that first win might be the only fav to win at that meeting. I also take a loss at the 8th race if no favourites have won.
Also I use the tote dividends at the meeting to find the favourite rather than the NZ TAB. If its an Australian meeting Im using the Australian tote because Kiwis being a bit patriotic will bet on a Kiwi horse in an Aussie race giving me a "false" fav.
I only bet on the favourite to place with this version. It looks risky but I went through a hell of a lot of historical data on the NZ and Australian racing websites to see how often a favourite didnt come in a top 3 place and found that there werent any instances in the last 12 months. However I have come across one instance myself last month and saw another time had happened this month although luckily I didnt bet on that meeting.
There will be a day when I get nailed on a big loss but with the infrequency of favs not coming in by the 5th race I am happy to accept those loss days because the winning days appear so far to cover it.
There are a few other things i also consider as well. I always make sure I stop betting if there are only 4 races left at a meeting so that I dont get caught out not being able to win back losses.
Im betting on a lot of races so it can be quite time consuming and often the return for a lot of races is very low. However my loss days are now spread well apart. The redeeming thing here is that I dont need to watch any races and tend to bet while watching tv, I can check the NZ tab website clock and will check a race a minute or so before it starts. I wait till about 20 seconds before the race starts and bet on the indicated favourite. Its not perfect because even after a race starts the fav on the tote can change but its a reasonably consistent indicator. So its easy to bet and watch tv at the same time but i do have to be conscious of the time of the next race. The actually betting time is only a minute or so each race then Im free to do other stuff.
I will do a posting soon explaining fully all the ins and outs of what Im doing. On the surface its reasonably simple but there are a few little traps to watch for.
The downside of what Im doing I think is that there is no skill involved on my part and also Im breaking a few of the most basic "rules" of gambling. Chasing winners etc. So some of the purist punters on the various forums I have questioned really dont like what im doing, they are convinced it will eventually fail but they dont seem to comprehend my stop betting points which are protection mechanisms and the fact I am happy to take loss days even when they can be big because im winning more than the loss days lose.
Im now pretty convinced that what im doing does work but its a bizarre betting system in all honesty. The time consumption factor for low returns would probably turn most people off.
Im still messing about with historical data and my spreadsheets to try and optimize the winnings so take any ramblings on here about new staking plans with a pinch of salt. I wont change until I have tested something properly first.
Now all I need is to understand how to write a bot that can automate my system, unfortunately all the betfair based bots dont fit what im doing so I think I need to teach myself how to do this.
Its all good fun and keeps me on my toes.