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Wikipedia have a rather nice phrase for luck, "luck is probability taken personally". Perhaps in this thread it could be "luck is randomness taken personally".
Jim
JimF,
I quite like that. It sums it up very well. Most people believe they are singled out for good or bad luck by some deity. That may be so, but I don’t believe it. Shakespeare, who knew a thing or two about the human condition, put these memorable words into Hamlet’s soliloquy:
‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ (bad luck, presumably)
Keats, who had more than his share of bad luck, was able to recognise ‘the magic hand of chance’, even though he thought he might never live long enough to benefit from it.
Random chance has been recognised by poets and scholars down the ages. They must have suspected that nothing is pre-ordained, although religions have always claimed otherwise.
Saint or sinner, rich or poor, luck seems to me to be impartial to anyone’s status or beliefs, although how we are able to deal with it sorts us out into winners and losers.
Although, also in Hamlet – one of my favourites:
"When sorrows come they come not single spies,
But in battalions."I prefer the term "randomness" to "luck".
Understandable it sounds far more intellectual trying to measure "randomness" than trying to measure " luck" But isn’t it the same thing when it comes to racing? Also doesn’t it apply to all the runners in equal measures?
Be Lucky
Mtoto .. it’s a proper question and I don’t know the answer.
I would say luck is a phenomema about an individual event that occurs within a framework of probabilities that are true over a long series of events. Randomness could be seen how quickly or slowly these individual ‘lucky’ events take to come around to their true probabilities, over time.
Despite what has been said by Robert and everybody, I am still convinced that randomness does not play such a greater part at high probabilities than it does at lower ones.
Dave Jay,
Thanks for the reply. To be honest the post was aimed at Prufrock as I’m still trying to understand his "strange" logic. He was the first to bring this "randomness" to my attention and I was rather hoping it would explain, or help to explain his thinking.
The way I’m reading this thread is luck or randomness as he prefers, must apply to all the runners in a race, so how does it give an edge? Surely it effects all the runners whatever their price? Sorry but the whole thing smacks of guessing, can anyone really back a horse hoping luck will intervene. Even if it does look like luck is it really? On Saturday a horse fell at the last when it looked the winner. I had looked at the race it was over the fixed brush hurdles. I had decided a chaser, or a French horse would win it as the technique needed to jump these fences is different to conventional hurdles. The horse that fell was "unlucky" the winner was "lucky" but where does the punter who had done his homework stand? He didn’t back the unlucky horse, and may have backed the lucky horse does that make him lucky?
You, and others have made this an interesting thread, and I thank you for giving me something to think about. But in the long run don’t we all make our own luck by doing the homework. Yes, sh1t happens, but how can you back horses hoping the unexpected (and sometimes the not so unexpected) is going to pay off in the long run. For me anyway this is a nonsense. The only way forward to study the form book, do your homework, and find the value. Value is backing a horse(s) with a good chance of winning at prices better than expected.
Be Lucky
Mtoto,
I believe you are on the right track.Your approach is the same as most of us, I don’t think anyone here is suggesting trying to anticipate good or bad luck, rather it’s just being aware that our selection methods are subject to the vagaries of random chance.Studying form, putting the work in and looking for value prices is the way forward. Ignore luck, but accept that it will often upset our calculations.
Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater!I thought it was clear that my reference to randomness rather than luck was somewhat tongue in cheek. But, that said, I think the post "luck is probability taken personally" hits the nail on the head as to why "luck" carries baggage.
This is a bit of an overspill from a previous thread in which some people seemed to think that races had predetermined outcomes and that all you needed to do to be a good punter was to crack the puzzle often enough.
Races do not have predetermined outcomes (strictly speaking, nothing in this universe does) and I think that’s something we would agree upon given your remark about value.
Randomness plays its part in a race. As much to the point, randomness has played its part in past races. I am a form (and a time) student through and through, but my punting improved greatly when I started excusing past bad performances more and not being carried away by past good performances as much as I used to. It improved when I stopped being so deterministic, in other words.
I think the whole point with randomness, well the whole point for me, is how big a part does randomness play?
We know it plays a big part because staking plans that chase losses don’t work, if they did there would be no bookies.
We know in mechanical games that Price-Waterhouse deem 300,000,000 iteratons of any game (Hi/Lo) to be fair, or completely random.
We also know that horses don’t have a normal dstribution when it comes to races about their relative chances.
I just wanted to know what other peoples thoughts were on the matter, as a factor for pricing races.
I didn’t think that people would not believe in it …
We also know that horses don’t have a normal dstribution when it comes to races about their relative chances.
Not sure I understand, can you elaborate on that.
Jim
I didn’t think that people would not believe in it.
Dave Jay
It isn’t that I don’t believe in randomness, I just don’t think it plays an important part in horse racing. Roulette, dice, and the lottery fair enough. I can’t see knowing randomness exists can give you an edge in horse racing. All you can do is adjust the prices on all the runners to allow for it, if it bothers you.
I am a form (and a time) student through and through, but my punting improved greatly when I started excusing past bad performances more and not being carried away by past good performances as much as I used to.
Prufrock,
I’m afraid the above statment has lost me. When you are looking at form good or bad, are you not trying to find a reason for that performance? If it is all down to randomness why bother with the form aspect?
This is a bit of an overspill from a previous thread in which some people seemed to think that races had predetermined outcomes and that all you needed to do to be a good punter was to crack the puzzle often enough.
I suppose it depends on how you view a good punter. For me a good punter is one who has weighed all the reasonable situations that could happen for or against your bet. After this is done a price against the horse winning is measured and if/when a fair price or better can be found you take it. If this can be done often enough you win/make a profit and are a good punter. Whats a good punter in your eyes?
Be Lucky
If it is all down to randomness why bother with the form aspect?
Now you are putting words into my mouth.
It is not "all" down to randomness.
But randomness is a factor and plenty of performances require no explanation other than that things do not always happen as we expect them to. Even more performances require no explanation other than that if things had happened differently, though in a way that we could not reasonably predict, the result would have been different.
Yes, I evaluate the probabilities of horses winning, and I use form and time to help me with that, but I don’t lose sight of the fact that pretty much anything could happen and does happen if you repeat the exercise often enough.
It’s not a shortcoming of you, me, or form study. It’s just how things are.
Now you are putting words into my mouth.
Prufrock,
That certainly isn’t my intention, I really am trying to understand where your coming from.
But randomness is a factor and plenty of performances require no explanation other than that things do not always happen as we expect them to. Even more performances require no explanation other than that if things had happened differently, though in a way that we could not reasonably predict, the result would have been different.
If there are plenty of exmples could you point me to one or two? Here I’m talking about good class races, the type of race a horse would be trained and aimed at, not a run of the mill "bookie fodder" race. I firmly believe class horses run to their profile consistently and randomness plays little part in these races. I also have some trouble with classifying randomness with when something happens you or I didn’t except, surely randomness is ONLY when something happens NOBODY expected.
Be Lucky
I think we are only debating semantics now.
Yesterday, anyone watching the racing at Newbury could have seen several examples of random chance at work. Horses falling, fallers bringing down other horses, fallers badly interfering with other horses and horses making bad blunders when cruising up to the leaders………and that’s just the horses I backed…… only a fraction of the incidents that occurred in the races I actually watched.
The point is we can be reasonably certain that such things will happen(much like road accidents), but we do not know precisely when and who will be involved. So they are not unexpected because horses fall and people crash, but the names of the victims are usually unpredictable.
Artemis
Betting on road accidents!
When – Black spots (Jumps)
Who – Dangerous or careless drivers and the innocent. (Jockeys)
Seems predictable to me. Certainly not random.
Perhaps I could make it plainer without patronising anyone.
If you spin a roulette wheel, the ball will land in a cup numbered 1 to 36 or a cup numbered 0. (predictable and determinstic because there are no other possibilities unless the ball jumps out of the wheel).
Which cup will it land in? Nobody knows. It will obey the laws of physics until it comes to rest but we cannot predict its movements before it comes to rest because it will strike the wheel and bounce about in a random manner. In this case, and most other kinds of uncertainty, random and unpredictable have the same meaning, although you could still assert that the fate of the ball is random AND predictable in another sense. Semantics.
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