Introduction

[Ken(West Derby)]

Mark, that’s a nice name, just continue posting will you? Whether or not it’s factually correct or not (don’t ask me, I’m useless) does it really matter? In Universal terms we’re only on this planet for a split second so what the heck, just do your own thing.
As for Caledon, I’ve sussed him. He owns a large string of horses and only bets on them, and only when he’s been assured that they will win. No wonder his percentage success is so good. Please feel free to PM me Cal but only when the money’s down. You know it makes sense and you know I’ll be eternally grateful.
Ken

[moehat]

I want to read what everyone has got to say; this is a learning curve for me. I only have small bets and

just about make a small profit [daren’t keep a record!]. I really value reading people who explain the logic behind their bets, because I don’t have any form of logic.

[Ken(West Derby)]

(Sorry Mark, couldn’t resist it – I’m so weak!)

Gosh Ethan, that’s some forensic assassination. It’s not going to go down well in the Caledon Corporation, is it?
I think the time has come for Cal to come clean and admit it, you’re too embarrassed to reveal your true identity aren’t you. If I give members a few clues will you own up to the truth, Cal.
1. You live in that big house at the end of The Mall.
2. You own a corgi or two.
3. You wear a tiara when posting.

Now don’t blush Queenie. The forum’s open to all sorts, so carry on posting in your usual regal style. You probably know of our other noble patron, GC, who went to Eton, or was it Harrow?

[Caledon]

Hi Ethan,

Don’t bother… but then I guess you may as well cause you obviously are in love with your own smart ass.

All I wanted was to share intelligent conversation with possibly like minded people… but I should have known better than to look in a Racing Forum where, with a few notable exceptions, all you are likely to find are opiniated losers.

I have no need to explain what I do to you or any others so being as polite as I can… go shove your head where the sun don’t shine you pompous ass.

[Ken(West Derby)]

That’s what I like to brighten up my day – a bit of vitriole. Normally, I’d try to mediate but I can’t find any common ground to work on. Perhaps if Ethan could admit his dissection of Caledon’s posts was, perhaps, a tad inflammatory and if Cal agreed that his response was a little ‘below the belt’ then maybe that would be a useful starting point in repairing this damaged relationship.
Failing that, DIVORCE!
Ken

[Tuffers]

Tuffers,
If they are such poor examples why give them? Seems pointless.

Mark

Mark

I’m posting on an internet forum not arguing in a court of law. I just post thoughts as they develop in my head rather than agonising about them before posting.

I see you are studiously refusing to acknowledge the good example I gave later

Tuffers

[Tuffers]

Ethan

OK. Let’s have a look at your analysis of Caledon’s posts.

First of all you attack the idea that he wants to discuss betting with other professional punters. Er, isn’t a horseracing internet forum exactly where such a person should come?

You then seem to ridicule the idea that you can win money based on pure maths rather than form. With just the most cursory of analysis I have given you in a previous post a mathematical method (backing the favourite in all 7f maidens at Chester) that would have produced an even better ROI than Caledon quotes.

Finally, you pluck out of thin air the idea that Caledon needs to have made £200K a year to have taken 5 years off and then suggest that is impossible. Two issues there – one is that that is a completely arbitrary figure (most of us could live off £50K a year quite comfortably) and the second is there is no reason at all why a pro-punter shouldn’t make that sort of money. I stand to be corrected but I always understook Eddie Fremantle and Dave Nevison made large sums on a much lower ROI.

[The Ante-Post King]

Caledon, you have proved you can capture the attention of many on here
with your admission that you dont actually have a clue about horse racing
but you are a professional gambler betting on horseracing! Who has had a
5 year sabbatical! When quizzed about your "Secret System" the only crumb you have thrown from your table is "Race type/ Race course"! Those
magic words have got the "Gullibles" on here reaching out for that carrot you keep dangling thinking your play on words actually have any meaning!
Unfortunately we will never know your system if its as successful as you say, but it sounds more like a lottery to me as there are no races that can
be number crunched into finding the winner! I shall have to let the cat out the bag and say you have devised a system to win on the Virtual reality racing!!

[graysonscolumn]

You probably know of our other noble patron, GC, who went to Eton, or was it Harrow?

To borrow a song title from Leicester’s finest Anglo-Indian beat combo Cornershop – "Where d’U Get Your Information"???

Product of an Oldham comprehensive school, I must inform you. The closest I got to "Harrow" was when we played Cowboys and Hindians.

Ken’s interest in me is all rather touching. I’ve not had a stalker since my days in public librarianship – high time that was put right.

gc

Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.

[Tuffers]

there are no races that can
be number crunched into finding the winner!

Not true, APK. I’ve already given you an example.

[Caledon]

if Cal agreed that his response was a little ‘below the belt’

Hi Ken,

Why? All I seem to have done since I joined this forum is defend what I do for a living. Everything I say seems to have some sort of hidden agenda to some.

I am bored with it now and basically don’t need it so will move on to more productive things.

I have enjoyed the friendly banter with yourself and a few others, but then others have been just plain obnoxious. Jealousy is a sad thing and to see it so prevelant here is also saddening.

All I hope is that someone reading this thread may just be prompted into getting out of the rut and look for the answers where they really are. And if they do and find them and start doing this full time, then they can still feel free to drop me an email.

[Ken(West Derby)]

GC, my stalking days and ability to stalk ended when Helen Shapiro seemed not to be winking at me via Top of The Pops on the television.
I realised then that my perception of myself as a double for a mixture of Adam Faith, Joe Brown and Patrick McGoohan was perhaps a stretch of the imagination too far.
As far as your kind self is concerned GC, my adulation only extends to the quantity of postings, quality of information and knowledge you posess which you so selflessly share with this forum. Please do not interpret my slavish admiration as anything but an expression of my desire to walk in your footsteps.
Cheers
All in Fun
Ken

[graysonscolumn]

LOL Ken! You don’t want to walk in my footsteps, I assure you, unless you want to end up in some fairly muddy fields watching some fat old hunters.

Ethan – I had some guy follow me around Scarborough for several months after I’d found him a Haynes manual for his Nissan Micra which, it transpired, was the same make and age as my own. Apparently that made us blood brothers or something, rather than just librarian and customer.

Finding him on my doorstep one evening was a bit creepy, but he lost interest totally when I upgraded to a newer model.

gc

Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.

[Gingertipster]

Tuffers,
If they are such poor examples why give them? Seems pointless.

Mark

Mark

I’m posting on an internet forum not arguing in a court of law. I just post thoughts as they develop in my head rather than agonising about them before posting.

I see you are studiously refusing to acknowledge the good example I gave later

Tuffers

Did not comment on the "good" example because I missed what your "good" example was Tuffers. But I see you have refered to it since so take it you mean favourites in 7f maidens at Chester.

A mere coincidence Tuffers.

When you think, how many courses are there in the country? And how many distances are there? And how many types of race?

The biggest coincidence would be if there were NO apparent winning formulas for this type of thing. But what has happened in the past often does not happen in the future.

When the sample is only of 6 races a year. O.K. last year it got 5 winners from those 6 but these were almost all uncompetitive affairs. With an average priced winner of just over 5/4. The five winners from 6 races paying out the equivalent of less than one winner at 13/2.

This is the stuff system sellers dream of, anyone can go back and find anomalies (is that the right word?) like this. Trouble is it is no good them working in the past if they don’t in the future.

There is No reason for any system working in the future that involves backing certain favourites winning. In your "good" example, just before the off; if horse A is 2/1 and B 85/40 and the two flip flop (to each others prices). Are we to think horse B now has an infinitely better chance than it did before the flip flop? Just because it came in 1 percentage point in the betting. And the opposite for horse A.

Suggest if you want to find something similar Tuffers, but with a better eye to future profit; then concentrate on certain course and distance draw advantages. You might get a year or two’s profit from them. But when it gets well known, betting is effected with shorter prices on offer and profit will eventually turn to loss. As well as any system / method; studying form lets you realise when the value is no longer there and so stopping the system before it loses too much money.

Mark

Value Is Everything

[Gerald]

Good post, Mark.

[Anonymous]

Finally, you pluck out of thin air the idea that Caledon needs to have made £200K a year to have taken 5 years off and then suggest that is impossible. Two issues there – one is that that is a completely arbitrary figure (most of us could live off £50K a year quite comfortably) and the second is there is no reason at all why a pro-punter shouldn’t make that sort of money. I stand to be corrected but I always understook Eddie Fremantle and Dave Nevison made large sums on a much lower ROI.

Tuffers

To quite comfortably live off £50k p.a. isn’t quite enough, as to build sufficient tank to live without betting 5 years, one also has to live whilst doing so. Assuming that to be a fair figure, we can conjecture that he needs to generate 100k a year, for 5 years solid, to accumulate that kind of surplus.
Using Caledon’s own figures, that suggests he was betting an average of 6k per week for 5 years, and winning 2k, without using the exchanges, and apparently, without his accounts being closed.
Now, I don’t have a maths degree, but that just does not add up?

[Tuffers]

I still think this thread has legs so I want to put forward one last time my reasoning to invite (sensible) comment.

Let’s first of all start with some common ground:

Is it possible for bookmakers to price up a race in a way where the price offered about one or more horses in the race fails to accurately reflect its chances of winning?

I hope that we are all agreed that it is. Certainly every ‘value’ punter (Ginge ) has an approach to punting that relies on some horses being overpriced based on their (subjective) assessment of those horses’ chance of winning.

If it is possbile for bookmakers to underestimate some horses then is it also possible that there are certain factors that make a bookmaker more likely to underestimate a horse (eg undervaluing a certain piece of form, particular trainer/jockey, breeding etc etc)?

I would argue that it is possible. I believe that certain types of horse are consistently overbet and that others are consistently underbet. The reason I believe this happens is connected with the fact that the human brain is not very good at calculating probabilities. We are hard-wired to give too much weight to certain factors and not enough weight to others.

Assuming you can at least be open-minded about the above point, is it then possible that the same factors that cause bookmakers to underestimate a horse will also cause punters to do the same? In other words both parties in the betting marketplace believe the horse to be fairly priced but both are mistaken in that belief?

Again, I would respectfully submit that it is possible, particularly if the crucial factor is the way all of our brains work to calculate probabilities.

If the above hypothesis is fair then surely it is inevitable that backing the type of horse that is consistently underbet blind (ie without any knowledge whatsoever of form) will be a winning strategy. You don’t need to make any individual assessments of ‘value’ as the value is already baked in the cake (to use a SM expression)

Now it may well be that the pattern isn’t obvious (in fact for such a ‘rick’ in the market to be consistently present requires it to be far from obvious) but if you crunch the numbers and assess enough variables then I believe it is almost inevitable that you will find a pattern (and not merely as a result of backfitting but rather because there genuinely is a pattern to be found).

Now if you had gone to all that trouble to discover this pattern, the last thing you would do is explain it on a public internet forum.

Caledon has probably made the mistake of coming across as slightly too cocksure and has certainly reacted badly to a few of the comments on this thread but I know from spending three years in the same house as two Maths undergraduates that those guys can get pretty fiery when it comes to talking about numbers

Finally, Ethan, if your belief that Caledon is just trying to tout a ‘system’ (and we’ve had a fair few spammers on this forum recently) is correct then I would have expected him to PM me (as I’m clearly one of the ‘gullibles’) to try to flog me that system. He hasn’t and I don’t expect him to.

[Author]

Posts