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Hi folks…
I did drop an intro post in the lounge, but so far no one has seen it.
Anyhow, I wonder is there any such thing as a system?
For example, SWIMBO has her system. If a horse has a name that in any way relates to someone she knows, something she’s done, somewhere she’s been etc., she’ll get me to have a tickle on it for her on Betfair. It’s a daft system, but it’s a system. And yes she does have some nice winners. Probably because she usually hears the ‘experts’ taking about a horse ‘on the telly’, or she sees it in the paddock and it looks nice.
We all have our favourite ways of divining winners (or losers) so as those ‘systems’ are going to have differences, isn’t it better to say we have a ‘methodical’ approach; rather than a system. If there was a ‘system’, we would surely all have found it by now, and the bookies would be flat broke? Yeah okay! Dream on.
I have a shelf full of racing books from ‘Always Back Winners’ to ‘Against The Crowd’. After all that reading, I decided that some of the authors wrote about racing, because they couldn’t make a profit from betting! Mainly though, I learned never to back slow horses. Obvious maybe, but there are plenty of slow runners on offer, often talked-up, to favourites as well.
My methods then: I build a list of horses to follow in early flat season, with the intention of starting my betting between May and late August.
Generally I find horses with a turn of foot, and I back them when they are running at the right courses, which means a lot of waiting about. So I don’t bet every day.
Rarely are my horses ‘down in the betting’. Generally they are listed in the top four. I don’t necessarily bet when my horses are favourite either.
The important things to me are: Fitness, Class, and Conditions, (Course, Going, Draw and the number of runners.) From my records I know if the horse is fit, and what it can cope with. So, if I think one of my ‘string’ is full of running, at the right course, and the opposition is fairly mundane, then I have a go and I am usually confident. At the very least I will always get a run for my money. (I don’t bet in races over 12 runners, and I won’t take less than 3/1, unless I have a good reason to do so.) Value!
Boiled down, my horses are game, have a finishing run, and are at or near top-weight, on a turning track. As long as they are fit, have a decent jockey, and the ground suits them, I am in with a chance.
In twenty-five years of using this approach, I only had two ‘out of profit’ years, and they weren’t on the trot. Is my approach a system? Is it a method? Let’s just say it’s the way I do things.
After a ‘sabbatical’, my health has picked up. I am ready to have another tilt at the ring. So we shall see what we shall see.
If you got this far then thanks for reading!
Regards
Rickety-Stick
Hello
Rickerty
If only I had followed
Swimbo
‘s system/method yesterday I could have had an 18/1 winner with JUST MADDIE, my grandaughters name and so perhaps her idea is not so bad.
METHOD or SYSTEM
Just one of the same, my dictionary quotes – A set of things working together, an organised scheme or METHOD.
My Thesaurus quotes – METHOD
It really does not matter what label you put on it just as long as you win, like
Swimbo
By the way, welcome.
Billy's Outback Shack
I have a shelf full of racing books from ‘Always Back Winners’ to ‘Against The Crowd’. After all that reading, I decided that some of the authors wrote about racing, because they couldn’t make a profit from betting!
I hope you don’t include the author of "Against The Crowd" in that group Rickety?
AP might take offence.
Value Is Everything
- Total Posts 17716
Statistics has many loopholes.
Why did the Germans’ miss the atom bomb ?
They missed because they believed U238 resonance was an instrument error and not real. But the Americans (professor Teller) understood it was the reaction that produces the highly fissile plutonium 239, the essential element for the production of the atomic bomb. After the war Werner Von Heisenberg said something to the effect that he deliberately wanted to mislead Hitler, but in my opinion he was a liar.
So in horse racing, which bears a strong resemblence to atomic physics, you have to look for something the bookies have missed out.- Total Posts 17716
A system is not the same as a big win.
You want to become "calife a la place du calife".
So you gotta findsomething they don’t know
.
Jockey signals is in this category, because the bookies don’t take them into account. Do you know good jockey signals ?froddo
Is there a link between horse racing and atomic physics? I think not. And here’s why.
Deeply fully randomus resultilodes enter as they’re underly starters orderfiles and the calculodes of the incubus soon send the pi-R-squared up the polly, which is enough in all condescience to make this ploy in the atomole redundifold.
Rickety
Your approach seems to be a mixture of Stewart Simpson (‘turn of foot’ horses) and Patrick Kilgallon (most, if not all, of the remainder of the factors you mention).
Do you have anything on your bookshelf by either of them?
Hi folks…
I did drop an intro post in the lounge, but so far no one has seen it.
Anyhow, I wonder is there any such thing as a system?
For example, SWIMBO has her system. If a horse has a name that in any way relates to someone she knows, something she’s done, somewhere she’s been etc., she’ll get me to have a tickle on it for her on Betfair. It’s a daft system, but it’s a system. And yes she does have some nice winners. Probably because she usually hears the ‘experts’ taking about a horse ‘on the telly’, or she sees it in the paddock and it looks nice.
We all have our favourite ways of divining winners (or losers) so as those ‘systems’ are going to have differences, isn’t it better to say we have a ‘methodical’ approach; rather than a system. If there was a ‘system’, we would surely all have found it by now, and the bookies would be flat broke? Yeah okay! Dream on.
I have a shelf full of racing books from ‘Always Back Winners’ to ‘Against The Crowd’. After all that reading, I decided that some of the authors wrote about racing, because they couldn’t make a profit from betting! Mainly though, I learned never to back slow horses. Obvious maybe, but there are plenty of slow runners on offer, often talked-up, to favourites as well.
My methods then: I build a list of horses to follow in early flat season, with the intention of starting my betting between May and late August.
Generally I find horses with a turn of foot, and I back them when they are running at the right courses, which means a lot of waiting about. So I don’t bet every day.
Rarely are my horses ‘down in the betting’. Generally they are listed in the top four. I don’t necessarily bet when my horses are favourite either.
The important things to me are: Fitness, Class, and Conditions, (Course, Going, Draw and the number of runners.) From my records I know if the horse is fit, and what it can cope with. So, if I think one of my ‘string’ is full of running, at the right course, and the opposition is fairly mundane, then I have a go and I am usually confident. At the very least I will always get a run for my money. (I don’t bet in races over 12 runners, and I won’t take less than 3/1, unless I have a good reason to do so.) Value!
Boiled down, my horses are game, have a finishing run, and are at or near top-weight, on a turning track. As long as they are fit, have a decent jockey, and the ground suits them, I am in with a chance.
In twenty-five years of using this approach, I only had two ‘out of profit’ years, and they weren’t on the trot. Is my approach a system? Is it a method? Let’s just say it’s the way I do things.
After a ‘sabbatical’, my health has picked up. I am ready to have another tilt at the ring. So we shall see what we shall see.
If you got this far then thanks for reading!
Regards
Rickety-StickHi R-C
90% of the time systems are compiled from past stats and as writing them is my HOBBY their is no HOLY GRAIL and if their was their would be no bookies anyway.
In your case it must be classed as a METHOD as you are starting from scratch and if I.m reading it right you start with a NEW SET OF HORSES every season and noting those you consider to have a very good chance of finding winners over a 4 month period [May tilL late Aug]if they meet what you consider fits your other requirements.
You say you have used this over 25 years and if you have stuck by the same method year in year out they 1 may CLASS IT AS A SYSTEMS
as its something thats worked every year bar 2 which 1 would expect.You also state it has to be 1st 4 in betting and as AROUND 60% of those win anyway NOTHING AT ALL WRONG WITH THAT. As for value and in your case nothing under 3/1 unless a very good reason sounds ok to me but still a very debatable subject in some peoples eyes.
I write systems but from past results but not from a general point of view and each 1 is individual to race type and distance
but all must have shown profits every year but would allow 1 bad 1 but never 2 on the trot.Some do very well others fall by the wayside but the biggest prob even if you have a very good 1 the profits maybe over a long period of time and MANY DONT HAVE THE PATIENCE to wait and lose interest if a losing run comes along which is SURE TO HAPPEN AT SOME POINT.
Theirs no doubt you have an eye or reason to follow horses after 1 or 2 runs and pick up on their potential from may onwards.
You talk about books which I dont have but do buy 2 every year ONE JUMP AHEAD AND AHEAD ON THE FLAT
As for the FLAT 1 he looks for developing sorts from what he saw last season [40 horses] and a very good read if one likes that approach as well as around 10 stable interviews and other things as well and finds some very good ones to follow.
This works for you and thats what counts
Are we likely to see any selections on the forum
% MAN
- Total Posts 17716
there cant be a system in horse racing, not the way some of these jockeys have showm by deliberately keeping horses at the back of the field giving them no chance at all? its all guess work really and you cant go on form all the time as some horses might peak at the right time and some go off form. fast times show true run races for the winner but next time out the horse might get pulled up? ive not seen any system that works at all .only top horses seem to hold their form well so what does that tell you, dont back in uncompetitive races as anything happen in them.
Hi folks.
Thanks for the replies to my post.
Once again health issues pulled me away from the PC and from Racing really!
I’ll try to answer the points raised.I don’t mind my ‘approach’ being referred to as a system, and yes I do have a refreshed list of horses every year. Some of the horses will stay on my list but at the first sign I have picked a ‘rouge’, I don’t hesitate to scratch it.
I wasn’t casting any aspersions on any particular Racing author; AP especially not. But my racing library has plenty of Kilgallon, Holt, Braddock and yes, Stewart Simpson (Whom Clive Holt seems to doubt exists.) I couldn’t understand why Clive Holt took that stance. True, a lot of the major players at the courses must know one another, but that doesn’t mean Stewart Simpson used his real name when he wrote his book. Nor does it follow that he was a ‘face’. Maybe he was practicing what he preaches, and always kept his head down.
Anyhow, I found some of the pointers in ‘Always Back Winners’ to be quite useful, and I worked out my own way of reading Race Returns, using that book; among others. Clive Holt even used the term Always Back Winners in the rambling title of his second book. I am not criticising Clive Holt by the way. But his basic selection system (Fineform) does seem a little arbitrary to me and most of the system pointers need to be qualified with further conditions.
The nearest I could find to his working methods, was Braddock, who again relies on form. (Most of his selections come from the first three in the betting too, as it happens.) So that tells me something, straight away.
So as I am just back into having a flutter after a long rest, I shall have to rebuild my ‘expertise’. I was sad to note that Racing Post is no longer free, online. Raceform Update and the Weekender seem to have sunk without trace (Unless my search engine is junk,) and Superform can’t rely on the Royal Mail any more. (Could we ever?) and is closed indefinitely. If anyone can update me here I’d be obliged. I shall have to subscribe to Racing Post though I imagine!
Otherwise, I will have to return to the lucky pin, or get ‘er indoors to pick my winners because she likes the names!
I haven’t got a full list this year, as I am still sitting on the latest bout of surgery.. If you get my drift. Shall we say I have piles of time, but no inclination to sit at the PC too long!
So again, if anyone knows where I can obtain reasonably priced access to the Race Returns, I would be eternally grateful.
All the best folks.
Rickety.
Rickety
Most of what I need is still free on the Racing Post website, although I do pay 20p a time for the form pdfs for the races I analyse, on average two a day. So even with the pdfs, a lot cheaper than buying the printed version of the Post, something I’ve not done for years and assume is well over a £1 a copy these days.
If one subscribes to the Post website one gets a bit extra, mainly I think the Post’s ratings (of no interest to me), access to archived trainer quotes about horses, and earlier access to the Post’s forecasts. But I wouldn’t pay 20p a day for any of that as none of it bears on the way I analyse races.
I think the Weekender still exists, because I read that the Raceform Update, to which I did used to subscribe, had been closed and various elements incorporated into the Weekender. That was, I think, only two or three months ago, so unless they have now closed down the Weekender as well it is presumably still published.
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