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Personally, I’m always happy at beating SP on a ‘fancied’ runner.
Having said that, there’s an interesting article by Tom Segal in that new Racing Post betting book. He wonders whether the exchanges haven’t robbed the market of the old-style ‘value’, on which Pricewise was predicated. I seem to remember TDK musing similarly on here a while ago.
Nick, is that not just self consolidation. I’m sure we all have thoughts like "oh well, at least I was in the ball park" and "its nice to know that I havent gone too far wrong with my figures".<br> The fact is though, the bet lost, and as it turned out the value was bad from that bet from the start. Maybe that given re-runs of the race the 20/1 shot would have won after a few more tries. Then again it could have just run the best race it ever will.
No way it was a ‘bad bet from the start’ CPGagie. If I could have the race run again I certainly would and to this day I’m convinced it was the best value bet I’ve ever placed.
I think we’ll have to agree to disagree. :)
We’ll agree to disagree then. You started it though:biggrin: ;) <br>I do see where your coming from. I had an experience similar with Tudor Bell, backed it at 25’s when it was a short head 2nd, had gone EW but, reflecting back after its recent 4/1 win I could say that it reppresented decent value for the win element when it was 25’s. I did take a chance on the distance and a couple of other things though, suppose I’ll never know the true odds for it that day as the hot fav flopped.
Sailing Shoes, everyone makes money from the game, as someone pointed out earlier. If they didn’t, the game wouldn’t be worth a light for those who win in the medium to long term, i.e. net winners: professionals and semi-professionals.
Winning on a particular day would certainly be the "be all and end all", if we lived in a world frozen in time.
I’ve have been making 200 to 300 a week, for a while now; £300 this week, and all from small stakes, as well as having near misses, and put most of it down to improved staking. As somebody else, mentioned in their tagline, it’s as important to control our losses as it is to find winners. <br>Again, this is a recognition that finding winners is not enough. Surely, your common sense will convince you of that.
I won’t be arguing any more about it, because if you can’t see it, you can’t see it. And you will surely feel justified in your own eyes in concluding precisely the same in my regard. But good luck. Arguments are what this forums about, to a large extent, isn’t it. But whoever’s right, it helps all of us to remember that the purpose of an open mind is to close on the truth. One position must be right and the other wrong. I’m sure we both understand that.
<br>Sorry, Sailing Shoes, I see you implied that you are a net winner in taking your calculated risks. But I’m baffled. I wonder why insurance companies bother to employ actuaries, or why they have developed a whole branch of mathematics dealing with probabilities, not just including the time dimension, but with time being the actual pivotal variable.<br>
(Edited by Grimes at 3:36 pm on May 20, 2004)
Put it this way. Supposing an actuary said the probability of that man getting run over as he crosses a certain road at a certain spot was 27000 to1.
And I said, "Well, I’ve studied these things a bit myself, and I reckong it’s only 2000 to 1".
We decide to watch him each day as he makes his trip across that road at that spot. And blow me, if he doesn’t get knocked down 10 days later. Would it be reasonable of me to say, "Ha! I told you so. I was a lot <br>nearer to being right than you! I wish I’d said 2 to 1, or even 10 to 1"
Would my prospects of earning a living on the basis of the way I calculate risks be better than that actuary’s? Or a bookie’s? Surely, I would have drawn the wrong inference altogether.
Grimes your analogy is slightly sad as twenty people probably lost their shoes that way today… but hey you spotted four of them them from your top window :laugh:
 If you were to get a reasonable number of deaths right, and beat the odds yes – you could be expected to make make a living at it – as Grime the ghoul
Surely the folk on Betfair forum won’t have a losing bet,considering how many tell you they win all the time. :biggrin:
phunter, just out of interest what would you think the top winner on betfair has won? since betfair started?
I wouldn’t know Master,and quite honestly couldn’t care,i only care about my betting records and not anyone elses ,and unlike some on the Betfair forum i don’t feel the need to tell all and sundry what i have won or lost.
A losing bet is a good bet so long as it has systematically been arrived at and when application of the system yields a long term profit.
The thing is, if you have a more or less systematic approach, (which, if kept to, yields a profit over at least the medium term), each time you accept the discipline it imposes, you reinforce the habit that will continue to earn money for you. ÂÂÂ
If, on the other hand, your attitude is, "Well one swallow may not make a summer, but at least I’ve got dosh in my hands at this moment, and I’m chuffed to naafis", well, you will be reinforcing that "Live for the day" attitude, and it can only be a transient pleasure, purchased at a price, like a trip to the cinema.
You may well – and quite justifiably say – "Well, I’ll tell you what, you miserable venal git, you get your gelt, and I’ll have my fun". That was my attitude for many years, and I don’t believe it was better or worse than prioritising a more or less steady accumulation of a little money. It’s a very personal choice that no-one can or should try to make for you. But in this thread, we are all giving our opinions about Nick’s question in the thread header.
Paul, you seem to have a very pedantic mindset. The work of an actuary is very one dimensional; so much so, that it seems to be primarily a matter of mathematics, not judgement – in spite of inevitable variables.  Indeed, incorporating them.
Stockbrokers have to consider many factors and dimensions, and could surely not rely primarily on mathematics. But bookies and pro punters (among which latter I am too small-time and have too brief a record of even modest success to count myself) are, in my book, super-sophisticated stockbrokers.
My tale was merely intended as a simple, primitive indication – a caricature, in fact –  to point out that any consideration of form, by definition, implies a record of incidences over a period of time.
What is "form" for a rozzer, but a record of an individual’s past actions, a chronicle of his known life and activities, enabling common-sense inferences to be drawn, about the probability, possibility or otherwise of his being of a larcenous, violent or depraved disposition. ÂÂÂ
Isn’t that what drives us mad? When we already have such a rough and ready judicial and penal system, great play is made of the paramount importance of the accused having a "level playing field", that he must be treated as innocent, unless and until he is proved guilty. <br>Never mind that he’s a multiple convicted rapist and murderer! And tell that to the *** miners!
(Edited by Grimes at 11:31 pm on May 21, 2004)<br>
(Edited by Grimes at 11:39 pm on May 21, 2004)
 An entertaining posting Grimes and your caricature of form is highly interesting , but there is something definately of the night about you with this continuingly ghoullish theme of death and destruction. ÂÂÂ
–   Watching poor sods being run over like supermarket chickens from a high window and cashing in on your good fortune
–   Banging up the crackheads, pervs, rapists and murderers, and possibly the miners too – without due process.
 This is nihilistic radicalism of a high order :angry: <br> Thou must not only eschew evil but do good..Beveridge
Your basic premise is right though concerning the predictability of form and the prices that link and determine it. Why not go the whole hog and make math the smoking crystal skull that predicts all :cool: the Superking ?
 Eighty percent of horseracing can be related to mathematics. Numbers translate to prices given suitable public form – say a minimum of five outings – and BINGO forget the period pain and the broken leg we have the cranking of a steady machine and enough certainty for a reliable evaluation of chance.
I do believe in pushing lazy people in society away from the benefit queue, so don’t consider me a total softee :bounce:
(Edited by gamble at 12:27 am on May 22, 2004)
I’ve voted yes, but this is nothing to do with getting value. As far as I am concerned there is very little value in backing a loser. It is more to do with the line of learning from your mistakes.
Colin
gamble, I was aware of the grim "humour", too dark even for my taste actually, and initially thought of attenuating it with disclaimers, but would not have thought that you, personally, would have gone the extra distance of extrapolating "something of the night" in me, rather than just a black sense of humour. I hope it is because the innocent suffering all around me is never far from my awareness, and black humour with regard to cardboard cut-out, cartoon joke figures helps me to cope with it.  Hamlet’s grave diggers. ÂÂÂ
Strangely, I think you might agree that the deepest subjects often provide the greatest humour. Religion, sex and, here, violence. I don’t have a problem with the notion of hell. And there is no way I can argue that away. There are certain cruel behaviours that merit no less than eternal torment. I think that of Brady and Hindley, for instance. And I trust God’s judgement in the matter more than my own, much as I would like to believe I am more compassionate in the matter than he is. But, in the final analysis, if we do go to hell, it is because we chose to. Read Christ’s parable of Dives and Lazarus in the Gospels.
Psychological profilers are in no doubt that psycopaths abound just as much if not more in the "higher" echelons of society: CEO’s who throw thousands, already underpaid, out of work. How many famillies are routinely devastated, at the altar of the greed of the sharks of industry. People, young and old, made homeless and sleeping rough throughout the winter, because of the failure of successive governments to provide adequate council housing, and properties made available at reasonable, and where necessary, with subsidised rents. In short, a reversion to the welfare state.
My point about the miners was that they were given "supermarket" justice, because it suited the authorities of the Thatcherite day/night.
Re your last point, old chap, you will see that I don’t take you for a "softee" in that regard. That, after all, is the real world, not the world of humour, or what in the opinion of some, purports so to be. As you said, you like to judge people by their actions. "By their fruit, you shall know them".  Still, and all, we don’t live in a society that encourages us to understand that God made this world and what it contains for all of us. But rather encourages the idea that the poor are responsible for their own poverty, as you mentioned. Surely, why concern for prisoners is expressed in Isiah and the Gospels. In fact, St James, in one of his Epistles, points out that Christ chose the poor to be rich in faith, and indeed the reality is that they – at least those who are children of light – are more moe innocent than the worldlywise by an order of magnitude, since their poverty is a direct result of their prioritising the spiritual over the material, albeit mostly on a supra-rational level. "Where your treasure is, there your heart is"; and it is our hearts that we will be judged on, not our worldly wisdom, or what we call intelligence.
No offence taken by me, by the way, gamble. Just my explanation, such as it is.
I should point out that with regard to the larceny, while there have always been professional villains, there would be far too many people who have been given an atrocious example of "self-help" by the "great and the good", and then driven to desperate measures by poverty.
The politicians, however, will also have some answering to do, for the creating the sex-mad culture, whereby young children will pick up a tabloid daily and read about "shagging", not to speak of the actual reality and even outlandish versions of it, on the box.
Not that young men will not have been encouraged by this culture to treat sex as just a one-dimensional bit of fun; when the reality is that it is a profoundly mysterious feature of our nature, both symbolising the consummation of God’s love for us, and constituting a range of options that can lead to open-ended horror, ie something that needs to be treated with great caution. Not, mind you, that I am unaware of the harm that teaching an unhealthy disdain for sex represents.
Still, for all the foregoing, gamble, you were right to bring it up, as I’m sure it would be how most people would have seen it. I should have trusted my instinct as I began to add my latest grim joke, and desisted.
(Edited by Grimes at 2:41 pm on May 22, 2004)
<br>(Edited by Grimes at 3:21 pm on May 22, 2004)
<br>(Edited by Grimes at 3:23 pm on May 22, 2004)
<br>(Edited by Grimes at 3:54 pm on May 22, 2004)<br>
(Edited by Grimes at 4:20 pm on May 22, 2004)
Grimes, I had to get my notebook out as you covered a mountain of territory. I have discovered that your mind is a highly complex affair containing several columns of organized thought, sorted and sifted to a conclusion by the Grimes life, which seems to have been pretty full throttle on experience. Did you ever drive a Bugatti in top gear without a belt ? Mixed in with those conclusions I do detect the odd chip. If I might be allowed to enter your temporal lobes I will nervously paraphrase your piece.
– Grimes blames the innocent suffering all around him for his ‘black humour’
– Grimes has a strong belief in the higher order of retribution – the ‘eye for the eye’ Bradley and Hindley should rot in hell for their obscenities. However he is highly conciliatory of the maker and he even allows him to hop up and share the same lofty plateau as him in the company of a sherpa and just below the summit .<br>
And I trust God’s judgement on the matter more than my own
– Grimes points a finger at the higher ups, the power brokers and the mighty government that has generally let the lower classes down.
– Next comes a difficult piece, Grimes considers the poor’s plight may be nonetheless partly of their own making and references the bible to aid this idea of their proritiising spiritual wealth for wordly castles. Grimes seems happy that the poor will in the end have the last eternal laugh.
– Next I see evidence of your chip Grimes, as you launch a rocket attack at the higher echelons and particularly the government for the shagging of modern society. The politicians you say hold the leather whip and are culpable for the steamy sex mad culture we live in. Then you deviate into the very grind of sex itself. It is not one dimensional fun but includes other emotions aside from lust, and even God looks in. However and here you wag an allowing finger – you do not abide a chaste Victorian attitude, and accept the idea and necessity for the odd bit of hanky panky:bounce:.
– Finally Grimes brings the birch out and uses it on himself for being so grim. He should have desisted from his black humour he says.
 Well Grimes, it is certainly a point of view. I think I agree with most of your conclusions bar the sex. Television and the media have served up the gonads. Mary Whitehouse is dead, and no five term government would risk tackling it. Society has itself become perverse of its very own choosing.
 My belief in the virtues of a free society are changing – as populations ‘explode’, and I mean that in both senses, we need more order and more control. The unhappy east Germans would agree, they hate their freedom – not that I abide communism. If Germany had conquered us, we would have soon breathed contentedly to the squeak of leather lapels and the big jackbooted corners as we waltzed about nervously in the no drunk cities singing Lilly I’m game, and queing up to see the edited Das Boot. <br>Order ! Grimes order !
flatcapgamble…..vote yes :laugh:
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