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Gerald
It is indeed 12%, which would be astonishing and would require a much smaller turnover and bank, as you say.
My error was (and is) to believe that such a return isn’t possible over 700+ bets. I, lazily and without checking, fell into my default mode of thinking that the best that could be expected would be between break-even(0%) and 5% profit on turnover, and based my figures on the average of this range(2.5%).
I thought £500 per week to be a fair target as a reward for the time and effort required to run the system. Most of us would settle for much less, just for the fun of doing it, so perhaps you wouldn’t need such a high turnover and bank. Not cowardice, but common sense because we couldn’t afford to lose more than £1000 without feeling the pain.
Gerald
You may be right. The figures were off the top of my head. I’ll have a more detailed look and report back.
If you use Gerald and Kevin’s calculations and onefurlongout’s method of selection, you have as good a system as you can get.
4% of the bank staked on a method with a very slight profitability and a high number of bets would get you barred very quickly from any casino. If you think about it, you are virtually acting as a bookmaker – a steady relatively small profit with very little risk.
The maths and statistics will stand up – I’m certain of that – but will the selection method? I look forward to hearing the results from 700 selections.
The profitabilty is very small, so stakes will have to be relatively high and the bank will have to be a very sizeable sum. Aiming for a profit of £500 per week, would require bets of about £20,000 a week and an available bank of half a million. Of course, the bank only needs to be ‘available’ and should not be needed, but there is a very small (quantifiable) risk that the system could lose more than half of it.
onefurlongout,
Sounds quite promising.
Some time ago, Dave Jay and I agreed that about 700 races was sufficient to appraise the effectiveness of a system using level stakes. If you are still showing a slight edge after such a test, I think you can be confident that the system will carry on in profit unless there is some underlying structural change in the way odds are returned or other major changes.
Once you introduce staking plans, you cannot make any safe predictions, especially if you are increasing stakes after a loser.
I know our friend, Seagull, has been monitoring such a system which has done very well indeed over the last 18 months, and covers thousands of races. This is a ‘Martingale’ type system which any statistician will tell you can only lead to ruin in the long term.
I think most of us who have used systematic approaches eventually realise that we do not have the time, or more importantly the spare capital, to make it an occupation.
You really do need a lot of time to study the intricacies of form and it can be demoralising when such efforts are unrewarded. However, it can be a pleasurable and absorbing hobby, so the time spent is not altogether lost.
It has been shown on here on several occasions that profit margins are very small for successful punters. If you can make 5 per cent, you are probably at the top of the game. It follows that you need to invest very large sums and/or have a very large number of bets in order to make a living out of it. To ‘earn’ a living wage of £25,000 per annum, which is around the national average take home pay, you would need to turn over half a million a year or £10,000 a week. To allow for the possiblity of a losing run which might occur at the beginning of your betting, you would need a substantial bank, perhaps £50,000. So, it is not for the faint-hearted or those who have hostages to fortune such as wives and children.
Not surprisingly, such sums are beyond most people and even the most confident eventually realise that this game is only ever going to be a hobby. We all have a certain amount of vanity when it comes to betting and perhaps we feel that we can succeed where countless others have failed. I suppose that is a learning curve that has to be experienced, It can be a very long and very expensive one for those who think they can be a professional punter.
The hobbyist should enjoy the studying without letting it steal away precious time from other worthwhile pursuits.
Hi Pompete
I have been rather quiet lately, mainly because I’ve been quite busy with other things. Nevertheless, racing is in my blood and it’s something I’ll come back to soon.
The Artemis in the race title is an Investment company, which I’ve seen advertised in the press for many years. No doubt they need all the publicity they can muster amid the gloom in the markets.
I haven’t seen anything new or interesting on this part of the forum for a while. Hence, very few comments. My own very occasional bets are based on the ‘composite’ ratings which are outlined on my last thread.
So, no crumbs friends, even from my exalted position at the top table, although I am seated someway ‘below the salt’. In any case, we all seem to be feeding very poorly if my reading of recent reports from the bookmakers is correct.
Best of luck
Alan
Trickmeister,
Whenever you have a gut feeling about a horse and think you know that it will win, make a note of it. At the end of the season, look back at how your instinct compared with your more reasoned choices. I would be very surprised if your gut instinct came out on top. I believe our memory is selective in favour of winning bets, which are few in relation to losers.
Also, what are our instincts but a distillation of our knowledge and animal cunning?, So, instinctive choices should be a fairly representative sample of everything we back. If you are not a very good judge to start with or a guesser, your gut feelings will only be as good as this.
I live about 16 miles from the course. There is still an unrelenting frost here, although it is quite bright, so I think the 90% chance of racing is rather optimistic at present. Probably another inspection at 11am.
I will advise about a day in Newcastle if they abandon.
Fair enough FOF. I wasn’t knocking you – obviously you are a confident punter. Just that it’s not really a system that anyone can use without doing a lot of studying, which is really how it should be.
This is how a lot of people bet on horses. Doubles and trebles, Saturdays only. Bookmakers encourage these bets which tells you everything about how favourable they might be to backers.
Unless you are a shrewd judge of form, you will be unlikely to make any money using this approach. Surely you would be better off backing singles on the three Saturday horses – less exciting but much more likely to produce a small profit or limit your losses.
In any case, the vast majority of people will not do any watching or studying while refraining from betting.
Betlarge,
I see what you are getting at – although there is an advantage in taking best morning prices, it is not as great as people might think and is not to be had in every race. So, is it worth the effort trying to beat SP, when you might not get very much on and are not certain to get better odds than SP?
I suppose it is mainly because you know at what price you are striking your bet. No-one should bet at unknown odds which is what SP amounts to.
The exceptional value that was once available on morning prices disappeared shortly after the SP changes in November 2006. The reasons for this are complex, although generally it was to maximise the profits of the large bookmaking firms whose margins were under threat from escalating costs.
In non- mathematical terms, the Kelly criterion simply means that the greater the available odds in relation to your perception of those odds, the more you should bet.
If I believe a horse should be 2/1 and it is available at 5/1 AND I TRUST MY JUDGEMENT, then this would be a very large bet indeed in relation to my total bank.
Of course, there may be good reasons why the horse is available at a much bigger price than I think it should be. If my judgement is poor, I will know it before too long using the Kelly criterion.
Seagull,
You deserve a pat on the back for keeping this thread going all year. It has been very entertaining and also very surprising. His system has defied the odds, much to the surprise of most of us. Lucky, perhaps, but obviously not a fluke because it has been profitable in previous years.
Only a few days left and then Mark’s profit for the year is out of reach of the bookmakers. I hope he treats himself out of the winnings. I also presume he starts again on January 1st. 2009. I’m sure we all wish him well.
Most of us wouldn’t have the time or the facility to operate this system, nor perhaps the bottle to stay with it when the losing run gets close to double figures.
Seagull,
Three excellent examples of ‘systems’ that have worked this year.
Of the three, the EW doubles looks the one with the best chance of repeating its success.
I quite like the ‘less than 9 runners’ method as well, especially used on Betfair.
Both of these have some logical appeal, but can only work provided they are used by a limited number of participants who are not too greedy.
So, yes, I eat my words. Systems do occasionally work. These are quite clever, but we need to keep them quiet.
As for the third, it seems to defy the gravity of probability. I’ve thought about it quite a bit this year and there is no doubt it has worked in theory as you have proved by posting up the results every day. There are practical difficulties such as races overlapping and a result not being known before the next race in the sequence starts, but it has worked. Bets were even refused, a fact which astonished me. I will follow it again with interest next year,if it is posted up here. I think we both agree that it shouldn’t work, but it has this year…….and in previous years according to Mark.
I hope the rogues don’t try to sell these methods as their own.
A salutory tale, Baker.
Systems do not work. If they did no-one would accept bets. The quest for the winning system is rather like the ancient search for the philosopher’s stone that would transmute base metals into gold. The modern alchemy is to try and persuade others to lend you(or give you) money, so that you can increase its quantity by merely manipulating numbers. Gambling is the obvious vehicle for such delusions.
We have seen what can happen when large numbers of respectable and normally sensible people get drawn into such schemes in the real world.
The rogues, the chancers and the mere greedy combine to cause chaos in our banking system. In our little sphere of interest, we have seen enough of these schemes to know that they cannot work.Betting is mainly an entertainment that the vast majority of us enjoy and control. We know that it has to be paid for, just like the other services we use in the economy. A small percentage make a living from the game by betting, as do thousands of people indirectly as employees, owners or shareholders in firms that supply betting services. There really is no easy money to be made, which leads to the type of despicable behaviour that Baker has drawn to the forum’s attention.
Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year..
I’m afraid this thread, like many, has degenerated into a personal argument that seems to have very little to do with the original subject.
I suppose some might find it entertaining in a puerile sort of way, but that sort of banter should really be on its own thread, preferably with a warning notice attached that this is a personal argument and bears no resemblance to a debate.
I know from experience that those who have sidetracked the thread are sensible and reasonable, and do contribute a lot to many serious discussions. Levity is fine…..in its place.
