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Hi Artemis<br>I’ve just looked over my records and results indicate my system does improve a little when race prize money is approximately the price of a mid-range new car.<br>At extremes of prize money such as banded and group races it does not do so well.
Anyway I will leave this system for now. At the moment I have just started a new system, that really goes against the crowd, to see if it can find any value.<br>The method looks really daft!<br>I won’t post results just yet as it may turn out to be complete rubbish. I expect it will have long losing runs.
For some sort of comparison I will compare it with the Fineform formulae as this is quick to calculate and quite a good yardstick for comparison purposes.
Final Update after 500 wagers, chosen at random from races where A Massey gives a selection.
A Massey loss = £835<br> Fineform loss = £831 <br> Expert Tipster loss = £840<br> My System loss = £398
All methods made a loss. A.Massey, Fineform and the<br>Newspaper Expert achieved almost the same loss level.<br>My system still made a loss although it performed much<br>better than the others.
The system was not entirely random as A. Massey does not provide details of his selections for some tracks. Since he provides selections for most tracks I do not think this made much difference to the results.
I am convinced now that in recent years horse racing has become more competitive so that in order for any system to make even a small profit, race selection is important. <br>I was amused to see the newspaper tipster bragging about his selections across the newspaper when he achieved a few winners while his selections in the main performed no better than Fineform selections.
Update at 458 wagers
A.Massey         £736 Loss<br>Fineform         £844 Loss<br>My System        £303 Loss<br>Newspaper tipster £958  Loss
(Edited by JAR at 8:25 pm on July 8, 2005)
Update at 396 wagers
A. Massey £721 loss<br>Fineform £735 loss<br>My System £368 loss<br>Newspaper tipster £971 loss
Update at 367 bets.
A. Massey £639 loss<br>Fineform £734 loss<br>My System £332 loss<br>Newspaper Expert £960 loss
Mine is still ahead :biggrin:
I agree lineform, Clive Holt is the real thing, Pro Gambler that is.  Considering how simple his fineform formulae is, suprisingly, it does pick horses on a par with some expert tipsters.
But I would imagine that Clive does more than just use this formulae when picking horses. Every time I’ve used the bare formulae on a series of bets I have either made a loss or just broken even.
Although my System is doing well at the moment, I really expect all four methods to converge over the long run and give more or less the same results, perhaps with the newspaper expert slightly ahead when form settles down.  And I will be surpised if that is not to just break even.
Form study is needed really. For example on Friday 13th there was a horse in the Newbury race at 2.40 called Rakti with race placings 185107 against horses such as Tarfah with race placings of 112111 and Grand Emporium with placings of 171421. yet Rakti was the strong favourite.  I think the fineform formulae selected Le Vie Dei Colori with placings of 143831 using my newspaper.   Rakti won at 7/4.  The only thing I can do with races such as these is to leave them alone.:)
The trouble is more and more races seem to be like the above or else to contain dark horses with unknown or unquantifiable form or if the race is straighfoward the horse is at unbackable extremely short odds. For this reason alone formulae should do worse and a newspaper expert who studies form should do better.
When I refer to the Bull sh*t of so called experts, I do not include the genuine ones. The problem for the ordinary punter is that the genuine experts are hidden in a forest of fake experts. Also to compound this, most genuine experts are unlikely to give all their secrets away while fake experts are selling their tips like they are going out of fashion.
(Edited by JAR at 5:42 pm on May 14, 2005)
They certainly are Dave Jay, My system which is a " no brainer" covers one page of A4 paper, and takes 10 minutes to work out a race, is beating all of them.<br>:biggrin:
It’s like everything in this country the bulls**t
and appearance of so called experts takes precedence over quality. No wonder that like a slowly sinking ship we are slowly working our way downwards to third world status.Hi Lineform and LookingForAWinner.<br>I’m not sure exactly how Fineform and A.Massey would do if their top rated only are picked.  However looking at my figures so far I think all systems including mine would perform better if only the top rated were picked.<br>When I have time, after I have finished this analysis, I may look at only the top rated horses to see how they perform.<br>I am quite pleased with my system so far because I feel that if I start to get selective in the type of races that I pick, it may make a profit.  I am not selective at the moment as I wish to compare different methods. Picking one type of race may improve the results of one method and downgrade the results of another.  I wish to avoid this bias at present. My aim is to compare my system with others to see if it is of any use.  At the end of the day if over a lengthy series of bets my system outperforms a national newspaper tipster, fineform, and A.Massey ratings it must have some value.  Because I invented it,  I know that there is no one picking the same horses, so it will not lose value and hopefully will work over the long term. I may also with further study be able to improve it.
Newspaper tipsters do perform poorly. I would like to see a newspaper use its tipsters to make really good selections by concentrating on say 5 races a day only.<br>After all what punters want are tips or information that generates a profit.  Trouble is if they did this everyone would use the tips, odds would shorten and value would be lost.
Some people, claim to be able to make a living from betting on horses. If this claim is true why is it that a newspaper cannot put forwards an expert who can make a profit. According to a fineform booklet just 2 out of 35 newspaper napsters made a small profit at SP.
Is there a con going on here? Is it the bookmakers putting out claims in disguise, that you the punter can making a living from betting , to generate more custom? I feel a conspiracy theory coming on.
How many systems in the Public Domain are put out by genuine punters compared to those put out by Bookmakers to muddy the punting waters? How easy is it for the relative or friend of a trainer to bet on a horse to lose if he has a whisper that the horse is not fully fit.
My view is that now because of the betting exchanges allowing people to back horses to lose. We should at least have the published actual weights of a horse the day before a race. So at least the punter can tell if a horse is likely to be fit and at its "fighting weight". They do it with Boxers why not with horses.
I don’t know if anyone noticed, but a National Newspaper, missed out one days race meeting altogether and to compound the error printed the same race meeting in the paper twice on the same day! Hereford on Tuesday May 10th.  If that gets past them, how closely are they looking at races, I wonder. <br>
<br>
(Edited by JAR at 9:40 pm on May 11, 2005)
Update at 323 wagers
A. Massey £621 loss<br>Fineform £679 loss<br>My System £399 loss<br>Newspaper Expert tips £ 1026 loss
I can’t understand why all these perform so poorly. All are on record, except My System, of claiming a profit.<br>The only selection criteria applied to races is that I do not choose any where A. Massey does not give ratings. Otherwise race choice is random. Yet none of these selection methods are anywhere near being in profit. :(
I agree LookingForaWinner.
Although the Fineform method is simple I thought it would do better. After all Clive Holt used to sell a book based around that selection method. So I thought it might at least break even.<br>And I just cannot believe how bad the newspaper tipster is doing.  A national newspaper tipster at that.
update at 283 wagers<br>A.Massey       £470 loss<br>Fineform        £419 loss<br>My System      £398 loss<br>Newspaper tips  £845 loss
<br>A Massey selections may soon jump ahead because he seems to pick more long shots and so far a lot of these have just missed. I expect that soon some of his long shots will win and put him in front. The trouble is he also has long losing runs.
(Edited by JAR at 8:28 pm on April 28, 2005)
update at 267 £10 bets
A.Massey £410 loss<br>Fineform £380 loss<br>My System £331 loss<br>Newspaper tipster £ 755 loss
and the newspaper tipster has a tipster service for which he charges! :)
Results update @ 220 £10 level stake wagers.
A.Massey £532 loss<br>Fineform £313 loss<br>My System £167 loss<br>Newspaper tipster £760 loss
<br>System results are beginning to converge.
Update of results – now after 199 £10 level stake wagers.
A.Massey = £430  loss<br>Fineform  = £459  loss<br>My System = £62 loss<br>National Newspaper Tipster = £654 loss.<br>:)
(Edited by JAR at 5:29 pm on April 11, 2005)
Thanks Artemis.<br>Funny thing about Fineform, they used to have a web page, but now I cannot find it anywhere!
Hi Artemis,<br>Profits are a bit on the low side, this may be because I am virtually picking races with a pin to bet on – a kind of no brainer method.  <br>However looking at my results I can easily move my method into a small profit just be selecting certain types of races and only betting when one or two other confirming factors occur.  I have not done this because the purpose of the exercise for me, is to compare each system and not to influence outcome by any of my own ideas except for the rules laid down in a system I have invented.  I find this quite hard to do as I must refrain from any alteration of my system if it hits a bad patch. Also I must try not to pick any type of race that favours any one of the systems above the others. This is getting harder as it is becoming clear that each method does favour a certain kind of race. In fact all methods could be improved profit wise,  simply by selecting certain types of race they perform best in.  But this would be backfitting the data.<br>The only race selection criteria I have used is that which allows the rules of fineform and my system to be applied by insisting on a minimum number of place results for a horse. I also never bet on very large races as these are a bookmakers benefit and I have to select races where AM and the newspaper tipster give a selection. As you said newspaper tipsters and what not,  do achieve a certain level of profit (usually a small loss) year in year out. So I am expecting the results of all the systems to converge to about the same level of profit or small loss after a longer betting period.  Of course I hope my system performs the best but it may not in the long run.:) At present it is achieving a result that is better than the other systems by a factor of ten. This must be a freak result to some extent, however it may indicate that in the long run my system is slightly better than the others.
In the short time I have been interested in horse racing I do think that races have become more competitive. Either that, or I had beginners luck at first and then as I learn’t more my methods became too similar to those of everybody else and so value was lost. If races have become a little more competitive it may explain why tipsters have been unable to apparently improve.<br>I feel there are more races today that look straighforwards at first but when you delve into the form deeper there is a hidden danger horse that always does not show in the simplistic racecards given in daily newspapers.<br>The change in the flat racing class system may make races even more competitive with overlap of class bands.
(Edited by JAR at 10:06 am on April 6, 2005)
I could name the computer program used but as it is a commercial product I will not do so because of libel laws.
If fact the computer program did so poorly that I dropped it from my analysis.<br>At present I am running 4 remaining comparisons. I pick a race at random from all types of race with less than 14 runners where all the horses have at least 3 race placings.<br>I then check each race and note the following for it.<br>The Adrian Massey Top rated.<br>The Fineform Top rated.<br>My Own System Top rated<br>A specific newspaper tipster choice.
Results so far from 170 £10 bets:
Adrian Massey £366 loss<br>Fineform £412 loss<br>My System £22 loss<br>Newspaper tipster £594 loss.
It is early days yet and the positions of each selection method may change.<br>What I have seen so far indicates the poor predictive ability of commercial computer programs. This surprised me to say the least. I shall continue my analysis to see if tipsters or fineform perform any better than my own system, the rules of which are writtten on two sides of A4 paper.
