I don't bet to live I bet to accumulate so to me not losing the bank is THE most important thing. I try to arrange it so that it will never happen because I know if it does that will be it for me, I will stop punting and move on to something else. You seem almost as cautious as I am Duritz so I'll tell you what I do.
I get a worst drawdown figure over 10 years of bets and then add half again to that figure for safety. That is my starting bet percentage. I bet level stakes never decreasing but increasing when the bank increases. My next increase also has a bit of safety built in. Say I am betting 0.5% of the bank ($1 for every $200) I will wait until the bank grows by $250 before I increase the bet by a dollar. That way as my bank increases I also increase my safety margin. It's fairly simple and just a minor (more cautious) variation on staking systems we've all seen on here before but it makes me feel safe.

KV

Yep. I understand that, I too don't bet to live. I earn full time and punting is separate. Luckily for me I earn from horse racing, but that's besides the point. My interest therefore is like yours, to grow a bank rather than to withdraw dividends from it.

Woof,

I'm flabbergasted at the disinterest shown here in Dr Z and the Benter video (you highlighted earlier). Why are you and I the only 2 interested in the mathematical "secrets" to maximising wealth?

I'm stunned that anyone would go to so much effort to produce that spreadsheet.

Possum (who appears to be a frightfully decent fellow) has a free JavaScript place calculator which presumably has a similar purpose.

http://www.geocities.com/possum_31415/place.htm

Although I'm in the process of a very detailed study of Dr Z's material I'm sceptical about his claims that "his" stuff still works in 2004. Sharks, armed with Native American kickbacks, would have been exploiting and crushing this for years.

Out of the 25 views of Dr_Z I'd say half were expecting "The cat in the Hat".
We are but simple folk here.

KV

JFC,

Quote: "I'm flabbergasted at the disinterest shown here in Dr Z and the Benter video (you highlighted earlier). Why are you and I the only 2 interested in the mathematical "secrets" to maximising wealth?" End quote.

If you have any serious money to bet with, the bookies are lining up to send a limo around, to get you both started on your road to riches:-)

JFC.
And Einstein and all you other scientists!
You are all very clever.
But you take the fun out of gambling.
Bit like that bloke who tells you the answer as to why that woman wasn't really sawn in half.
I know she wasn't really sawn in half.But it sure is entertaining.

Ok Duritz....

I have whipped up a quick application and run some numbers....

I have done 5,000 separate tests of a run of 2,000 bets. I didn't bother going out to 1,000,000 bets unlike others, as I don't expect to ever have 1,000,000 bets for any one of my strategies.... I can fully expect to have 2,000 bets though, so it's a little more realistic.

I calculated Longest Run of Outs and Maximum drawdown based upon the original 22% Strike Rate and $4.80 dividend. I then averaged these over the 5,000 separate tests. For the "average" I used the arithmetic mean. The simulation isn't ideal as we don't have a spread of dividends, but it's probably close enough.

The average Longest Run of Outs for 2000 bets was 26.47.
The average Maximum Drawdown for 2000 bets was 73.20 units.

The ratio of Maximum Drawdown to LRO averaged out to 2.77. Therefore, Bhagwan's ratio of 3.5 is not too far from the mark. If you expect to have a LRO of 30, then you should expect your MaxDD to be around 100.

What does this mean for staking????? Simply calculate your MaxDD and then structure your betting bank to withstand that drawdown. For a 100 unit MaxDD, then you should only be betting 1% of your bank if you decide to bet flat stakes.

Following on from your most recent post, if your plan is to accumulate a bank, then I would recommend that you bet 1% of your bank non-reducing. This means that as your bank increases you increase your bets, but when it decreases you do NOT decrease your bet. I have been using this method of staking for quite a long period of time now, and it has stood me in good stead.

Cheers,
Chris.

Increasing betting amount when WINNING is the only progressive staking plan that [in the long run]works. Otherwise stick to flat stakes.

If it has truly been proven that a staking plan will only exaggerate the effects of a negative expectation game, then would it not do the same on the reverse?
If you are profiting level stakes, would you not expect to improve this by a proggressive staking system?

A vauge angle that none of us wants to admit to..........the lady herself, LUCK,
e.g.
I've been operating a win system betting week to week race to race at Belmont/Ascot, 2 weeks ago I'd reached my maximum bet on race 6 (I think, can't be bothered looking) the horse was "Electic" it finished 6th beaten 1-1/4 lengths (the unluckiest loser this year) anyway it broke my bank on that particular race, so what happens the next week??? Yup! Electic @ $8.60c!!!

Hi Duritz,
The runs of outs was arrived at by running 10x10,000 simulations.

You may like to keep a copy of this as a ready reconner , it is fairly accurate

%SR---Max Outs
10%---65
15---42
20---31
25---24
30---20
35---16
40---14
45---12
50---10
55---9
60---8
70---6
80---5
90---3

This is a start to working out what your bank to bet size could be .
The 3.5 multiplier X run of outs, is as resonable as anything else , but at the end of the day one has to have some ability in picking selections that win at resonable divs. so as to acquire a profit.

You could ignore all this as rubbish as our arrogant friends suggest & listen to only them alone .
I can only feel they were not the oldest in their family & had to yell loader than any one else to make themselves heard when they felt they were being ignored & by trying to invalidate others ,helps to to feed their imature egos.
PS
Could you please tell JFC to JGF.
And take his Dr. Z & Cat in a Hat with him.

Cheers.

hey there stebbo
 

that means at max drawdown you would be betting way more than 1% of your bank,i thought this was all about the reduction of risk....at your rundown what would the% after 26 loses.........cheers,,gazman...

Hi Baghwan
 

Your figures are pretty much what I work to, and despite what some people may believe, it is inevitable that one will encounter runs of outs to match those figures... if my punting experience is anything to go by. Almost all of my various plans have run to their maximum expected run of outs at least once.

Stebbo correctly points out that once that maximum expected run of outs has been met and ended, there is absolutely nothing to stop the same run repeating itself immediately after the previous drought-breaking winner.

Runs of ouits is one of the prime reasons, I believe, why no amount of posting of succesful methods on this forum will ever dent prices on offer for any significant period of time.

Stebbo,
I feel you are doing our friend Duritz a mis-service by offering this advice. Using JFC's simulator I did only 5 runs of 2000 bets and got maximum drawdowns of 46, 120, 66, 57 and 65. The average maxDD here is only 49 so you could say I was "luckier" than you who averaged 73.
Now poor Duritz who was probably thanking you for your advice after the first 2000 bets would still be using 1% of his bank non-reducing during the second batch of 2000 bets and whammo. His drawdown of 120 units would have sent him back to his day job.
Averaging a bunch of 2000 bet batches is not SAFE. Look at your 5000 figures for maxDD and count how many times you would have blown your bank at 1%. On my five figures you have a 1 in 5 chance of losing ALL your money for each batch of 2000 bets. Maybe that's OK if you are one of these people who have a lot of banks running concurrently (and I'm not knocking that) but if you rely on one bank like I do, no thanks. I doubt if I'll ever have a million bets either but it gives a more realistic view of what can happen when "Sod's Law" comes in to play.

KV

Yeah I'm like KV, don't want to lose bank and don't run more than one.

Thanks though Stebbo, it all contributes to getting a good feel for what I should do.

Again, Bhagwan, I like the idea of the 3.5 ratio, though I had independently set it at 4.0 (therefore lose 1/4 of bank when longest "anticipatable" losing streak is struck). Thanks for the "ready reckoner", handy to have.

Who is this Dr Z fella? And does he know how to fix my sore neck?

THE BANK
 

DURITZ.

A bank is a bank.And if the bank goes,then all is lost.
Unless you have a reserve bank.
At your suggestion of 22% strike rate,there is a 1% chance,(yes-A hundred to one),of there being a losing streak of 60.
That is over a run of 100,000 bets.
So if you ain't daunted by the prospect of a hundred to one chance of your bank being wiped out,then 1.5% of your bank is quite in order.
OR IS IT?

Problem arises if two long losing streaks occur close together.
Supposing we just had a run of 30 outs,which will happen.
Then a winner or two followed by a string of 30 or so losers.
I suggest that this scenario is also about a 100 to one chance.

So your answer is 1.5%,if you can handle a hundred to one chance of losing your bank before losing your life.
100,000 bets is a lot of bets!

Hi Kenny,

averaging the figures may not be entirely safe, but it's probably as safe as anything else we're doing around here. :-)

Running my 5000 tests, then all things being equal, there's a little more than a 12% chance of losing the bank if betting 1% of bank.



Why don't we go to 1 billion bets then... on one single test, the LRO is 90 and the MaxDD is 460 units. I can tell you right now that there would be very few punters who would keep betting a strategy if they got 90 losers in a row. I would reckon that most punters would ditch a new system if they got 10 or 20 losers in their first 10 or 20 bets..... These sorts of numbers are great for academic purposes, but get thrown out the window in RL.

Should we seriously start betting this strategy with 0.2% of bank? If we did, then I'd need $25,000 to begin with a $50 bet and a chance to actually make serious money.... I'd much rather put that $25,000 to work over a number of strategies...

This is, after all, punting... It's a gamble. I'm in it for the money, and I'm quite prepared to lose a bank on a bad run if it means I can actually make some serious money from it. I only ever bet as low as 1% of bank on longshot systems... My usual percentages are 2%, 2.5% or 3%. (one particular longshot system I run at 1% has already had a maximum drawdown of 87 units.... that was a harrowing time, but it bounced back very nicely indeed)

I also add some other bank saving procedures to my punting... Once I double a bank, I start to slowly syphon my original starting bank out of the pool. This allows me to introduce new methods to my aresenal. I have a number of strategies who's starting banks are in the negative numbers... meaning that I can never lose on those stratgies :-)



Gazman, you are correct in your assertion that I'm betting more than 1% of my *remaining* bank when I'm in the middle of a bad run. However the key to this game is not necessarily about reducing risk. It's about balancing risk and reward. If I'm confident that my bank can ride out the bad run, then I'm prepared to take on the risk involved.

Cheers,
Chris.

Hey Stebbo,

I guess we end this discussion in the usual way with the ever truthful comment of "Each to his own".
You see, I get quite some comfort from your Billion bet experiment. A MaxDD of 460 is not a great deal more than I was getting for a million bets. It looks like the MaxDD is like one of those exponential shaped curves that rises sharply at the start and then levels out at around the 460 - 500 mark. I wouldn't mind betting also that the variability from run to run on consecutive runs of the same number of bets would even out when the number of bets is high - wheras they vary a lot (proportionately) in the 2000 bet range - I think this is important too.
Now if I had a $25,000 bank to use I would feel quite comfortable using it knowing that there is little chance of it reaching 0 if I made a billion bets. I wouldn't risk it in a fit if I thought there was a 12% chance of it dissappearing.
But then I don't regard backing horses as gambling - I'm one of these weirdos who consider it an investment. :-)

May your MaxDD never exceed your bank and your POT grow luxuriantly.

KV

I agree KV, many plans may lose overall, but some spectacular runs, the winners do seem to come in clumps. Therefore i think it makes sense to try and capitalise on these with an agressive approach with a fixed bank that you are prepared to lose.

Hi KV,

as you say, each to their own. One thing I've learned in this game is that there are many ways to skin the punting cat....

If the best I could do was a 22% S/R and $4.80 dividend, then I'd take that $25,000 and split it into 5 banks. I'd bet 1% of bank for each bank. I'd find 5 different strategies that gave me the 22/4.8.

While there's a 12.5% chance I'd lose one bank, there's around a 0.003% chance that I'll lose all five banks. With 5 banks in operation, I'll be betting about 5 times as many bets, I'll be turning over about 5 times as much money, and presumably making about 5 times as much actual PROFIT.

Like you, I consider this an investment... I make my money work very hard for me... At the present, I turn my original punting bank over about once every 8 to 10 days.

Happy Punting.

Cheers,
Chris.

While on the question of losing runs, could somebody please give me a possible losing run figure for the following, assuming betting three selections per race

20% s/r
15% s/r
13% s/r

that is if three horses with the strike rates mentioned were backed in each race what would be a possible run of outs? I can work out individual figures but am unnsure how to work out the combined figures. Thanks

Ummm.. So why not combine them and work it out?

Total strike rate of 48%. Would this not work?

I'm not sure you can do that Dr. Ron. For instance, what happens when you have 3 horses in a race that all have 100% win strike rates? Does that mean that it will be a 3 way dead heat?

thanks bj, sometimes I cant see the forrest for the trees. I just assumed it would be more complicated than that.

silver and sand, the strike rates are for a particular selection method and not the actual win % of the horses as such.

I think you would have to add the three % figures together and then divide by 3 first and then work out The LRO for that figure for your average.
Adding the initial SR % together would be the wrong way to go I think without dividing by 3.

Where are the mathematicians here when you need them?

Average for the 3 figures is 16% so LRO is 40.

A table from Bagman:

%SR---Max Outs
10%---65
15---42
20---31
25---24
30---20
35---16
40---14
45---12
50---10
55---9
60---8
70---6
80---5
90---3

But if you are looking for a run of outs for number of races, then surely it makes no difference how many horses per race. The total strike rate is 48% and should be treated as such.

Are you suggesting that with a strike rate like that, he can expect to have 40 losses in a row?

My strike rate at the moment is 34% and my longest run of outs to date is 17, which against that list is extremely accurate.
But I think that since I have only been going for 7 months now, I can expect a much worse run.


I do understand kind of what you are trying to say Crash, but I think if that were the correct avenue, then the final figure would have to be divided by 3 again, giving an answer closer to 13.3.

As long as the three strategies were guaranteed to pick different horses then it would be acceptable to add the probabilities together and estimate your LRO based on that. However, as soon as the strategies starting picking only one or two horses per race, then the math becomes very tricky.

If it were easy to do, then it might be useful to find the S/R when all three strategies select the same horse, and work from there. This should give a pretty good "worst case scenario".

Cheers,
Chris.

Stebbo, they are always different horses, being the first three ranked for my method.

With 3 horses per race it would be treated the same as one horse running a place.

The combined figure of 48% for the 3 horses, would have an expected run of outs of
approx. 11 of one of the 3 horses not getting up .

Considering you said they are always three horse's then all you need to do is add them up, combined 48% is your chance, BJ was spot on.

Hi Duritz,

Back on the original subject, I did some further checking on the efficacy of the simulators we have made. My system at home runs through about 10 years of races testing itself against past results and giving a strike rate, profit margin and maximum drawdown figure. I thought I would test the simulator I created back at the start of this thread against those figures and without exception the maximum drawdown figure (using the system's strike rate and profit margin) was less (averaging around half) of that given in the "real world". JFC's simulator gave similar results.
I suppose we should expect this. The simulators are assuming a regular return with regular and equal dividends when the results in the real world are probably going to be more lumpy than just pure random figures (seasonal variations and who knows what else). This is using a system averaging about 14% strike rate and $8 ish divvies so the relative low strike rate may exascerbate the difference but I think (a cautious man like yourself may find) it is worth noting.

KV

i came across this thread whilst trying to work out my likely worst run of outs/ bank(s) required etc etc, & it was well worth another read so ive given it a bump

being no mathematician & after reading through it all & comprehending 65.7895% of it all, the following post stuck me as spot on as soon as i read it





i have to agree, be prepared to lose a bank or 2, as there's no use being overly protective of ones bank & therefore sacrificing profits when the going is good

I think those Banking chaps in the USA must of heeded the good advice &

took up the idea, that it really is not a bad idea to loose a few banks.

I think they must have had a different interpretation some how.

When do you think they felt that they may have a little problem on their hands.

Was it the first billion or the 100th billion?

I was reading that one of those bank chaps decided he didn't like working in a bank no more & took up his Golden Parachute payment of $98Mil & was ordered by the Senate committee to hand back 25mill of it.

Imagine what he would have said to his wife when he got back home...
"How was your day dear?"
"Oh, alright, I guess, I've had better days"

Yeah right!... and some.

So let that be a lesson for all us punters.
Know when to cut your losses & know where your at with them .
Unlike those silly boys in the States who pay themselve millions while ballsing up the entire American Empire, the largest economy in the world and allowed to walk around scott free!

Weird!

Hi Duritz
One idea is to look up what the theoretical run of outs is, then multiply that figure by say approx 3-4 this gives you the run of outs for the bank to withstand.

10% SR theoretical run of outs is 65
20% SR ................................ 31
25% .................................... 24

e.g.
10% Selections
65 x 3 = 195 units needed

20% selections
31 x 3 = 93 units needed.


Another recommended plan is to bet 1/200th of your bank for each day.
Re-adjust staking for the day based on remainder of bank.
e.g. Bank was 1000 betting 1/200th = 5 units a bet.
New day. Remaining bank 900 / 200 = $4.50 unit bets for the day.

We adjust bank up or down based on what the bank is
Sometimes referred to as , bet percentage of bank, up & down.

Cheers.

lol Bhagwan, point taken

& backup or 3 is of course essential, something that perhaps our american friends failed to provide for...but then again theres always the federal govt to bail them out

wonder what a punters equivalent of the fed gov is?

mayhap the missus!?
most likely the public trustees bankruptcy services...