would it be a fair assumption..
 

Count me in sonny.......

This the comp. 'Autumn Comp.'
----------------------------------
This week 29.3.08
Sportz $745
Rabbitz $580
Gold Coaster $520
Mr Quaddie $480
YoungBuck $450
Makybe Diva $390
Maverick $380
Crash $180
Spartacus $170
Horse Whisperer $165
Sirpent $105
----------------------------------
Leader Board:
YoungBuck $3640
Rabbitz $3315
Crash $2725
Mackybe Deva $2205
Raw Instint $2040
Sportz $2005
Goldcoaster $1800
Horse Whisperer $1565
Sirpent $1360
Mr Quaddi $1145
Maverick $1100
Panther $830
Spartacus $675
Nutter1 $160

Welcome aboard. I'm impressed that you will at least have a go new boy. That's a lot more than many opinionated punters here will do. Good on you mate I'm liking you already.

Would it be a fair assumption if...
 

OK Ive checked the Comp Rules out on another thread - only one question -
What is the deadline for bets to be posted?

Thanks mate............

Oh I'm a bit easy there. 1/2 hour before they jump for any selection. If any of your selections is a late scratching, you get the SP fav. unless you nominate a sub.
Anyhow, welcome aboard with heartfelt approval. Not many of high opinion here every get on board. Some of those I highly respect because of the way they bet: Chrome, Bagman, Party and quite few others on this forum page just don't suit a betting comp. because they bet lay, or odds just before they jump.

Would it be a fair assumption...
 

OK Thanks for that...look forward to saturday.....

cheers:cool:

Chi Chi Choo Choo
 

There's an easier way, a quick and dirty way to test systems that is very accurate.

1. Take the maximum win dividend
2. Divide the profit by the maximum win dividend
3. The resulting number is the number of winners you're staking all hope and your bank on.

Example:

One of my systems
1187 selections
368 winners
31% S/R
Profit $130.80
POT 11.02%
Average Divvy $3.58
Maximum Divvy $28.80

$130.80 / $28.80 = 4.54

In this case, I'm clinging onto 4.50 winners to make money in the future.

So what does this mean?

With your systems, use it as a bank percentage tool, in this case I'm betting 1.23% of my bank on the selections. (4.50 winners divided by 368 total winners).

The higher this number (confidence) the more of your bank you're betting, the lower the number the lower the bets.

Your confident systems will make more money and if your others turn ugly, it will make up for it.

As average systems flourish, you're betting more and making more.

Back to my coding....

* Very few marketed systems actually show a positive result when more than two of the maximum dividends are taken out.

Well I'm glad we ended up on friendly terms there! Just remember with many of my posts, my tongue is stuck firmly in my cheek. Playing Devil's advocate gives the place a bit of interesting reading.

Being a new member has no bearing on your punting ability, but we can have a bit of fun until the comp. finishes. Good luck!

In your opinion.......

Pixie or anyone else.

I have a system which has ran for about eight months and the last month was disasterous, losing 24% of the total bank. But that was the first losing month, and the overall figures remain:

126 bets, 50 winners, Ave SP $3.94, SR 39.68%, POT 17.71%.

I just tried the Chi test and got: 1.84812E. Now i know i did it right because i got Pixie's correct score from his example.

It is obiously a damn good system so far, but can anyone shed light on the CHi score i got?

Losing streaks
 

Posts 1 and 2 of this thread began with the assumption that most punters drop out after a few weeks. Over 40 years ago, I joined a syndicate where the professional writer undertook to bet if sufficient followers gave him the betting bank, and he took a small percentage for himself. (These days few would entertain the idea, but nevertheless I was among those who did.)

His methods were most educational. If each syndicate contributed 100 pounds, he began by having a betting bank of 50 pounds, with the remainder kept in reserve. Usually he bet on one horse, with a saver on a second to cover the original stake. If the bet won, he added half the winnings to the reserve, and put a third of the winnings on the next three bets. I think his unit was 10% of the bank.

He had a terrible trot to begin with, so when the betting bank was low, he took not the remainder, but only half of it, that is 25 pounds.

He then took a spell because of bad health, started again and with just three consecutive wins ( which meant increasinglh higher bets), he made every syndicate in profit, and retired because of ill health. He was a real gentleman.

It does point out that perseverance can pay off, and shows that doubling up to "get out of trouble" is a risky business.

Error in previous.
 

Should have said, half the winnings went to the betting bank, and other half to the next three races.

Sounds like a sharp punter. Free betting money for himself !

G'day Young Buck,

Your Chi test result should have read 1.84812E-06. The E-06 means you need to slide the full stop to the left 6 times, so it should really end up reading 0.00000184812, which according to AngryPixie's interpretation means that there's only about 1/5,000th of 1% chance that your results were thanks to luck, and therefor you should feel confident in your system future success.

Personally, I find this Punters Chi-square test fascinating stuff...I have absolutely no idea it it's predictions will ultimately reign true or not...but it's fascinating nonetheless...

Thanks for that S&S!

I'd heard of the Chi test but put it in the 'too hard' basket. It's encouraging to hear those figures in your favour...

Yes it's interesting...
 

You do need quite a few samples as the score will bounce around a bit till you do.

Here's something else I've posted recently. Bit more complicated but a worthwhile exercise all the same.

When is enough, enough??
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How long should you test that fantastic new selection method?
How many results should a commercial tipster provide before you consider parting with your hard earned cash?

With some easily obtainable data, and a bit of simple maths, it’s not that hard to find out. All you need to get started is the average SP of all selections, and the percentage of winners. Easy stuff.

Suppose a tipster has provided the following data about his service:

Total Bets: 300
Winners: 60
Average decimal SP all selections: $5.50

We can easily work out the percentage of winners (W%) by dividing winners by total bets:

60/300 = 0.20 (20% winners)

From here it’s simple to work out the percentage of losers (L%) by subtracting W% from 100% like this:

1.00 – 0.20 = 0.80 (80% losers)

Using the W% and L% figures we can work out whether the selections provide us with a positive expectation. That’s the profit we can expect to make for each $1.00 bet. Here’s the equation:

Exp = ((DECSP - 1) * W%) - L%

Let’s put our figures in:

Exp = ((5.5 – 1) * 0.20) – 0.80
Exp = (4.5 * 0.20) – 0.80
Exp = 0.90 – 0.80
Exp = 0.10 (10% profit for each dollar bet)

Now we know our expectation but the bad news is that for mathamatical reasons we can't use that figure in our calculations. We calculated it because we need to choose a figure between that and 0% (breakeven) to use as a minimum acceptable profit MINAP. For this example I'll be happy with a profit of 0.05 (5%). We're going to use MINAP in our next calculation. A word of caution here though. The closer the minimum is to the maximum, the more test bets you'll need!!

Simple so far right. The next bit is a little harder.

As part of our final calculation we need to work out one last figure we'll call ERR. This is the figure that represents the difference between the W% and the win percentage that gives a 5% profit. Here's the equation:

ERR = W% - ((1 + MINAP) / DECSP)

With our numbers it looks like this:

ERR = 0.20 - ((1 + 0.05) / 5.5)
ERR = 0.20 - (1.05 / 5.5)
ERR = 0.20 - 0.1909
ERR = 0.0091

Almost there but one more thing. The final calculation allows us to assign a confidence level (Z) to the final result. You don't need to work this out. For this example I'll use a 90% confidence level. Using the list I've provide below we see that this confidence level is assigned the number 1.65.

Here we go with the final calculation. To work out the minimum number of test that should be conducted we use the following equation:

TESTS = W% * L% * (Z / ERR) * (Z / ERR)

Now with our numbers:

TESTS = 0.20 * 0.80 * (1.65 / 0.0091) * (1.65 / 0.0091)
TESTS = 0.20 * 0.80 * 181.3186 * 181.3186
TESTS = 5260.22

There you have it. The minimum number of tests we should conduct to have 90% confidence of a 5% profit is 5261!! Sobering isn't it

APPENDIX
===
1) Other confidence levels (Z):

60% = 0.84
70% = 1.04
80% = 1.28
90% = 1.65
95% = 1.96
98% = 2.33
99% = 2.58
99.9% = 3.29

2) These calculations assume that the average SP is an accurate representation of a selections chance of winning.
3) I was originally introduced to this technique by American writer/punter Dick Mitchell in one of his books. I've localised the calculations for you.

What if we just want to breakeven?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Using the same basic figures above, how many tests if we just want to breakeven? You'd still need 1316 tests to have 90% confidence of not losing any money.

ERR = 0.20 - ((1 + 0) / 5.5)
ERR = 0.20 - (1 / 5.5)
ERR = 0.20 - 0.1818
ERR = 0.0182

TESTS = 0.20 * 0.80 * (1.65 / 0.0182) * (1.65 / 0.0182)
TESTS = 0.20 * 0.80 * 90.6593 * 90.6593
TESTS = 1315.05

If you only wanted to be 60% confident of not losing any money you've almost done enough tests.

TESTS = 0.20 * 0.80 * (0.84 / 0.0182) * (0.84 / 0.0182)
TESTS = 0.20 * 0.80 * 46.1538 * 46.1538
TESTS = 318.67

For 99.9% confidence of breaking even, a minimum of 5229 tests should be conducted.

TESTS = 0.20 * 0.80 * (3.29 / 0.0182) * (3.29 / 0.0182)
TESTS = 0.20 * 0.80 * 180.7692 * 180.7692
TESTS = 5228.4

A blast from the past!

does anyone else use the Archie Score method?

I using test it on profitable systems but the other day come across a system that had 7000 bets and a loss of $600.

When I tested the Archie Score it was 56.278

What does this mean for a unprofitable system?

I guess I'm flying solo here.

Is woof43 still around?