Mad I've been giving it thought too. Over the last 24 hours I've had a great deal of thinking time, as I toiled in the back yard digging my "bird flu shelter", completely quarantined from the outside world, and as I set up my patented state of the art "Duritz's Water Purifier and System Staking Plan" which runs in tubes in concentric circles around my Quarantine Shelter, and I've come up with this for you, Mad:

You've got two banks, $500 each. I think there's some truth in what Crash says, that you've picked 3% because you don't want to have too tiny a bet on the horse, $15 keeps you interested, $5 does not (which is 1%).

However, I still think at some point you'll slaughter yourself with 3%, even with a high strike rate of 35% odd. So here's what I suggest:

Take your two $500 banks, and merge them, marry them if you will. Hell, we can have a ceremony in my Quarantine Pit, the marriage of Mad's banks, Crash can be the priest.

So, marry them, and you have one bank, $1000. I know you therefore won't have a backup, but you won't need it.

Now, because you've got a high strike rate, you can start out a little bit more aggressively than the 1% I advocate, so start at 1.5%, increasing/reducing. Co-incidentally, this equals $15. So, you start out at $15, and also make this your minimum level. If you go below $1000, keep it at $15 because you want to have a little bit of action. It's all very well having an increasing/reducing method but no-one can get on for 20c bets.

So, make it a 1.5% increasing/reducing stake, with a minimum of $15. Now, here's the safety bit, ASSUMING (and that's a big assumption, nothing personal, just that 99.99% of systems fail) that your bank grows, build a safety somewhere for yourself. IE, set a figure at which begin to drop the % you have on from 1.5% to 1.0%. It's safer, and it's all very well punting aggressively but you can't punt aggressively if you don't have a $ to punt with.

Do that, Mad, if your system works, that'll work, and keep us posted with how you're going.

Oh yeah, and if the bird flu comes, stay away from my Quarantine Pit come Water Purifier and System Staker method, patented, dammit!