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Originally Posted by AssumeTheCrown
It is possible to beat a rake as high as 20% in my view.
Most of my betting is on first fours which have a rake as high as 25% (NSW TAB) and i have managed to show a healthy POT on these bet types over the past few years. I do have an advantage however of having software to generate the hundreds of combinations per race and a robust mathematical model to predict the first four placings. My biggest problem is finding large enough pools. Small pools are bad for my method of betting because dividends are "unders" when the outsiders come in. The beauty now is that exotic bets can be placed with corporate bookmakers to avoid smothering the dividend. The problem however is that they are quick to ban you when you start collecting big payouts. I have been a fulltime pro for about 4 years now and have consistently beaten a 20% rake. You just have to be a little smarter than the average person, have a decent bankroll and a good computer program. And a PhD in mathematics helps too!
Cheers
ATC
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ATC,
While I appreciate your quality post there are some observations I need to make.
I deliberately stipulated 21% Trifectas on Australian gallops for good reason.
Your situation with F4s is straying into different areas.
As I have just tried to demonstrate there are many situations where Trifectas are inferior propositions to F4s so success in F4s does not imply success in Trifectas.
The F4 rake hike to 25% is only recent so your 4 year record may not be able to be sustained.
Flexi-betting was only introduced in 2001. That offered a massive advantage to F4 players capable of rapidly automating that. That edge has now been eroded.
F4s are both more blind and less blind than Trifectas allowing appropriate exploitation.
And of course the big difference is that F4s have a pleasant habit of jackpotting - meaning big pools and effective rakes approaching ZERO. The sub-zero ones seems to have stopped now for some curious reason.
So all in all your F4 testimony does not change my scepticism about Trifectas.
I also note you frequent the Betfair Forum. That suggests you are not averse to minimum rake gambits.
Writing an effective F4 program is not difficult and certainly not only the province of PhDs.
Betfair Programming is however a different matter.
Essentially there is a massive first-mover advantage in such capers. It wouldn't surprise me if those pioneers who led the way in Overs, then Trifectas, Supers, F4s and noticed the diminishing returns as laggers finally arrived, are now making waves in the still brave new stochastic world of Betfair.