Thekey,

You are correct. Last year I basically concentrated on midweek races and focused on the $7.00 to $15.00 price range. I did make a profit from it but it was:

1. Hard work!
2. Inconsistant - there were some really fantastic weeks but also some horrible weeks so a bit of an emotional roller coaster.
3. Due to the amount of work involved I was spending huge amounts of time but not earning enough to make a living.

At the time the last point was not a huge issue as I was only working part time and looking after the kids, etc, but this year with the kids off to school I had to go back to working more hours it was impractical to continue. (I sort of consider last year to be my "apprenticeship" for serious punting - I learnt a LOT, did a lot of hard work, had some fun and came out ahead)

Due to my work committments I decided that focusing on a Saturday only approach was better so went back to the drawing board (well actually the keyboard) and started looking for alternatives because my previous approach had never shown much promise for Saturday racing (at least not for the metro venues). For the first half of this year I actually did very little betting on the races and most of my punting was on the Tennis (very profitable).

Once I got past that "only mugs bet on favourites" myth I discovered that the short end of the market had some great promise - the old longshot bias means instead of having to overcome a 15% disadvantage you are almost starting at a break-even point so making a profit is actually not as hard.

I now have 2 basic "systems" in operation. My best one only averages about 2-3 bets per Saturday and all of them start at under $3.00 on the TAB (although I often get a bit more using Divi+ or bookie prices) but the strike rate and consistancy are phenominal. The second system has a few more bets and some longer prices but very rare to have anything over about $7.00.

Now that I have got everything worked out it takes me only a few minutes each Saturday morning to work out the raw selections (the computer does most of the work) and then it is just a matter of reviewing the prices just before each race where I have selected a runner to see if the selection becomes a bet and if so whether to bet Divi+ or fixed odds.

_________________
"Computers can do that????" - Homer Simpson

[ This Message was edited by: becareful on 2003-09-18 11:59 ]