Crash,

I certainly never meant to imply that punters are either handicappers or systems users. If most people looked at the way I pick my bets they would classify me as a system user BUT the systems have been developed using (in my mind at least) sound handicapping techniques. The system is just an automated way of perfoming that handicapping approach.

There are, however, some people who seem to believe that a fully automated selection system can never produce long-term profits because the system is based on previous events. My question was therefore how do they perform their handicapping without any reference to the past????

Several poeple have also mentioned using a system to produce selections but then using a manual process to decide if they should bet or not. My main betting now is all from systems I have developed and if the system says a selection is a bet I put the bet on without question. In the past trying to examine each selection manually to improve on the system has cost me far more than it has saved when horses I assessed as poor chances romped home at double-figure odds!

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